Page 45 of When Wildflowers Bloom

She gasps. “Mary Magdalene patron saint of orgasms, pray for us sinners!”

My face is so hot I wonder if my skin is going to melt off my skull, but the swearing she does under her breath—and the fact she pulls her notebook and pen out of her waistband—keeps the giddy smile plastered on my face.

“Birdie, why aren’t you spending every night in bed with that man?” she asks as she takes a long slurpy sip of her cocktail. “If I were forty years younger, I’d be permanently stuck to his throbbing member!”

I snort. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Life’s complicated!” she shouts in disbelief and sets her cocktail on her glass-top coffee table. Her eyes look past me, as though she’s watching something a thousand miles away, and her voice lowers. “You know I was a nun and left the convent. What you don’t know is why I left. I fell in love, hard, with the groundskeeper, a man named Paul. It was the real kind of love that chews you up and spits you out. Every breath I took around him was a gasp, just like one of our books.” She smiles, her love for him clear as day all these years later. “He wanted to marry me, and I wanted to marry him. But then I just thought, what if I’m supposed to be a nun again? In my mind, I’d left God for this man—God, Birdie! I got indecisive and couldn’t commit. It was a damned if I do, damned if I don’t in my mind. I grappled back and forth with this until he didn’t want towait anymore…” Her voice trails off, gaze still somewhere faraway and long ago.

“What happened?”

“Ahh, well, that’s a story for another day. But he was it for me. My great love story that ended too soon. I had lots of sex—good sex too—but there was never another him.” She smiles, sad yet fond, and blinks rapidly, as though she’s bringing herself back to her body.

“Would you change it? If you could?”

“Of course, I would!” she cries without hesitation, picking up her cocktail again. “Hindsight is a soul-sucking whore like that.”

Her words make me laugh, but there’s no heat behind them. She might feel regret for how parts of her story went, but the woman in front of me is also smiling.

It’s stupid, but I’ve gotten used to grocery shopping with Bo. I’ve always thought my Friday night routine was relaxing, but he’s somehow made it funandrelaxing. Every week for the last month, he’s outside the store, waiting for me, same question on his lips of,What’s on the list for us tonight, Birdie?before leaning on a cart and strolling beside me—toothpick tickling his lips—while I read labels.

I don’t just look forward to seeing him, I expect it.

When I walk up to the doors tonight and he’s not there, there’s an uninvited sinking feeling in my belly. I check my phone, nomessages. I look around the parking lot to the spot where he always parks, no Jeep.

I wave to Monica and grab a cart, but instead of pushing it to the produce section, I sit on the bench just inside the doors. The bench, usually reserved for old men waiting on wives to shop or cashiers on break to scroll their phones while they drink a Mountain Dew, becomes the place I wait for Bo.

Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty minutes pass.

Every time the automatic doors slide open, it’s not him walking in.

I sit on the bench next to my empty cart for an hour before I accept it—he’s not coming.

The worst part is, I can’t even get mad. I didn’t invite him to meet me here; I just assumed he would keep showing up. Aside from our hikes, we don’t really do anything else together. Sometimes he stops by Veda’s, but that’s obviously for her and not me. Why I expect him to spend every Friday night for the rest of his life grocery shopping with me almost has the absurdity to make me laugh. Or cry. Or both.

When I stand up, I look toward the produce section and can’t make myself go to it. Like my sacred space will make me feel worse instead of better tonight.

With a disappointed slump, I push the cart back to the designated area, give Monica a sad smile, and walk out of the store.

The whole drive home, for the first time in my life, I feel how alone I am. It’s like Bo showing up amplified everything that’s not.That will never be. Whether I die this year or not—there’s nobody to share it with.

As I pull up to my house, I see the Jeep parked at the curb before the shape of the man standing illuminated in the porch light.

Bo.

Shoulders wracked with tension, I open my door and make the short walk across my yard. All I can think is: what is he doing here?

“You forgot your groceries,” he says with an easy roll of his toothpick when I’m next to him.

I dig in my purse, looking for my keys with manic punches, refusing to look at him.

“What are you doing here?” I sound angry and, for the life of me, I don’t know why.

“Well, I stopped by the grocery store—where you were sitting on a bench seemingly waiting for someone—before I came here to wait for you.”

The. Nerve. Of. This. Ass. Hole.

“One, that’s weird. And two, I wasn’t,” I snap, lifting my eyes to his defiantly as he takes a step toward me. Then I add, “My foot hurt so I didn’t feel like walking around the store.” Followed by, “And I needed to rest it.”

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