Free We Interrupt This Date by L.C. Evans

you’d
just dumped your guy and we tried making out on the couch at my
house? Talk about a lack of chemistry--it just was not going to
happen between us.” He smiled, then the smile became a chuckle, and
then I thought he’d fall out of his seat howling like a coyote.
    I tried to force a laugh of my own, but the
attempt died somewhere around my lips. My face flamed at the
memory. We’d exchanged a few tentative kisses when his mother
sauntered into the room trailed by the new preacher from the
Baptist Church. I’d jumped half out of my skin and rolled off the
couch onto the floor to land on my butt with a solid thump while
Jack said something about me being there to help him with his math
homework.
    I’d made an excuse to Mrs. Maxwell and Pastor
Green and left. But my recollection of the kiss was that it had
every bit as much chemistry as I’d hoped for, enough to put all
thoughts of anyone except Jack out of my mind for weeks to come.
Jack must have thought so, too, because he’d asked me out a couple
of times after that. I’d accepted and then had to cancel at the
last minute to babysit my sister and to handle one crisis or
another for my mother. We’d gone away to different colleges not
long after. And met our spouses. And lost touch until now.
    We played catch up for another half hour.
Jack was in an on again off again relationship with a woman named
Kelly who was planning to visit him in Charleston. We gave each
other the condensed versions of our divorces and discussed our
jobs.
    Jack was an architect. I, on the other hand,
had never lived up to my potential. Just ask Mama. But I wasn’t
ashamed to tell him about my stint behind a lopsided
desk—especially now that I was leaving.
    “You’re not happy with your job,” he said, in
response to my telling him how much I hated dealing with nasty
customers. “That’s not surprising for someone of your intelligence.
Have you found something else?”
    “A friend in real estate has come to my
rescue.” Though I’d known both of them for years, somehow Veronica
and Jack had never managed to meet. “She’s offered me something I’m
pretty excited about.” I didn’t tell him I hadn’t actually had the
nerve to take Veronica’s offer until I got fired. The job at
Odell’s was bad enough. Getting rejected from that job was its own
new form of humiliation.
    “You’re going into real estate?”
    “No, she has a new business starting up and
she’s going to make me her manager.”
    “Sounds promising. What’s it involve?”
    Emmie brought yet another refill, though
after three coffees my bladder was screaming for relief. I sent it
a silent message to hang in there.
    “Ghost tours.” I dumped a packet of sweetener
into my cup and watched it float like dust on top of the dark
liquid.
    He raised an eyebrow. Lowered it and raised
the other one. “Ghost tours, as in looking for spirits in
graveyards?”
    “Something like that. You know how it is. In
a historic town like Charleston ghost hunting is popular with
tourists. But my friend has a great angle, something that should
get us a lot of business. She bought an old house that started life
as a residence for a man who was rumored to be a pirate. Since its
pirate owner days it’s served as a makeshift jail, church, and
music school before it ended up as a boarding house, fell on hard
times and was finally abandoned. She’s restoring it to its original
state and plans to open for regular tours during the day and ghost
tours at night. It’ll be finished in another few weeks.
    “According to local legend, the original
owner was a larger than life type called—behind his back, I
presume--Devilhearted Eli. He still, so people say, clomps the
halls exuding ill-will. And he’s just the main character. There are
supposed to be other ghosts who make their appearances if they’ve
nothing better to do. A former night watchman reported hearing
screams, seeing mysterious lights, and smelling perfume, before