“Meaning what?” she asks. “Mine doesn’t count?”
Fucking hell. The shit I have to put up with.
“No,” I reply blackly.
“Why?” she demands. “Because I’m a woman?”
Her eyes flare with indignation. I notice a couple of people gawking at us from the aisles. That does remarkably little to help my mood.
“No,” I retort. “Because you’re fucking nuts.”
“You should look in the mirror before you go around throwing insults like that,” she says placidly.
One well-placed hit and she’d be out cold. It’d be so easy and the silence that follows would be so fucking welcome…
I try to walk around her, but she moves right in front of me, putting her body between me and the exit.
“Why don’t you come around to my place for dinner?” she suggests brightly. “You look like you could use a real meal.”
“I have food.”
“Alcohol doesn’t count as food.”
“Why the fuck do you even care?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I think Esme would want me to make sure you’re alright,” she says.
I freeze. My eyes narrow. Icy, flinty, furious.
“Fuck off, you crazy bitch,” I rasp.
Then I push past her so hard that she stumbles into the long shelves and upends several racks of beans.
Leaving the chaos in my wake, I head straight for the checkout counter and push my cart through.
“Hurry the fuck up,” I tell the pimple-faced youth who looks about ready to piss himself. I’m not sure how good his English is, but some messages are universal. He gets the gist of it.
He grabs the items from my cart, trying to be as fast as he can, but he’s so nervous he keeps stumbling, making silly mistakes and sweating through his green grocery store shirt.
“You have five seconds to finish up or else I’m gonna walk out of here with my alcohol and you’re gonna have to pay for it.”
His eyes go wide and the amount of sweat on his brow seems to double instantly.
“Do you have to terrorize the boy just because you’re mad at the world?” comes a sickeningly familiar voice.
Fucking Aracelia.
“Don’t you have a séance to go perform somewhere?” I ask. “A Ouija board that needs a friend?”
“Not today,” she replies seriously. “But if you’re interesting in communicating with someone, I can find the time for you.”
“Ti durak!” I groan in Russian. Shut the fuck up.
The boy almost drops one of my bottles of whiskey while he tries to run it under the scanner.
But my anger is directed at Aracelia right now. She’s standing behind me with a bunch of bananas in her arms. Cradling it like a fucking baby.
“You know where I live if you change your mind about dinner,” she says. As though we’d been having a perfectly civil conversation.