Page 10 of The Trust We Broke
Change I still haven’t gotten my head around.
But Butcher was much more of a people person than I am. Hell, so was Lucy. She was gregarious and funny and could find a way to engage with every single person she talked to.
She’d meet them where they are and would leave the conversation knowing twenty-eight different things about them.
Fuck, if I want to get my shopping done in peace without bumping into Lucy in every single aisle, I need her to get out of here quick.
And the best way to make that happen…?
I step to the other side of the aisle and grab a box of the fan-shaped waffle wafer things she liked. But instead of handing the basket back to her, I take off down the aisle.
“Grudge,” she shouts when she realizes what I’m doing. I almost stop walking when I hear my road name spill over her lips. Some nights, as we lay in bed after railing each other into the mattress, she’d offer up suggestions about what she thought my road name would be once I finally patched in.
Hawk, because I notice the shit other people don’t.
Chorizo, because I love that stuff.
Eight, because she came eight times that day and decided it was notable.
She was full of suggestions. I wonder if she even considers how deeply she plays a role in my actual name. A brief glance behind me sees her bending to pick up the large purse she had over her shoulder.
Then, I hear the tap, tap, tap of her heels on the store tiles as she runs after me.
It was a long-standing joke between us that she had to take four steps to keep up with one of mine.
Yeah, well, catch me now, Lucy De Bose.
I lose her as I turn into the aisle two over from where she is. There’s a wall of potential toppings. I almost give myself a headache as I scan the shelves at high speed, looking for everything else Lucy puts on her sundae.
Maybe she’s changed; maybe she doesn’t like them anymore. But I’m too pissed to care.
I toss in a packet of marshmallows and some sprinkles.
Farther up the aisle, I find fudge sauce and chocolate sauce. Lucy never combined them, always said they should be kept separated and treated as two different, distinct tastes and desserts.
Not willing to face her as she finally nears me, I grab both and toss them in.
“I didn’t want both of those,” she says, her breath coming thick and fast.
“Too bad,” I say.
I scan the aisle signs and find what I’m looking for in aisle thirteen: chopped nuts.
“Grudge!” Her voice snaps down the aisle. “Just get back here with my basket.”
My eyes whip to hers. “No.”
I stride to the frozen food aisle and head straight for the ice cream. Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.
It’s the poor man’s Neapolitan ice cream, made especially for the American market because the original ice creams mirrored the colors of the Italian flag, usually pistachio, vanilla, and cherry or raspberry.
We were in bed, exhausted after a bout of lovemaking. She’d grabbed a container of it, and we both dug in with spoons. She told me I was eating too much of the chocolate, making it uneven. I’d smeared some across her breast and licked it off, and by the time I was done, she didn’t care about the history of ice cream or the flavor ratios.
There isn’t a container of Neapolitan, so I do the next best thing: I throw a container of each flavor into the basket.
“Grudge, stop. I don’t need three.”
I turn around and snarl at her: “You find a container of Neapolitan in there; you come find me at the register.”
