Death By Chick Lit Read Online Free PDF Page A

glories, nasturtiums, honeysuckle, jasmine, and five kinds of basil. Plus hollyhocks, foxglove, lilies, lupine. Portulaca, clematis, lavender. Any herb you’d ever want in an omelet. Hot chili peppers, too. And tomatoes. Ignoring all instructions to “plant seedlings twenty-four inches apart,” Lola had filled two roughly seven-by-seven rectangles on either side of the front steps—plus two other small stretches between the sidewalk and the street—with tall, jungly tangles of all the sun-loving plants she’d never been able to grow indoors, even with enough Gro-Lites to make her apartment look like it was set up for a photo shoot (specifically, a photo shoot of ailing plants). She had suffered for years with just a couple of coleuses, the requisite bathroom fern, and one desultory philodendron with whom she was never quite on speaking terms, waiting all the while for a knight in shining armor to carry her off into the full sun.
    And in rode her geek-hottie hybrid dreamboat Doug, who would have done so on a Segway if he hadn’t instead been saving for a down payment with someone like Lola. Doug of the thick, dark hair Lola loved to put a hand in and just hold, Doug who could build a computer out of a coconut and a website out of thin air, Doug who was still in touch with his friends from his D&D days, Doug who could sort of play the banjo. Their love was the phoenix that had risen, two years before, and faster than anyone had expected, from the ashes of their dot-com glory days at Ovum, Inc.
    So Lola had Doug, and because of Doug, she had her garden. It was her pride, her joy, her most beloved procrastination. Having returned to freelance journalism, Lola worked at home. Whenever she got sick of no one calling about her novel, she’d step out and deadhead the marigolds.
    The night of Mimi’s murder, Doug bundled Lola into a cab—a $30 splurge for them, plus a twenty-five minute ride with a glowering driver sure he’d never pick up a fare for the way back—and stroked her hair with her head on his lap, which was her second- favoritest thing ever in the whole wide world, but she was too spent at that moment to reposition for him to scratch her back.
    “See?” said Lola drowsily. “If we had kids, or even a dog, we’d never be able to go out on the town like this.”
    “And find dead bodies?” asked Doug.
    “Well, you know.”
    Oh, how she loved him. How did she know? Because she loved hanging out with him. They always had a good time. They liked each other. They were fine apart, of course—they’d always drift away from each other at parties to allow each other more airtime—but their druthers were to be together. So many people forget that, Lola thought. That in addition to any lightning-strike love, there also has to be like . You actually have to like each other, want to be together, feel like you need to be in the same place at the same time, even if one of you is lost in a book and the other is scrambling an egg.
    Now that she and Doug were married, though, something had shifted a bit—not in Lola’s devotion, but in her intentions. Lola was highly determined not to become one of those married women who, due to their “lifestyle change,” stop seeing their single friends. She hung out constantly with Annabel, dutifully did the requisite girl brunches, made sure she went to media parties, “kept herself out there,” and so forth. With or without Doug. They’d never actually talked about it, but she knew he understood; that’s how closely and intuitively connected they were. And it’s not like he didn’t go without her to Burning Man.
    I am so damn lucky, Lola thought woozily, feeling soothing heat from Doug’s hand. She was floating on a cloud of exhaustion so thick she couldn’t even feel the bumps on the road. I have Doug, and I’m not dead.
    As the cab slowed to a stop, Lola began to calculate the number of feet remaining between the car and her bed.
    “Hey, monkey, don’t forget your