Page 32 of The Summer of ’98

“I’m David,” he filled in the silence and offered me his hand.

“Babe,” Leroy’s voice pulled my attention to the end of the aisle, where he stood with the cart and a packet of diapers in each hand. “Is Abby in junior- or toddler-sized diapers? I forget. I know, worst dad ever.”

My jaw dropped and it took every single ounce of self-control that I could muster not to burst into a side-splitting laughter. He just stood there with a dead serious expression. I didn’t know how he was doing it because I was about three seconds from snorting like an animal.

“Oh, uh, toddler,” I answered and turned back to David, who looked a little disappointed. “Sorry, better get back to it. The baby’s waiting with the sitter.”

“Of course.” He gave me a brief nod and went on his way as Leroy wheeled the cart up beside me with a satisfied smile on his face.

“Who is Abby?” I laughed.

“I have no idea. It was just the first name that I thought of when I saw that slut of a cashier chatting you up.”

“Aww, is someone jealous?” I teased.

He stopped the cart and stared at me with an expression that left no room to mistake how serious he was. “That would suggest that I want what isn’t mine,” he shrugged. “I’d like to think we’ve established exclusiveness and I will always protect that.”

And after he pressed a quick kiss on my lips, he carried on pushing the cart, leaving me reeling with an abundance of emotions. It’s an amazing thing when the same man who makes you feel as though the earth is spinning is also the one who can take you by the hand and keep you from falling over.

He made me feel things I’d never felt before—special, protected—because he chose me. He cared enough to make me the center of his world. He was always making sure I felt comfortable and happy. He was showing me what it felt like to fall in love, and I was loving every moment of it.

The stolen kisses while no one was looking. The heated gazes across the room. The excitement when we discovered something new about each other. Because despite the hours of phone conversations, there were still things we had yet to learn, and it was a beautiful thing. I had never been so excited to find out how dark someone liked their toast. Or which side of the bed they preferred. Or if they liked their OJ with or without pulp. Or if they favored sweet or savory. It was all of the small things that made a person who they were, and I wanted to know it all.

We stood at the checkout and started placing our items on the belt while the woman in front of us paid for her groceries. I realized it was one of the moms from the kids’ football practice, Maxi Bryan. She hadn’t seen us, so we let her continue without bothering her. She chatted with the cashier while her son tossed his football in the air. “Not in the supermarket, Nathan,” she playfully scolded. She received her change and the two of them left hand in hand.

We loaded everything onto the belt and then Leroy stood behind me with his arms clasped in front of my stomach. The cashier packed the groceries into the plastic bags.

“That’ll be eighty-two dollars and thirty-six cents,” she said when she was done.

“Oh, jimmy shoo!” I broke free from Leroy, heading straight for the bags. “We’ll put something back. We can just do one meal. Ground meat or chicken? And the ice cream, we don’t need—”

“Els,” Leroy laughed, and when I glanced at him, my hand still in the bag, he shook his head in dismissal. “I’ve got it.”

“But it’s so exp—”

“Ellie,” he gave me a sideways glance and ran his card through the machine. “I’ve got it.”

The cashier gave me an amused smile and I stepped back so that he could finish the transaction. I wasn’t used to dropping that kind of cash on a whimsical trip to the store. We spent that in a month of groceries at home. The amount of money he spent made me feel a little terrible, made me question whether or not I needed to earn it or do something to deserve such an amount being spent on me.

What if I seemed like a burden? What if he realized I couldn’t keep up with his lifestyle? I worked for what I had, and I liked to work hard, but that didn’t mean we were in the same league. We weren’t even in the same game.

“You’re overthinking things,” Leroy whispered as his lips brushed my temple. It stirred me from my thoughts and I skipped into step beside him as he pushed the cart full of groceries toward the exit.

“How do you do that?”

“You have a tell,” he grinned, staring straight ahead as though he was picturing something. “Your eyebrows pull together and your bottom lip juts out. You do it whenever you’re thinking. Usually you follow it up with a question or a statement that bothers you.”

“You’re very observant,” I noted as we wandered through the parking lot, the sweltering sun beaming straight down on us.

“I am when it comes to you,” he turned to me with a breathtaking smile. And I do mean breathtaking. “You’re important to me.”

“You’re important to me too.”

Ellie

When we got back to the house and headed into the kitchen to unload the groceries, we found Noah sitting just outside of the sliding door on the deck. He was bouncing a handball up and down as music came from the windowsill speaker, and he turned to look at us with a mild frown when he noticed that we’d come back with our ingredients for the meal tonight.

“Is there enough for three?” Noah asked with a robotically loud voice for the sake of their parents outside, “since I will definitely be here for dinner and all.”

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