Chapter 16
They didn’t get a chance to go at it all night because a sudden, hard jolt rocked the bed with them in it.
“What was that?” Dell gasped and clutched Cole’s arms.
His eyes went wide from his position beneath her. “Earthquake?”
It was entirely plausible, given their location.
But the shake didn’t feel like a fault line slipping—a sensation Dell was very familiar with, having grown up in California.
It was something bigger. And stronger.
She turned her head to the window, expecting to see the Lewises’ backyard garden, but instead saw hazy pink clouds, as if
they were floating in the sky. She gasped again and looked down at Cole. Around him, the bedsheets had changed. They were
no longer the soft blue of the Lewises’ guest room but gray. On that note, the headboard was now dark wood rather than a tufted
cream cushion.
With a start, she sat up so she was straddling Cole.
“What happened? Where are we?” As the words spilled from her mouth, she looked around the room.
It was no longer Cole’s childhood bedroom but instead a small, neat room with cool gray walls.
Other than the bed, a nightstand with a lamp, and a dresser, there was nothing in it.
“Whoa,” Cole said when he sat up. “This is my apartment. How did we get here?” His voice was slow with confusion. He gripped
Dell’s hips to remove her from his lap and scooted to the edge of the bed.
“Your apartment?” Dell asked. She pulled the sheet up around her bare chest. “The one your parents said they closed the lease
on?”
Cole moved like he was underwater, disbelief shrouded over him like a blanket. “No. My apartment in the Afterlife Administration.”
“What?!” Dell shrieked. She scrambled to lean her back against the headboard and pulled more blankets up for protection. “What do
you mean? We’re in the—the—afterlife?”
Cole hurried to her side of the bed and cupped her panicking face in his big hands. “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t worry. I’m here
with you.”
“Yeah, in the afterlife!” she shouted. Her whole body had begun to tremble. “I was supposed to come back to life, not end up more dead!”
“I know!” Cole tried to soothe. “Something strange has happened, but we can figure it out.”
Dell was on the verge of losing her mind. The tiny gray room suddenly felt like it was suffocating her. “What are we going
to do?”
Cole kissed her forehead and then turned for the dresser. “I don’t know, but we can start by getting dressed.” He pulled open
a drawer and fished out a pair of boxers. Then he opened the sliding closet door to reveal two parallel rows of button-downs
and slacks.
Dell glanced around for her nightie, but seeing as the whole room had somehow transformed, it was nowhere to be seen. “Do you happen to have anything in my size?”
Cole looked over his shoulder with a twist of his lips. “No.”
“Great. I’ll just cruise around the afterlife in the nude. That shouldn’t cause any issues.”
He grimaced as he stepped into a pair of pants. A doorbell rang and made Dell jump.
“Who’s that?” she asked, and clutched the sheets tighter.
“Um . . .” Cole muttered in an uncertain tone that made her heart skip. He reached for a shirt and threw his arms into it.
“I’ll go check. Stay here,” he ordered, and fastened a few buttons.
“No problem,” Dell said.
She listened to Cole move through what had to be a small apartment. The sound of him opening the front door came only a handful
of seconds after he left the room.
“Mr. Lewis,” a man greeted in a bright voice.
“Yes?” Cole said.
“Welcome back. Your supervisor would like to see you in her office. Here is something for Ms. Rodgers to wear, given the state
you arrived in. Please report in ten minutes.”
A wave of embarrassment hit Dell hard enough to knock her down if she’d been standing. Whoever was at the door knew she was
in the other room naked? And now they had only ten minutes to get dressed and report to someone’s office?
“What is this place?” she muttered.
“Um, thank you,” Cole said from down the hall. “Can I ask what—?”
“Your supervisor will provide more details,” the man said. “Good day.”
Dell imagined him nodding and turning on a heel to walk away. She heard the front door close and Cole’s footsteps returning
to the bedroom.
“Who was that?” Dell asked.
“A messenger,” Cole said with a frown. His eyes jumped with nerves. “We have to—”
“Go see your supervisor—yeah, I heard,” she said, and held out her arm. “Not weird at all that they know I’m naked and need
something to wear. Were they watching us this whole time? You know what, don’t answer that. Give me the bag.”
The flush in his face was confirmation enough that they’d been spied on. “Right. I’ll give you a few minutes to freshen up.
Bathroom is down the hall.” He pointed to his left and set a small gift bag on the bed.
“Wait, why do you have a bathroom if you don’t need to—?”
“To ease the transition,” he said. “They give you all the comforts of home so it’s not such an abrupt shock.”
“So, you lived like a monk?” she said, and gestured around the room.
He smirked at her. “Well, the comforts of a home, not my home. We have a tight budget, hence the department backup. I can tell you more later. Beatrice doesn’t tolerate tardiness,
so we need to go.”
“Beatrice?”
“Yes, my supervisor.”
“What do you think she wants?”
