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“Ugh. I really do not want to get cleaned up for a restaurant,” I moaned. “I miss New York already. There is plenty of food in New York.”
“I’m sure they have food here, as well, I just forgot to buy any.” He eased me up and sat at the edge of the couch, his elbows braced on his knees, hands limp between them. “Your caveman failed at the hunt.”
“My caveman?” I stood and faced him with my hands on my hips. “I don’t want to starve to death. Let’s go to the grocery store.”
“Do you know where a grocery store is?” he asked, as though I were going to tell him where to find the Golden Fleece.
“That’s what cell phones and Google Maps are for.” I slid my phone from my pocket. “There may not be a sex shop on every corner, but I am confident there is at least one grocery store. But I feel kinda bad asking Tony to drive us.”
“Then we don’t have to.” Neil was warming to the idea of grocery shopping, and it took me a second to figure out why.
“Oh, no. No, no. We are not going out for food in a Ferrari.” I shook my head firmly.
“We’re not?” he sounded amused. “Are you planning to walk?”
He had me there.
We bundled up and headed out to the enormous garage he’d had constructed on the grounds. It was really more like an airplane hangar, with dozens of painted lines on the floor.
“And you need all this space for cars?” I said with a laugh, and Neil looked away uncomfortably. My jaw dropped. “I know you have a lot, but you don’t really have this many.”
“Let’s just get in then, shall we?”
The car shone like a candy apple under the fluorescent lights, and I couldn’t help trailing my fingers lovingly over the hood. It was just so sexy, I had to. “So, it’s a Ferrari. What kind of a Ferrari?”
“A two-thousand-ten, four-fifty-eight Italia,” he said as we climbed into the tan leather seats. “Five-hundred sixty-two horsepower, nine-thousand RPMs—”
My stomach was dissolving itself for nourishment, and he wanted to talk about horsepower. “Forget I asked. All I care about is the lack of space for food. How much are we getting?”
“Enough to fit in your lap and on the floor between your legs?” He winked at me. “Come on, Sophie. I want to take you for a drive in a very fast, very cool car. It will make me feel young.”
“Make me feel unhungry, then I’ll worry about making you feel young.” I buckled my seatbelt, wondering if we wouldn’t be safer in harnesses or Hannibal Lecter-style restraints. Then again, thinking of cannibalism was probably not a great idea when I was so hungry. “I can’t believe I’m letting you do this.”
For the most part, Neil drove responsibly, and I had to admit, there was something sexy about a man downshifting to go around curves. He bemoaned the fact that there wasn’t room to “open it up properly,” but after he’d hit a straightaway and gunned it to demonstrate the quick pick-up—to ninety miles per hour—I was glad he didn’t get the opportunity to go any faster.
We found a supermarket about thirty minutes from our house, one my mother would have referred to as “fancy.” Due to Neil’s insistence on taking a ridiculous sports car, we really could only bring home what would fit in my lap.
He looked around a bit sheepishly as we walked through the doors. “Listen…you’re much better at this than I am…”
It had never occurred to me that Neil had probably had someone who shopped for him his entire life. “You’ve been to a grocery store before, right?”
“Yes, before,” he said, a bit uncomfortably. “Not in the past twenty-five years, that I can recall.”
“You haven’t been in a supermarket since before Emma was born?” This was serious. “How did you even get food?”
“Delivery services,” he said, as astonished as though I’d started talking out of my ears. “You fill out a list. Or, my housekeeper does. I suppose since we don’t have a housekeeper anymore, we’ll have to fill it out ourselves.”
He seemed overwhelmed by even that most basic task.
“Okay, how about…you do the wine,” I suggested. “Just follow the signs.”
He gave me an irritated glance and muttered, “I do know how a shop works, Sophie. I just don’t do my own shopping.”
We headed home with the bare essentials—a bottle of red wine, a head of broccoli, a jar of pasta sauce and some spaghetti noodles, a big loaf of crusty bread, with coffee and a carton of soy milk for the morning.
“I can’t believe you remembered bubble bath for me, but not food.” I laughed as we pulled up to the front door.
“I remembered what was important. I’m sorry if naked, wet, and soapy Sophie is higher on my list of priorities than well-fed Sophie.”
