Page 8 of Beneath the Indigo Sky

Is it creepy that when I returned to retrieve a forgotten jacket after my brother’s funeral, this ethereal man noticed what other scents lingered on the worn leather as he carried it from the back room? I decide that it’s not. No one has cared what I smell like for a very long time. I have to tell myself that the sip of chai is the only reason there is a pool of warmth spreading through my abdomen.

“Do you have a list?”

My eyebrow tries to escape my forehead in confusion. “A list?”

He takes another sip. “A grocery list.”

Oh. “Oh. No, I don’t.”

He shifts to the side in his seat and pulls his phone from his back pocket. He presses on the bottom corner, and a small stylus pops out, which he uses to tap on the screen for a moment before sliding the phone across the table to rest beside my tea, stylus on top.

“Why don’t you make one for me, and then I’ll grab your shopping with mine while you sit here and enjoy your tea.”

What?

Why in the world is he offering to shop for me? I don’t know this man. The most effort anyone has extended to me has been to leave a roast or scalloped potatoes at the shop when they’ve dropped off their trucks.

I shake my head quickly. “No. That’s not something you…”

He cuts me off.

“Please. Let me do this.”

I search his face, all strong, sleek lines and soft skin.

“…Why?”

"Because I want to.” He says it like it’s the most natural thing in the world to want to grocery shop for someone he doesn’t know. Like it would be the most natural thing in the world for me to agree.

He watches me struggle to say yes and seems to decide that perhaps an additional reason might sway the tide.

“Besides. I only allow myself one espresso a day, and if I do this, then you’ll have to buy me a second as a thank you, and I’ll have to drink it. It would be rude of me to decline.”

A noise escapes me that feels like it’s trying to be a laugh but manages to sound like nothing more than a choked sob.

His playful grin is wide and brilliant and all-encompassing, and I can’t remember what it’s like to look at anything other than his smile as his smooth voice winds its way across my skin and down my spine.

I can’t say no when he looks at me like that, when his voice sounds like that.

I look away before his radiance blinds me, nod once, and quickly scratch out a list on his phone.

As he walks away, leaving me with my still steaming cup of tea, I realize that for the first time in more than a month, for one brief moment, I forgot to hurt.

Namid

I have no idea why I’m doing this. I’m shopping for his groceries. Really, Namid, this is the choice you’ve made?

I’d noticed him as soon as I entered the store. His emotions are so intense that it’s hard for me to ignore them anytime he’s near. I’d recognize the intensity of his despair anywhere. Not noticing him was never an option. My gaze had been drawn to him each time I left an aisle and walked the few steps along the main walkway before turning down the next. He didn’t move. I made it through half of my shopping, and he’d still been staring at the cheese. He hadn’t been wearing a coat even though it was thirty degrees outside, and his hair, which was longer than it had been when I last saw him nearly a month ago, looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. He’d looked so…alone. He felt so…alone. Somehow, that had been enough to convince me to prolong the agony that is the grocery store.

There are less than a half-dozen things on his list: milk and bread and cheese and lunch meat. I don’t really think that eating nothing but pre-sliced deli sandwiches for weeks on end is going to do much to help his mental state, so I add a few more things: pastries and a rotisserie chicken, apples and broccoli. I don’t know whether he’ll bother eating them, but somehow, I feel a bit better knowing that he has the option.

I have his groceries loaded into paper bags since I didn’t think to ask if he has canvas ones in his truck and there were none in his cart when I took it from him. Somehow, I doubt he brought them, or even if he knows whether he did or not. I settle his bags in the cart next to mine and head back to the coffee nook.

When I return, he hasn’t moved, and I find myself studying him as I order a second round of drinks and park the cart to the side in a way that places it out of the way of other customers but also encourages them not to sit at the table nearest ours. Even with his shoulders hunched like he carries the weight of the world, his back is straight and broad, and I wonder what it must have been like to have known him laughing and loving and enjoying life.

He jumps slightly as I set a second cup down in front of him and slide back into the cold metal seat on the opposite side of the scuffed-up table.

I sip slowly as I wait for him to calm down and readjust to my presence.

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