Free Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men by Molly Harper Page A

(before death) relationship.
    I thought back to the chapter in
Sense and Sensibility
when Mr. Dashwood has just died. Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood are overcome by grief.
They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in the future.
This leaves Elinor to deal with their grasping relatives. Elinor isn’t given thechance to grieve because she’s able to handle all of the grunt work.
    I was definitely an Elinor, minus the quiet dignity … or the sense. But I was dependable, overly analytical, and unable to shirk excessive responsibilities. So I gathered the coffee cups and bit my tongue.
    “I’ll just take them into the kitchen,” I muttered. “And join the other scullery maids.”
    I hefted the tray with one hand and nearly ran smack into my high-school crush, Adam Morrow, a blond, dimpled, and ridiculously clean-cut veterinarian.
    “A-Adam!” I stuttered. “Hi!”
    At least one thing had remained constant since my living days: I still couldn’t find anything to say to Adam Morrow. While contemplating the back of his neck in sophomore English, I had daydreams where Adam suddenly realized how luminously beautiful I was, inside and out. He would finally realize that I was more than the brainy gal jocks wanted to be paired with on group projects. He’d ask me where I’d been all his life. There was also an imagined prom-night scenario that I won’t go into. And now, all I could do was gawk at him and keep a death grip on a tray of dirty coffee cups.
    “Hi, Jane,” he said, smiling broadly. “It’s nice to see you again. It’s been a while.”
    “What are you doing here?” I blurted. Woo-hoo, a full, unstuttered sentence!
    Adam was carrying a carefully Tupperwared seven-layer salad, though how anything involving hard-boiled eggs, bacon, mayonnaise, and sugar could be consideredsalad, I have no idea. “Mama sent me over with this. She had dental surgery this afternoon, and she’s still laid up on the pain pills. She’s sorry she couldn’t make it.”
    “That was very thoughtful,” I said, accepting the bowl with my free hand. “And heavy. How much bacon is in this thing?”
    “Just enough.” He laughed, bottomless cerulean eyes twinkling. “What about you? Are you doing something different with your hair?” he asked, staring at me closely. “Because you look different. Great but different.”
    He was staring at me again, as if I were a puzzle he was trying to solve. Apparently, word hadn’t gotten around to Adam about my undead status. So, for reasons I didn’t quite fathom yet, I lied through my pointy teeth.
    “I’ve been working out,” I told him, smiling brightly. His interest seemed to perk up even further at the display of teeth. “What have you been up to? How’s the clinic?”
    He shrugged those wide shoulders. “Oh, you know, patients who bite me and pee on themselves. It’s a living. How about you?”
    I grimaced. “Well, I’m sure you heard that I’m no longer working at the library.”
    His cheerfully blank face gave me the impression that he was too polite to acknowledge that I was being gossiped about behind my back. I continued, “I’m actually working at a bookstore over on Braxton Avenue now. I really like my new boss. I’ve never really done retail before, but I get to work around books again, so it’s great. I’ve sort of moved on to another phase of mylife. A phase that does not include Story Time and sock puppets.”
    Adam chuckled, winking his dimples at me. “You should keep your options open. You never know what might come up.”
    Like a bullet wound and an old guy willing to gnaw on my neck to save my life. That was a surprise. At the thought of Gabriel, I felt a little twinge of guilt. It felt very wrong to do anything even remotely resembling flirting. And even worse when Adam blurted, “It’s been—I—I’d like to—would you like