Conor keeps pace beside me. “How long are you thinking we’ll be stuck here?”
“Who knows? Probably only for a day, but better to be prepared. We can donate what’s left to a shelter.”
Conor nabs a frozen pizza. Meat and Veggie Lovers. He holds it up by his face with a grin. “For lunch. I say since we’re stuck in a hotel room with a hurricane coming at us, we might as well be having some fun with our food choices.”
I poke him in the chest as I pass by him. “I like how you think, Mr. McDaid.”
He smirks and tosses it into our buggy. In the produce section, I grab some apples. The crunch and juiciness of biting into one calls. In they go.
Food is fuel. Something that took me a while to see.
We tool down the canned food aisle, and Conor grabs some Le Sueur green peas. He reads the label. “Very young small early peas.” He snorts. “How many adjectives is it needing to get the point across?”
We banter like this, our choices in sync sometimes with what we pick, but always by method—we’re picking things because we want them.
Last time I grocery-shopped with a guy was soooo not this. At all. This I’m actually enjoying. My boyfriend during my sick time was also training to make the Olympic sailing team, and our trips to the grocery store were fraught with decisions regarding calories and whether it had trans fat or high fructose corn syrup, or whatever chemical was obsessing us at the moment. Not a fun experience. No. Instead, anxiety clogged me up, worrying about whether I was choosing the right thing or how much fat it might add to my thighs.
I don’t remember much of that time other than flashes of forcing myself to throw up—secretly and full of shame—but I do remember our shopping trips because it was one of our “couple” things.
Basically, my teenage years were a haze. A haze of me trying to please my mom and my boyfriend, and letting my own wishes and desires be steamrolled by those stronger.
Thank God that’s behind me. It took a while to toughen up, to not see others’ wishes as superseding mine. Learning to recognize and respect my own emotions.
No one will control me like that again.
We roll down another aisle. Conor squats and holds up a pack of candles, the movement doing some ridiculous things to his thigh muscles. C’mon, it’s like he’s showing off.
“Definitely.” I grab a lighter so I can look away. I spot a pack of cards and throw them in too.
I have to admit, though, working together to prep for this big storm is fun.
Conor
Never thought shopping could be great craic, but there it is. Claire’s shed some of her awkwardness around me, and I catch myself reacting to her, messing around just for her.
Jaysus. I’m flirting. With Claire.
Huh.
But not only am I feeling…playful around her, there’s this strange weight missing that’s normally hanging on my shoulders. As if being stuck here is giving me the space to relax and have a savage time. As if I’m some kind of prisoner let loose for a whale of a time on an unsuspecting town.
I grab the silver container of Jiffy Pop popcorn and toss it in the trolley, and Claire laughs. Christ, American supermarkets are banjaxed. Popcorn in a tinfoil pouch. The novelty’s worn mostly off, though, from the first time I walked into one. There’s just so much of everything. So many choices for every little thing too. But, yeah, I don’t care since I’m bunking off work and having myself some unexpected fun.
Proof of how much I’m farting around?
Claire makes a goofy face while reading a label on a can, and I laugh out loud. Like full on, everyone’s-looking-at-me laugh.
Claire stops, and her breath catches. Her eyes slowly lift to mine.
I shift on my feet. “What? Do you think I’m touched?”
“Touched?”
“Crazy.”
“I haven’t heard you laugh too often. And never like that.”
I stare at her. She’s right, I know. I’m not one for laughing much. Aiden’s the gallery-entertainer on our team, and no one’s ever accused me of laughing my cacks off. But I’m also not some emo sap that’s as useless as tits on a bull.
Then her words sink in. For her to be saying such a thing means she’s been aware of me for longer than I knew, whether I’m laughing or not.
Now I’m the one catching my breath. Especially when she’s going scarlet as she must be seeing…what she revealed. And she’s that mortified.
All the hairs rise on my skin, and my heart does an odd thump. And then it starts coiling down, stirring my pipe.
Claire’s gaze darts to the side. Then she does a strange hop and gets behind the trolley. She wants to play it cool. But I know better now.
Claire’s been hiding a secret.
Claire’s thinking I’m mighty feen.
Has she been thinking this the whole time, and I was too much of a muppet to notice?
And just like that, the woman I forced from my mind several years ago is back, front and center and fully crowding my thoughts.
Jaysus.
Claire
Groceries split and paid for, we face an interesting dilemma. We forgot we didn’t have a car to put it in. And we still need to pick up our clothes. And while it’s not far away to the hotel, it’s pounding down rain.
We’re staring at the buggy, and then we laugh at the same time. He’s got a ton of bags in each hand, and so do I. And we still have bags in the buggy. Thankfully the strip mall has an overhang covering the sidewalk.
Conor heaves his bags back into the buggy.
“What are you doing?”
He gives me a big grin, and my heart does another kick. When he laughed in the grocery store, it made his serious face five years younger. He was beautiful. And I’m seeing that beauty again.
“We don’t need to be carrying them yet. We’ll just roll this into the laundrette, put our clothes in here too, and then load up the Lyft car when it gets here. I’ll give him a bit extra for helping, yeah.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I place all mine back in and flex my fingers, getting the blood flowing again. “Good thing the only cold item is the pizza.”
“And we’ll cook that up when we get back.” He pushes the buggy down the sidewalk of the strip mall, and we bump it into the laundromat. We get some weird looks, but whatever.
We managed to combine our clothes into one machine for colors and one for whites. Both are done now, so we throw them into the big dryers. It’s weird having our clothes mixed together, as if we skipped to some future stage of dating, but I try not to focus too much on that.
We have thirty minutes to wait, so I fish around our grocery bags and pull out the pack of cards. “You ever play Spit?”
His footsteps bring him closer, and he's by my side, and I'm acutely conscious of how close he is to me. “Never heard of it.”
I motion to two empty red Formica chairs with a short table between. I love Spit. “Prepare to learn from the master.”
He brushes past me, his scent brushing me too, and folds his large body into the tiny chair. “The master, is it now?” He glances up at me.
And I proceed to kick his hot Irish ass at the fast-paced game.
Chapter 6