CHAPTER 18
“What the . . . ?”
I stood in the parking lot and looked around. There wasn’t a car in sight. Nothing.Nada. No car and no Mike. I swung around to make sure I hadn’t missed some parking lot behind me that had suddenly come out of nowhere and magically appeared with his car in it.
But, as I suspected, there wasn’t one. I could feel the packet of condoms burning a hole in the palm of my hand.
“You’re kidding me!” I threw my hands in the air. “You. Are. Fucking. Kidding. Me!”Had I just been stood up?It’s one thing being stood up on a date, but to be stood up in the almost-middle of almost-sex, for heaven’s sake, with a bag of prophylactics in your hands—well, this was just a whole new level of embarrassment.
Wait. . . Maybe he was parked on the street, to avoid being seen? I walked through the lot and looked up the street. Nope. I looked left and right, and left again. He’d stood me up. The bastard had gotten me all hot under the collar and then had just dumped me, with a box of condoms in my hand! He definitely wasn’t XL, that’s for sure. Someone who was XL would have had the balls, not to mention decency, to tell me they were leaving. That they had changed their mind.
I stood there for a few moments, trying to decide what the hell to do with myself now. I could see my hotel from where I stood, so I guessed the only thing to do was to walk back. I sighed. Turned around. Tossed the box of condoms in the trash can and then walked back to the shop, dragging my feet behind me. I opened the door and the little bell rang out again.
Great!Just announce my arrival. Announce the arrival of the girlnothaving sex right now!
I strolled to the first aisle and grabbed a few things: some chocolate to dull the humiliation, a biscuit or two to push down the feelings and, last but not least, salty crisps to rub in my gaping wound. I walked up to the counter and put my stuff on it. The man, who had, two minutes ago, sold me a box of condoms, looked up at me questioningly.
“I think I just got stood up,” I said, pulling some cash from my wallet and sliding it over the counter.
“What can you do, right?” the man said, as he rung my stuff up slowly on one of those old cash registers.Why didn’t he have a fast one that scanned the stuff?It was painful, standing there in silence as he pressed the buttons with one finger. “You know,” he said, looking up at me, “my son is a doctor. He lives in Cape Town.”
“Huh?” Was this man serious? Was he trying to set me up with his son, at a moment like this?
He stopped ringing my things up and pulled out his phone, and then handed it over to me. I took it and looked at the picture on the screen.
“Mmm,” I mumbled. “Very . . . He looks . . . uh . . .like a doctor,” I finally managed, after not knowing what I was meant to say to this.
And then he leaned over the counter and whispered, “And he’s never painted a purple you-know-what on someone’s wall. That poor man, he’d just had his knees done—”
“I thought it was his hip,” I interrupted.
He shook his head. “No, it was his wife who got the new hip. If you ask me, she only got it done because she was having an affair with his chiropractor.”
“I thought it was his physiotherapist? And wasn’thethe one having the affair?” I said flatly, leaning on the counter now.
He shook his head again. “No,shehad the affair. She was from the Canary Islands, you know.”
“I thought it was the Channel Islands.” I hung my head and shook it. What was wrong with the people of this town? Did none of them have anything better to do than know everyone’s business?
“Definitely Canary. She was as mad as a bird.”
“She was, was she?” I sighed deeply, taking it all in. How had I gone from almost having hot sex, to having a discussion about someone’s decrepit hips and knees and a woman who may or may not have been from some island?
“And you know what they say about people from the Canary Islands,” he said, and continued ringing my items up.
“Mmm. I sure do,” I lied. The people of Willow Bay were definitely a bit strange!
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of hell, he put all my snacks into a bag and handed it over to me.
“Thanks,” I said dryly, and started heading for the door again.
“Good luck with the . . . uh . . .” he said.
I gave him a thumbs up, walked out the shop and stood in the empty parking lot again. I walked across it and jumped as a blast of bright light hit me. I turned and looked straight at all the motion-activated security lights.
Great! As if this moment needed any more highlighting—now, I was flooded in lights, as if on the stage.Behold the woman who did not have sex, the lights seemed to say, in a mocking tone. The walk back to my hotel was a quick one, and soon I found myself sitting on the purple velvet duvet on the bed. I had laid my junk food out in front of me in a semicircle, to give me good and equal access to all of it.
“What does one eat when one is stood up in a parking lot with condoms in one’s hand?” I muttered to myself.And what the hell was the song for a moment like this?
