Page 64 of The ABCs of You & Me

Tuesday is the second game, at our rink.

I’ll see if Soph can make it. I’ll be there regardless.

Love you and all but make sure she comes.

Unless you messed things up already?

Hey! That’s not fair.

What? It’s not like you’ve got a great record. Besides, she’s way too good for you.

Wow… I mean I know but WOW!

Foster, you’re supposed to stand up for yourself. This was a test and you failed!

See you Tuesday at 7:25.

“So,” I say as we get out of the car on Saturday afternoon, “what vendor are we going to first?”

Sophie looks at me like I have three heads.

“What?”

“I haven’t been here before. I’ve always wanted to, but I’m a bit overwhelmed by all the face-to-face stuff.”

“You’re great with people.”

“Yeah, but if I’m looking at their stuff and don’t really want anything, I’m going to feel really bad if I walk away without buying anything.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I don’t want to let them down.”

I stare at her for a minute. She couldn’t let anyone down if she tried. “Soph, they’re used to that. Hell, there are like three people in there selling dried flowers. Does that mean you’d get something from each of them?”

She shrugs, looking guilty. “Probably.”

“Oh, so this is so much more than shopping for a gonorrhea dinner.”

She guffaws. “Don’t call it that.”

“I don’t know,” I say thoughtfully, “I think it has a nice ring to it.”

“It really doesn’t. It sounds like a dinner that’s all army green or like… something that’s going to give you diarrhea.”

I take the tote from her and throw it over my shoulder. “Stick with me, sunshine, and you’ll only go home with one bunch of flowers.” If this was a real date, this is when I’d reach for her hand.

I can feel Sophie’s discomfort ripple through the air as we walk away from the first table in the market building. It only builds as we do the same at the second.

“If you were selling milk from your parents’ farm here and someone came up and left without buying any, what would you do?”

“Nothing,” she says as she reads the label on a jar of honey.

“Okay, how would you feel?”

She puts one jar down, then picks up another. “I guess I’d think that they weren’t looking for milk.”

“Right, so that’s what all these people are thinking, if they’re thinking anything at all.”

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