“I can’t imagine anything good if we were both brought here.”
Dell grimaced and reached for the bag. “I’ll be ready in a few.”
He left her to change. The bag held a pair of flats, a short navy-blue dress with a circle skirt, a bra, and underwear, all
in her size. “Not weird at all,” she said, and stood from the bed. She dressed and then found the bathroom.
To her surprise, everything worked. “Functional plumbing, who would have thought,” she muttered, and turned on the sink to
splash water on her face. A tiny hope flitted in her mind that the shock of cold water would wake her from the bizarrest of
dreams, but no such luck. She dried her face with a soft towel and looked in the mirror. At least she still looked like herself,
even if she’d been improbably teleported to another realm.
“Ready,” she announced when she entered the living room.
Cole stood near the breakfast bar, on the other side of a low-profile sofa and coffee table. The kitchen was behind him through
a cutout wall.
“What’s in your fridge?” she asked, and nodded at the stainless-steel appliance.
“Nothing. We should go. It’s a walk to Beatrice’s office.” He held out his hand for her to take.
“What about your TV? Anything good streaming in the afterlife?” She pointed at the flat screen opposite the sofa.
“Actually, yes. You can watch literally anything here,” he said, and pulled her toward the front door.
“Really? That’s awesome.”
“Yep. And if we’re not about to get our heads chewed off by Beatrice, I’ll show you the library. Every book ever written,
at your request.”
“Hey, that’s a perk. Still too bad about the no-eating thing though.”
He led her into a hallway with zigzag-patterned carpet and gray walls the same color as his bedroom. “You can’t eat only while you’re in the DAD. Once you move on, you can have anything you want.”
“Huh. So, the administration prioritizes entertainment over nutrition. Got it.”
“They have to do something to keep people occupied while they wait. This way.” He tugged her hand to lead her around a corner
to a staircase. They followed it down into a sparse lobby with a row of mailboxes on one wall and linoleum floor.
“Not much for interior design around here, are they?” Dell commented as they approached the glass doors leading outside.
“Not indoors, no,” Cole said. “But outdoors—”
Dell cut him off with a gasp. They’d stepped into Oz, had it been painted with sorbet-colored skies and rolling green lawns.
Cherry blossoms puffed like pink cotton balls down each side of the street in front of them. An improbable number of purple
tulips burst out of flower beds lining the sidewalk.
“What do you see?” Cole asked.
Dell looked at him in confusion. “What do you mean, what do I see?”
He nodded out in front of them. “It looks different to everyone. It’s based on your favorite season.”
A wonderous laugh burst out of her. “Seriously?”
“Yes. What do you see?”
She grinned at their surroundings, taking it all in. “I see flowers. A pink sunset, bright green grass. Cherry blossoms.”
“Spring,” Cole said with a soft smile. “Of course you see spring.”
She looked at him with a quirk of her mouth. “Let me guess, you see . . . pumpkins. Crunchy leaves. Slanted sunlight. You are an autumn through and through.”
He smiled down at her. “You are correct. What do you smell?”
Dell deeply inhaled and caught the scent of chocolate cake. Caramel. A sprinkle of sea salt. “Dessert,” she said.
Cole laughed. “It smells like happiness.”
She couldn’t help smiling bigger. “What do you smell?”
“Books. Coffee. Petrichor.”
“You are a stereotype in the best way possible.” She popped up on her toes to kiss his cheek.
“I guess now that we know who I was, it all fits.”
“Yes, the clothing, the hair, the aloof professor vibe. I bet your students were obsessed with you.”
“Ha,” he said flatly. “What about my hair?”
“Oh please. Don’t act like you don’t know you have Prince Charming hair.”
He dramatically swung his head back and forth like he was in a shampoo commercial, and Dell laughed.
He tugged her hand and stopped walking. “Dell,” he said with a serious note. “Thank you for helping me.” He looked up at the
sunset sky and thickly swallowed before speaking again. “Every day I’d forget more and more. I can’t even describe what it’s
like to lose your life bit by bit. I didn’t realize how much I longed for it until it started coming back. And getting to
see my parents . . .” He didn’t have the words, she could tell.
She reached up as if she were brushing a tear from his eye, though of course there was nothing there. “You’re welcome.”
She studied Cole’s handsome face and thought about what it would be like to wake up next to him each morning.
Surely, they’d spend an hour or so devouring each other in bed before they actually got up to do anything—a shift in her routine she would welcome.
And then they’d have breakfast together and go off to their respective days: Cole teaching at the university, and Dell running a restaurant.
Or maybe they’d do something completely different.
The world felt wide open with Cole beside her.
No roles to fill, no boxes to check. Maybe they’d move to France and he’d teach English and she’d cook in some tiny restaurant where she’d continue learning from the masters without the pressure of her name being on the lease.
The idea was lovely, even if impossible.
“We better not be late,” she said, and let the fantasy disappear.