Page 11 of When You Least Expect It
“A fruit basket?”he echoed.“Like...for you to eat?”
“I assume so,” I sighed again.“Though I’ve never eaten any, so I can’t be sure.”
“But...uh, you can kind of smell the...uh, ripeness from over here,” he stated carefully.“And...uh, the flies aren’t a good look, either.”
“No, they’re not,” I agreed.
“I’m so confused right now,” he remarked.“Why would anyone leave this here for you?”
“Well, when your parents are farmers, I imagine that they must have a lot of extra fruit lying around,” I told him, guessing the best that I could right now.
“But that’s not fruit,” he pointed out.“That’s...that’s an ER visit waiting to happen.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Letting out another heavy sigh, I said, “Well, I guess I better get rid of it.”
“Yeah, no,” he quickly replied.“You aren’t touching that...that case of food poisoning.”
I looked back up at him.“Well, I can’t very well leave it sitting on my doorstep.”
He jerked his head towards his house.“I have some gloves that I can use to get rid of it.”
My eyes widened at that.“You can’t just take it and toss it in the trash.”
His brows immediately furrowed.“Why not?”
“Because then she might see, and that might bring her over here to ask why we threw away the fruit basket,” I explained.“Are you prepared to deal with that?Because I’m not.”
“She who?”
“Louise.”
“Who in the hell is Louise?”he asked.“And if she did come over, then I’d simply tell her that the fruit was rotten.”
“God does not provide that which is unsafe,” I told him pointedly, that crazy conversation forever etched into my brain.
“What?”he asked, staring down at me like I probably looked at Louise.
“Just...I need to get it into the house first, then I can throw it away,” I said.“The flies stay trapped in the city garbage bin, so she never suspects.”
“Who?Louise?”
I shot him an exasperated look.“Who else?”
“I’m still having trouble understanding why we can’t just throw it away,” he replied, looking genuinely perplexed.
“God, remember?”
Deciding to pick his battles, the man said, “Well, no matter what we do with it, we can’t touch it with our bare hands.”
“Oh, on that I agree,” I snorted.“Luckily, I have some disposable gloves in my tote.”
“Are they big enough to fit my hands?”he asked, making me automatically glance at them, noting how very capable and big they looked.They were also missing a wedding ring, though I was certain that the man had a girlfriend.Nobody with a face and body like his was single.
“No,” I answered, trying to get rid of the image of what his hands were all capable of.“But it’s fine.I’ve done this before.A few times, actually.”
“I am not letting you pick that thing up,” he said again.
