“Elena,” he said my name with more of that impatience that edged his eyes and yet my stomach dipped at the way my name sounded coming out of his mouth.
I jerked when I realized I hadn’t answered his question, instead I’d just stared at him, likely with a blank gaze and a slack jaw.
“No, I eat meat. I love meat of all kinds,” I said quickly, my mind taking three whole seconds to catch up to my mouth and realize what I’d just said.
My cheeks went hotter than the ones inside my white shorts.
Lance didn’t even blink. Obviously he was laughing on the inside. At me. The grown-ass woman who had no control over her sweat glands or her words.
“Allergic to gluten, dairy? On some crazy diet you pretend you’re allergic to it?” he continued.
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak this time.
I wasn’t allergic to anything, especially not gluten or dairy, thankfully. My diet consisted of mostly those things, considering they were some of the cheapest. Also, bread was happiness. Anyone who didn’t eat it for reasons that weren’t medical was insane.
“Good,” was all he said before he moved the cart forward.
I followed him, rather helplessly, as he heaped various name brand foodstuffs into the cart, much like those Lululemon housewives, but with a lot more manly force and sex appeal.
The housewives were all but banging into each other as we passed them, everyone gaping, staring at Lance. Then at me. Likely they were trying to figure out what happened in the universe to make a man like that go grocery shopping with a woman like me.
I had given up on even trying to say something about the sheer amount of expensive food that now filled the cart. I was already planning on using the ‘in case of super-duper emergency’ credit card that I never used. As desperate as times sometimes got, I didn’t want to get myself into a hole of debt I couldn’t get out of. I also didn’t want to find myself in a position where I had no backup apart from asking Eliza and Karen for money.
Which they would give to me in a heartbeat.
Which was why I’d never ask.
I figured this credit card was probably going to be seeing a lot more use considering I’d be swiping it at the Greenstone Security office and be spending the rest of my life paying it off. But it was payments I’d be making gladly with my son at home with me.
“You drink?” Lance asked me after he’d put a box of beer into the cart, somehow finding room amongst the decidedly awesome foods he’d chosen for tonight. Most of which I’d only coveted in other people’s carts and never brought home with me.
Nathan would be so excited.
And that was worth it.
“I have a five-year-old, an abusive ex-husband and a shitty job,” I told him with a raised brow. “Of course I drink.”
Something moved, slightly, almost imperceptibly in his face, something that might have been amusement, but it disappeared too quickly to tell.
“Wine or beer?” he asked.
“Wine,” I replied. “I’m not really fussy with what kind, as long as it has an alcohol content and doesn’t taste like vinegar if it’s red.” My secret weapon was the ‘Two Buck Chuck’ from Trader Joe’s that was $2.99 a bottle and tasted excellent to my unrefined palate. But Trader Joe’s was a thirty-minute drive away, so it made the wine decidedly more expensive when you factored in gas prices.
Lance looked at me for a second longer than was regular with him, and regular was already plenty long, then he directed the cart to the wine.
I followed him, but because my gait was dreamy and stilted, I made it to him just as he was putting three bottles of wine into the cart.
Three, beautiful bottles of Cab Sav I’d stared at on the top shelf before I’d reached down and got my five buck bottles.
The bottle that cost thirty bucks a pop.
And there was three of them.
“Wait, as much as my life is somewhat of a mess right now, even I can’t drink that much wine,” I said, picking up one of the bottles and intending to put it back on the shelf, ready for a woman in expensive leggings to pick up.
“I’m not refined enough to appreciate such an expensive bottle. I’m good with the cheap stuff it—”
I was cut off by a hand on my wrist. The hand that was reaching toward the shelf, intending on putting the wine back.
The very same hand that had been on my wrist not thirty minutes ago, but somehow the effect was just as jarring. I reasoned Lance’s touch was something that no one could get used to.
I moved my eyes to his.
They were hard, stormy.
“Bottle’s thirty bucks, Elena,” he said.