Page 42 of Look at Her and Die

After making sure to grab the oldest carton on the shelf that had the old amount of ounces in it, I was just contemplating getting a pack of dryer sheets when a cart ran into mine.

I blinked and looked up, surprised to see a very dirty-looking Posy staring at my cart that’d just ran into his.

“You know,” I drawled. “You can totally fit two carts down an aisle. You don’t have to run into the one that’s already here.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, sounding off. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

“I can see that,” I observed as I studied his face. He had dirt right underneath his left eye. And what looked like blood on the collar of his shirt. “You have blood on your t-shirt collar.”

He wrinkled his nose, which was surprisingly cute. “Got headbutted in the face by a calf.”

“You’re lucky it was a calf and not a grown cow at least,” I pointed out as my eyes trailed down the rest of him. He was wearing the same thing that he was wearing this morning, only a whole lot dirtier. And he had a piece of straw in his hair. “You have straw in your hair.”

He didn’t bother to reach to get it free.

“I’m sure I have straw in other places, too.” He looked down the aisle I was on. “Do you like that brand?”

He pointed at the Tide in my cart.

“I usually don’t get it, but it’s on sale this week, and I have a really good coupon for it,” I replied. “I generally go for making my own, but I’m only paying six bucks for this one.”

“I’d ask you how you made your own, but that sounds like torture to me when I already have barely any time to do stuff,” he muttered as he reached for one of the newer bottles of Tide.

“Not that one,” I pointed out as I pushed it back onto the shelf before he could get it free. “This one.”

I gave him the bigger ounced one.

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“The difference,”—I pointed at the ounces—“is that they kept the size of the bottles the same, but gave you less product. This one has more.”

He grunted and put it into his cart.

I reached for a coupon out of my book and handed it to him. “It’s one per customer. This one will give you the same deal I’m getting.”

He eyed it. “Just do two transactions. Then you can get more.”

I didn’t tell him that I couldn’t afford more. If I got more Tide, then I couldn’t get the lunch meat that the kids would need to feed themselves the next week.

Instead, I shook the coupon at him more insistently.

He took it, then grabbed another bottle of Tide.

He shoved the coupon into his pocket, then fell into step beside me as I moved to the next aisle.

“Why are you here so late?” I asked him.

“Long ass day,” he said. “Got done, went inside to grab something, and saw that my fridge was empty.”

“Same,” I admitted. “The kids didn’t tell me that they’ve eaten literally everything. And since they don’t like the school’s lunch tomorrow, I had to come buy some food.”

With the generous tip you gave me!

Speaking of earlier, after Mr. Grumpy Pants had left, I’d learned that the girl on the back of Posy’s bike this morning was nothing to Posy. She was just a woman that ran into car trouble and asked Posy to pick her up.

It’d all been innocent, and I might’ve overreacted today.

Which was kind of eye opening seeing as I wasn’t completely sure how it’d happened, but I had a big, fat crush on the man.

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