Page 1 of Karma's Kiss

CHAPTER 1

I never thoughtrock bottom would feel so…hot.

I’m burning up.

This rental car is stifling. The air conditioning can barely keep up with the overwhelming heat trying to encroach from outside. That’s summer in Texas for you.

I drop my face lower, right in line with the air vent that’s working overtime, but it’s still not enough. I battle with the urge to peel out of this parking lot and drive anywhere. North, south, east, west—any place is better than here.

Here beinghome.

Oh god. I’m not sure I have the energy to go through with this, to walk into that bar and return to a life I left behind eight years ago.

The parking lot of John’s Ice House is packed to the gills. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is inside drinking cheap beer, waiting for me to make my grand entrance. I know what they think about me. Well…at least what they thought about me last week.Madison McCall is really something special. She was the valedictorian of her graduating class at Oak Hill High before earning a full ride to Auburn, where she served as hersorority’s president while maintaining excellent grades. More importantly than all that, she managed to snag a proposal and a big fat diamond ring before those four precious years were up, and not from some Joe Blow, but from a real catch—a senator’s son.

That was last week though. Now, things are different.Now, I’ve been thrust off that high horse and they all know it. Some of them—all right,most of them—are probably really happy about it too. It’s not that I’m some horrible person, but everyone loves a dramatic fall from grace—it’s titillating! Watching other people fail epically refocuses the magnifying lens off their own troubles even if only for a little while.

The rental car groans with the struggle of keeping the A/C on full blast, and then a finger suddenly taps on my window. I lurch out of my seat, banging my head on the steering wheel.

“Jesus.”

I wince as I clutch my forehead and turn to see my old classmate, Pam O’Neal, standing just on the other side of my driver’s side door. She’s smiling wide and waving her hand, indicating she wants me to roll down my window. I don’t do it right away; I’m hoping she might get the hint and leave me alone, but instead, she crouches down and taps on the glass again, shouting through it.

“Hey, darlin’! You going in or are you havin’ a bit of me time? Don’t let me bother you if you are. I do that sort of thing ’bout once a week when Jimmy and the kids are annoying me. Sometimes, I like to park just down the street from our house and I turn on a juicy audiobook, you know one of those real steamy ones—”

Quickly, so as to not encourage any more details about her steamy personal time, I kill the engine, yank my purse off the passenger seat, and open my door.

Here goes nothing.

As I stand up and straighten my dress, Pam steps back and takes me in from head to toe before she delivers a low country whistle. “Well look at you. Gorgeous as ever. I bet you ate those men alive in Montgomery.”

I blanch, then blush—the color spreading even more once Pam meets my eyes and realizes she just put her foot in her mouth. She has the decency to look down and hide most of her pity. When she looks up again, she’s smiling brighter than ever.

“You know what?Who needs men?God, they’re a pain in the ass. How about we go inside and you let me buy you a beer?”

Before I can agree, she loops her arm through mine and starts tugging me across the dirt parking lot.

I always liked Pam. She and I never really hung out much in high school; there just wasn’t any opportunity. I was busy running track and heading up the debate team while Pam was bumming cigarettes and flirting with truancy officers.

“You been in town long?” she asks, eyeing my designer heels.

“Just arrived today, actually.”

Her heavily lined eyes widen in shock. “No.Really?” Then she lowers her voice, mumbling mostly to herself as she continues, “Nothin’ like ripping the Band-Aid off…”

She’s right about that.

This is not how I envisioned my first night back in Oak Hill, Texas. I was supposed to go straight from the airport to my mom’s house where I could lick my wounds in private. After a quiet dinner where she kept her probing questions to herself and I pretended everything was fine, I was going to steal an expensive bottle of wine from where she likes to hide them under the kitchen sink “for emergencies” and then I was going to wallow, sulk, and despair up in my childhood bedroom, alone and in that order. Instead, Queenie changed the plans on me when I called her outside arrivals.

“You just come on down to John’s, honey. There’re loads of people who want to see you. They’re real excited you’re back in town.”

Of course they’re excited! I’m sure they’re lining up in droves to witness my demise.

I can’t believe I’m here right now, stuck in these circumstances. I had a carefully laid plan for my life, and up until recently, it was all going swimmingly. For the last twenty-six years, I’ve been a perfect daughter, perfect sister, perfect student, then after graduation, a perfect wedding coordinator and perfect fiancée. Turns out being perfect isn’t enough of a safeguard against the trials and tribulations of life because you can be perfect and still walk into your house on a Monday evening with plans to cook a delicious and complicated chicken soufflé for your handsome fiancé only to find him sitting in the living room—home early from work—nursing a bourbon sour. He looks up at you with pitiful blue eyes and stares you square in the face as he explains that he’s fallen out of love with you.In fact, he’s in love with someone else. In one-tenth of a second, your perfect life can pop like a balloon, and you’re left picking up the pieces in the dusty parking lot of John’s Ice House.

This is the last place I want to be tonight, but Pam is tugging me through the door and it’s too late to turn back now. My presence is already drawing attention and—

Lord have mercy.

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