Page 92 of No Cap

“What the fuck?” I heard her grumble under her breath.

I wasn’t the only one to hear it, either. The woman in front of me in the checkout lane turned to survey me.

Quincy groaned under his breath.

“What?” she asked, her gaze traveling up and down over the length of my body, and obviously finding me lacking.

So I was wearing sweatpants. So I had my hair up in a bun. So I had Crocs with Croc Lights on.

A woman could be comfortable! And dammit, but the hallway and the stairwell were dark. Sometimes a woman wanted to make sure she didn’t fall down the stairs!

“Math wasn’t your strong subject in school, was it?” I asked, pissed off at her obvious disdain.

Quincy caught me around the belly and turned me, his eyes huge, as he gave me a look that clearly said, “Behave!”

“Because you definitely have thirty items in a fifteen items or less line,” a voice finished for me.

At least during the 1918 pandemic, they had cocaine in their soda.

—Text from Hollis to Quincy

QUINCY

I stared up at the ceiling, wondering if I was about to have to deal with a fight.

Luckily, the woman turned around and ignored them.

I glanced behind me at the woman with her own cart of ice cream, and nearly laughed when I saw Hollis notice her.

“Ellodie.” Hollis smiled. “Like minds!”

She moved so that this Ellodie chick could see her cart.

“They’re buy one get one free today,” she said. “And this is my favorite kind of ice cream. My favorite is the cookie dough. And though I have a test due in an hour and a half, I had to run by here after I got off shift.”

Ellodie, in her hospital uniform, likely worked at the same hospital as Hollis.

Though since their scrubs were different colors, I imagined that they were in different departments.

Ellodie did look familiar…

“Ma’am,” the woman checking out the lane said to the woman in front of us with the fifty items or more. “This is a fifteen item or less lane. You can’t bring that much here.”

The woman stiffened. “I’m already here.”

As in, just check me out.

The two women behind her snorted, causing the woman who couldn’t follow directions—or apparently read—to look over her shoulder. “I will fight you.”

Hollis’s brows raised.

Ellodie pushed her cart backward. “Listen, lady, we know that you’re entitled, but sometimes the world doesn’t revolve around you. Just move to the other lane.”

Hollis snickered behind her hand.

I was going to have to break up a fight.

I just knew it.

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