Page 11 of The Trust We Broke
Her cheeks are pink, and her tits beneath that silk blouse are heaving. I’m not naturally a cruel person. In fact, there’s a pieceof me wondering what it would feel like to sit down and share the sundae with her.
But the truth is, the past is irrelevant, at this point. I got over her.
And by kicking her out of the store, you are going to stay over her.
I resist the urge to call myself a liar.
“Plus, if you buy three, you won’t have to come back to the store for a while, which will reduce the number of times I have to see your face.”
I see the way my words slice through her. Lucy’s always worn her emotions on her sleeve when it came to me. I told her once that I believed she had the brains for law, but not the face. She’d gotten mad until I explained I meant poker face, not looks.
Even then, it took her a couple of days to forgive me.
I turn from her and march to the self-checkout and scan things out at such speed, I could consider an alternate career as a cashier. I launch each one into a grocery bag with the precision of a basketball player in the conference final.
“I mean it. Give. Me. My. Things.” She tries to tug the ice cream out of my hands. People are watching the two of us, but I just keep tossing stuff into bags.
When the total appears on the screen, I grab my phone to pull up my card, but Lucy elbows me in the ribs.
“That’s assault, Lucy. You know better than that.”
The sound she makes is one of fury. She throws her shoulder into me, pushing with all her might.
Her heels go from beneath her, and she sinks to the floor with a thud.
I put my phone down, slip my hands under both her arms, and put her onto her feet before swiping her ass to get the dust off it. The curve is as perfect as I remember. Maybe a few more squats have been done over the years, made it a little rounder.Makes me want to drop to my knees and bite it so hard, she thinks of me every time she sits down for the next week.
“Zach,” she says, my real name passing her lips for the first time. It’s worse than hearing my road name. She could have just stabbed me through the fucking heart, and it would have hurt less. “Stop.”
She shakes out of my hands.
“Everything okay here?” The man wears a badge declaring that his name is Andrew and he’s the store manager. His brow sweats, and he clasps his hands in front of him.
“Yes,” I say.
“No,” Lucy says in parallel.
“Erm,” Andrew says.
I tap his name badge as I pull myself up to my full height in front of him. “Just getting her groceries, then we’ll be out of your hair, Andrew.”
His shoulders drop in relief. “Well, I’ll be…watching…from over there.”
“Yeah,” I say sardonically. “You do that. Oh, and if I see you reach for that phone, I can’t be held responsible for what I do next.”
“Understood,” Andrew mutters, and I want to punch the fucker in the face.
The hypocrisy isn’t lost on me that I wish Andrew were doing a better job looking out for my wife.
Ex-wife.
Ex with a capitalE.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Lucy says. “Why did I even follow you around the store? I should have just grabbed a second basket.”
I huff. “Once upon a time, you’d have…” I shake my head instead of finishing the sentence. She used to jump onto my back, and I’d carry her while she laughed.
While she reaches for her purse, I assume to dig out her own means of payment, I use my phone to make the payment for her.
