Resurrected (Resurrected Series Book 1) Read Free Page B

like Eric did. It seemed silly. She was dead. Unlike Eric, I didn’t believe in a Heaven. But she was here, and I often just wanted to be near her. I sat with her for a very long time before Eric made his way back to me and told me we needed to go. Just like he never argued with me about coming, I never argued with him about leaving. I brushed the grass and dirt from my pants and followed him back to his car.
    You would think sitting at the graveside of my dead fiancée would have put me in a worse mood, but as we drove back toward my apartment, I actually felt better. Some of it was just being with Eric. He had that effect on me, even when I was being an asshole. We had skipped lunch and we were hungry, so we stopped at a sports bar so we could catch the end of the game. The waitress was trying to flirt with me. I was trying to ignore her. And there was no way Eric was not going to tease me about it. As soon as she walked out of ear shot, Eric leaned across the table, and asked me, “Dietrich, does your dick still work?”
    I rolled my eyes.
    “She’s kinda hot,” he continued. He was just fucking with me. He knew there was no one except Lottie.
    “I just care if our food is hot. And fast.” Goddamn it, I had set myself up. I sighed before he could even say it.
    “She seems hot and fast. You should get her number.”
    “What for? Do you think she delivers? Food , Eric.”
    Eric was smiling now. “Oh, I’ll bet she does. Get her number for me then.”
    “I’m no expert but I don’t think it works that way.”
    Eric wasn’t deterred, probably because he wasn’t serious. I had never known Eric to spend a night alone if he didn’t want to. “In my next life, I’m coming back with a European accent.”
    “Hey, this particular accent only became cool again in like the last 20 years. Be careful what you wish for.” I had no idea if that were true or not. But it seemed like it should be. “Besides, you speak better Russian than I do. Just fake an accent.”
    Eric’s smiled broadened. “I have. And it works all the time.”
    By the time we had finished eating, LSU had won the game and Eric had given me seven sure-fire ways to pick up women, all of which he knew I would never use, but because it had distracted me from obsessing about Lottie, he had persisted in telling me anyway. The thing is, Eric wasn’t a bad guy at all; he talked like it, but I knew he usually only went home with a woman if she obviously just wanted sex or if he actually really liked her. But we worked in a testosterone-driven field; he had picked up the language over the years anyway.
    As the waitress dropped off our checks, I noticed she had written her phone number on mine. I pushed it across the table so Eric could see. “Huh,” he slipped his credit card into the sleeve of the cardholder and picked up my check to look at it more carefully. “You should write her a note; tell her you’re really flattered but you have a girlfriend so she doesn’t get her feelings hurt.”
    And that was the kind of guy Eric really was. I wrote the note.
    That night, I lay awake in bed for a long time. I hated nighttime the most. The apartment was too quiet, too empty. The bed never felt right without her in it. I was usually the one who fell asleep pressed against her, burying my face in those long brown waves of hair, keeping an arm around her both protectively and for my own security.
    We had shocked her parents when we moved in together so young. We had only recently turned eighteen. Lottie had just graduated from high school, and I had just graduated from LSU, and we were so sure of our love, of our future together, that we risked her parents’ fury and told them what we were planning on doing. I had always liked Lottie’s parents and I was certain they would never speak to me again. But a few days later, her father called me – and asked me when we were planning on moving so he could borrow his friend’s truck. Lottie had the kind of parents