CHAPTER 100

I wanted to split up. Divide and conquer, that was the best strategy when dealing with the enormity that was a superstore. But Cole said no, that we needed to stick together, and when his old man bag face said something, I couldn’t seem to say no. We should wear these all the time. Behind mine I felt fearless, like the words coming out of me weren’t mine at all, but those of some other, braver, more confident individual. Whipped cream? Where did that come from? And did I actually tell him I wanted him to lick it off? I should have been mortified, but I wasn’t. I felt free.

We took the scenic route through the store, stopping at the sunglass stand—our bag heads too big for proper modeling—then the toys section, a heated discussion erupting over a wall of board games and puzzles. We decided on Taboo and Scrabble, then got distracted with a cartwheel competition: Cole bet me a hundred dollars that I couldn’t do three cartwheels in a row without my bag falling off (I won, my hair is fluffy) and then I bet, double or nothing, that he couldn’t do three cartwheels in a row without falling over. Needless to say, I left two hundred bucks richer.

It was in the pet section when it happened. We were arguing over the toy selection, Cole insisting, his mouth muffled through the bag, that Cocky was a chicken—a distinction that he seemed to think removed any chance of him enjoying a cat toy—and I was arguing that if Cocky was a chicken then maybe he didn’t need any toys. That’s when he dropped the ridiculous tiny dog collar he’d been considering, and pinned me to the cart, his arms on the handle, my body in between.

I squirmed, and he wrapped a leg around me, holding me against him. “Kiss me,” he said, and I stopped squirming, my hands softening their push against his chest.

“Now?” I squeaked, and turned my head to look down the aisle, my paper bag getting crooked in the process, my right eye losing all sight.

He let go of the handles and pulled at my bag, my hair floating up with it, and he tossed it into the cart, his hands coming down to smooth the erratic pieces. “Cole,” I whispered. “The cameras.”

“I don’t care about the cameras,” he said gruffly, his bag pulled off and joining mine, and there was a moment of nothing, then he pulled with rough hands at the back of my head, and there was a moment of everything.

I knew I was supposed to hate this man, but I kissed him in that pet aisle and somewhere, in the months since he moved here, I lost that objective. I let him kiss me and couldn’t, no matter how deep I reached, find any hate at all.

CHAPTER 101

Our covers were blown, everyone in the store knew who we were anyway, but we still put the bags back on and continued shopping. The kiss had changed things, his hands constantly on me, resting on my lower back, playing with the ends of my hair, his fingers sliding through my fingers when we’d stop at a display. I found him a giant cowboy hat that I was able to squash on his head, the worried old man face now looking eerily similar to a country version of Robert DeNiro. He returned the favor with big hot pink earrings that he pierced the side of my bag with. “We’re so sexy,” I mused, striking a pose in front of a dressing room mirror. I had a sudden thought and wheeled around, facing him. “Photo booth!”

“What?” He adjusted his hat in the mirror. “God, this hat makes me look ridiculous.” His hands stalled as his statement sank in, and we both burst out laughing.

I chased down my original idea. “Let’s take a picture in the photo booth.”

“They have a photo booth?” I couldn’t see them, but I was pretty sure his eyebrows were raised in skepticism.

“The photo lab machine takes selfies. Come on.” I grabbed his hand and tugged at it, pulling him and our cart in the direction of the electronics department. I hadn’t been entirely sure of myself, but when we parked in front of the standalone machine, it turned out that I was right. It took pics in bursts of three. We took ten. The electronics girl popped her gum and stared at us like we were idiots.

We were idiots. Something about this man, whether it was having sex with him, or kissing him on camera, or running up a nine hundred dollar bill in the middle of the night at Walmart, made me act like an idiot. The cashier, a pixie brunette who I’d attended high school with, bagged our items, handing Cole his credit card and nodded at me. I smiled at her and wondered, for the first dark moment since entering the store, if she’d been one of Quincy’s ‘anonymous sources.’

When we pushed the buggies out the front door, the parking lot was dark, the ten thousand watts of parking bulbs out. And around us, as far as I could see, was pitch dark. We stopped, the carts squeaking, and stared.

CHAPTER 102

Ten minutes later, our new items in the backseat of the truck, we found out that the power outage was caused by a trip at the power station. I would go into greater detail except that verbiage meant diddle squat to me. It was Carl at the gas station who told me. I nodded intelligently and asked him if the two for two-dollar candy bar deal included Rolos. They didn’t.

On the way back to Cole’s we drove by the Pit. He spoke to the security officers there, who assured him that they would be diligent in watching for any vandals who appeared on the heels of the blackout.

I snorted when he drove off. Vandals? This was Quincy. Those guys were going to have a long night of waiting ahead of them if they expected trouble. We did one final loop of the town, then drove slowly back, his brights on, our eyes peeled for deer.

When we pulled down the long drive, the white house lit by the moonlight, I looked to my house and thought of Mama. This time of night, she’d be asleep. She wouldn’t even know about the blackout but it felt odd for me to think of her, in that house, alone. Once I moved away she would always be alone. That idea, like every time before it, felt odd too. I would get used to it. I’d have to. It was only natural for the young to grow up and leave the nest.

We set up camp in the Kirklands’ living room. I found candles and lit them, the large room glowing in flickering light, and I had the sudden vision of flames licking up the wall, the wallpaper bubbling, and hurried to blow out a few. There. Four candles lit. Enough to see by, just not in high definition. We unpacked in the living room, the floor strewn with our gear, Cocky picking his way gingerly through the pile. I saw some of his poo on the floor behind Cole and nodded toward it, passing him a can of wipes. I put on Cole’s new cowboy hat and ripped open a Nerds rope, chewing on one end of it as I shifted through our haul. Cole returned, scooping up the rooster and I plucked out the bag of peas, holding them up to him. “Sprinkle some of these in his tub. He’ll like digging through the bedding for them.” My words came out garbled, through a mouthful of Nerds goodness, but Cole nodded, grabbing the bag and heading to the bathroom. We’d have to build an outside pen for Cocky. He was too big to be inside, despite whatever notions Cole had for making him a house chicken. I frowned around the piece of candy. He’d. He’d have to build an outside pen. It was silly for me to think that we’d continue hanging out. Just because the sex had destroyed my world and rebuilt it in an entirely new way. Just because we’d had fun and been reckless and kissed in a Walmart aisle. Whatever heartbreak I had coming when Cole Masten left town was my thing, not his. That was what I needed to remember.