Page 17 of Beckon

“Talking to myself. It’s a habit, I’m afraid, so you’ll hear a lot more of that if we’re still on for Saturday?”

Chandler didn’t miss the insecurity in her question.

“Why wouldn’t we be? But I’m curious. What’s so special about a Walmart receipt?” Tami’s jade eyes conveyed her shock at his hearing her mumblings.

“Did I tell you I’m married? I mean I was… am—”

“Married?” Chandler did some shady stuff in his life but taking a married woman to dinner was not on his to-do list.Datedate or not.

“Wait, okay, deep breath. I never know how to say it. I mean, I know the proper words, I’m not stupid, but they feel wrong. I’m a widow. I hate that word. It feels so, I don’t know, icky.”

Chandler hated the fact that she was stressed about what he thought about her situation. He hated even more that dinner would indeed be adatedate, no matter what. But he hated even more that she was braced for disappointment.

“I’m sorry about your husband. I get your aversion to the word. It makes perfect sense to me.” He loathed the word himself because it brought two women to the forefront of his mind. Both of which he was responsible for hanging thewword on. There was nothing he could do or say for them, but he could for her. He wanted to, and not just as an apology.

Opening the driver’s door so Tami could slide in, he shoved his thought deep down. “I do still need to hear the story behind the receipt though.” Why would a receipt make her smile while launching into explaining her late husband? Color him curious.

“Seven.” He heard her mumble. He was going to ask her to elaborate, but she met his gaze in the rearview mirror.

“Losing someone is hard. I believe you understand that all too well.” Sure, she would’ve figured that out if she sang him to sleep after an episode, so there was no use hiding it. A single nod toward her reflection and she took a deep breath.

“Well, we all process it differently and one thing I’ve learned over the years is there is no standard way to grieve. For me, it was trying to act normal while inside I was dying.” Chandler could relate to that. He’d acted like his old self until pretending got to be too much. Then he got mad and mean and drunk.

“So, I cooked dinner like always, deep cleaned the house on Wednesdays and grocery shopped on Thursdays. Just like I’d done since I moved out of my childhood home. Like everything was normal, but it wasn’t. It was Thursday, so I had a cart loaded down with groceries and the wind whipped around me and my receipt went flying. I abandoned my cart and ran after it, but my cart went rolling. I had to choose cart or receipt. I chose cart, but because I may be a little obsessive about certain things, losing the receipt meant I couldn’t complete my normal routine. Which meant I would have to admit to myself that things weren’t normal.”

He watched as her emotional eyes flicked to the mirror and back to the road. He hated the insecurity he saw in her shimmering there.

“I was military. You’ll get no judgment from me about routines.”Also, because I can totally relate.

Her relief was palpable.

“I had a full-on meltdown right there in the middle of the parking lot, holding up traffic. I couldn’t hold it together for a single second longer. I just didn’t want to go on with the lie. Things were not normal, but I couldn’t live in the truth just yet either. That’s when a man tapped me on the shoulder and handed me my receipt. He was older, and winded from chasing it down, but he smiled at me. That was the first July since my husband was taken. It was also one of the first times that I thought I might make it. At least I knew I would make it through the day and at that point, a day felt like a lifetime.”

The whole story punched him in the chest, but it was her use of the word taken that stood out. They were stopped in front of his apartment, and he didn’t have a single memory of the actual drive there. It was all about her and a receipt. That story would stick with him in ways he wasn’t even prepared to process.

“Is it okay if I get your address?”

“Why?”

“Um, I thought I would pick you up like a gentleman. My mother didn’t raise me to be the asshole you met initially.”

“You still want to do that?” He nodded, not really understanding. “I mean, I… talked about all that.”

Ahh, she thought he was bolting when it was quite the opposite. He was now considering it adatedate and not a means to an end.

As a matter of fact, he wasn’t thinking about theendat all.

“Of course, I do, and I want to do it properly, so If I could get you to text me your address?”I would also have your number.

“Wait, you have a car?”

“Yes.” Why did she seem shock—oh. “I just haven’t been driving a lot lately.” With what he suspected, he didn’t want to elaborate.

He rattled off his number.

“How about we make a day of it and cap it off with dinner? I’ll pick you up at one if that’s good. Dress for the kind of adventure you want, and I’ll take it from there.”

Who was that and why did it sound like me?

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