Page 1 of Love You Truly

CHAPTER 1

Dash

One Month Ago

The parking lot at Sunshine Foods market is jam-packed at seven in the evening. Typical.

After taking what seems like the last available parking spot, I weave through the sea of vehicles—pickup trucks and Teslas in equal numbers—and grab a shopping cart.

I know exactly what I need, so it shouldn’t take too long.

Tortilla chips, avocado, chicken breasts, white rice, black beans. And a bag of powdered sugar mini donuts.

The donuts have nothing to do with cooking tacos for my family tomorrow night. They have everything to do with an after-work craving when I haven’t had dinner and probably won’t. Splitting a plate of wings at the bar hardly counts as dinner, but Lucas is as predictable as he is insistent that we keep our weekly guys’ night ritual going.

In three years, neither Lucas nor I have missed a single Wednesday night, and I don’t plan to be the one to break our streak. Let him be the one to fall for a girl and come crawling, telling me he just has to spend Wednesday night with her.

I’m stubborn enough to win any kind of showdown he throws my way, especially if it involves a woman.

Rounding the endcap of the cereal aisle, I try to recall whether I have anything left in my pantry that might qualify as breakfast tomorrow morning. If not, I’ll double up on the donuts. For the past few days, I’ve slept in and skipped breakfast in order to make it to work on time. Bad habit.

The vast wall of cereal puts me in a temporary trance. Colors dance in front of my eyes as Cap’n Crunch’s blue hat merges with the beak of Toucan Sam and morphs into the yellow of a Cheerios box. Organic cornflakes, regular ones… I wonder if they taste any different.

It should be a thoughtless selection. Any kind of cereal will do, especially if I end up shoveling it down from a coffee mug on the go, but the choice suddenly seems daunting.

Three days of worrying about vineyards and my fucking reputation have left me unable to make a basic decision. I should grab a box—any box—and move on, but my feet feel glued to the floor. I stare down the cereal as though it’s Mt. Everest.

It’s why I barely move out of the way when a frustrated “excuse me” sounds beside my shoulder. I feel it more than I hear the words—a lilt against my ear, a subtle hint of jasmine perfume, a warm sweep of air as a woman moves past me. My senses light up before I even get a look at her, as she nearly sideswipes me with her shopping cart.

The close call has my senses on alert. Same feeling I used to get when I played high school football, and I’d feel someone on my heels before I could see him running to tackle me. It allowed me to dart out of the way more than once and score a touchdown.

I’m interested enough to follow as she careens down the aisle like a drunk linebacker with a case of vertigo.

Her shopping cart is loaded to the top with box upon box of canned sparkling water and cases of bottled water, and the cart itself seems to have a wonky wheel. The bright flash of her red sweater calls to me like a toreador waving a flag. I’m the bull, unable to tear my eyes away as she weaves down the aisle.

The rogue wheel seems to be turning the cart in circles as the woman fights to keep it moving straight ahead, hanging on for dear life. The problem is that with a hundred pounds of beverages in the cart, she’s fighting a losing battle against the laws of physics.

Instead of moving to help her, I stand frozen, watching the impending disaster unfold like a movie. I know it’s terrible, but my feet won’t budge.

I watch her long, dark hair swish against her red sweater, which highlights a tapered waist above tight black jeans, her legs long and lean. She works hard to control the cart, which nicks a box of Lucky Charms, sending it to the floor.

Swearing under her breath, she’s loud enough for me to be amused by her choice of words. When she bends to pick up the box, she briefly lets go of the cart, which sweeps in a circle and dead ends into fourteen kinds of Special K. The weight of the cart keeps them in place, but freeing the cart isn’t an easy job.

I can’t help but wonder why she has so many drinks in her cart, but that’s beside the point. Then I notice a jumbo bag of dog food on the lower rack. Probably weighs fifty pounds. I feel compelled to tell her there are delivery services for these things.

“Hey, can I help you with that?” I call after her.

She doesn’t answer, instead yanking on the shopping cart, which hurls her backward into the center of the aisle. Digging in with her three-inch heels, she doesn’t get much traction, but I admire the effort.

This is why I tell people like my uptight eldest brother that getting out of the office is important. Seeing people in their natural environments often tells me more about them than a résumé packed with qualities they think I think are important.

Hitting the gym and watching which guys are all about their own workouts—wearing headphones, refusing to spot someone who’s lifting—tells me how they’d fare in a workplace. Selfish assholes. Seeing someone like this woman, determined to complete her mission, fighting a shopping cart goliath like David in a red sweater, tells me she has grit.

All of these things matter, and since I’m the one in charge of hiring new people to keep our winery afloat, I notice.

Finally unmoored from the linoleum tiles on the floor, I push my own cart after hers, determined to help if she needs it. I’m not being chivalrous; this now feels like a public safety issue.

I catch up with her in a few strides, but not before she tries to whip the cart around the end of the aisle. Big mistake.

---