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“Try me.” Lila gave her a wicked smile. “I bet you’re not fragile at all.”
“That is too much for one hour-long shopping session.”
“An hour?” Looking around, Lila checked on her basket with one bag in it and Heidi’s, which had nothing in it. “I think we’re going to be here longer than an hour if we keep talking.
Heidi chuckled. “You may be right.”
As if to prove her point, Heidi reached for a bag and grabbed some cucumbers off the organic section, which was far smaller than it should be. “I like my cucumbers with enough dressing to make them slippery.”
Lila froze mid-thought as she twisted to focus on Heidi. She couldn’t tell in all that subtlety if Heidi had meant that to come across the way that it had. Though with the blush in her cheeks, her gaze boring straight at Lila, and her full lower and thin upper lip parted, Lila was going to take a guess she had meant it to sound suggestive. Maybe they shouldn’t have started in the vegetable aisle.
Something short-circuited in Lila’s brain because for the life of her she could not figure out how to respond to the simple, suggestive innuendo.
“You okay?” Heidi asked, as if there was nothing else to her but innocence. The contradiction was spectacular.
Lila nodded. “Yeah, everything is fine. If you wanted, we could grab a coffee. That’d certainly take longer than an hour.”
Heidi gave a gentle but sad smile. “Not today. I have chores at home I need to get to. My partner is working, and I like to get these things done when I’m by myself rather than spending what little time we have together doing it.”
“Understandable.” Lila’s heart sank slightly. Usually the mention of a partner in any form meant a no to a relationship with her. She might be open to just about everything, but finding someone else who was on that same wavelength in rural Kansas was a different story. She’d struck out more than once, and accidentally slept with someone far more often than that.
“Maybe some other time.”
“Right.” Lila counted out three avocados and dropped them into her cart. “You getting anything else over here?”
“Yeah.” Heidi trailed up and down the aisles, grabbing mostly vegetables and a few pieces of fruit. Her cart looked half full by the time they finished in that section. When Heidi finally stopped and looked as though she was ready to move on, she said, “I’m vegan.”
“Oh! So I guess this is your playground over here.”
“It is. My partner isn’t, though. Often when we go out, it’s a feast of meat.”
Lila giggled. “I can see that happening. I once dated a guy who didn’t eat pork, and for some reason any time we went out to eat, all I wanted was pork.”
Heidi’s eyes crinkled in the corners. “Understandable.”
“Did you grow up here?” Lila asked as they turned down the meat section. She reached over to grab two steaks, and Heidi didn’t even seem fazed by it.
“I grew up in Topeka.”
“How’d you end up way out here?” Dropping the meat into her cart, Lila went back for some chicken. She needed enough food to last her a week of dinners and half a week of lunches, assuming she ate out some. She mentally ticked off the list of what she typically bought for herself.
Heidi sighed. “My partner is from out here, and we met in college. When we were looking for jobs after school, this is where we landed. We didn’t really expect to be here this long, but it stuck, and we like it.”
“I grew up here. I never wanted to live anywhere else. I love being this close to home.”
“Must be nice.”
That sad look was back. Lila realized her mistake too late. With Heidi’s past, home must not have been a place she necessarily wanted to go back to, which would explain why moving hadn’t been so difficult a decision.
“My dad lived in Wichita. I’m not sure I’d ever want to go back there. I went to Manhattan for school for a reason,” Lila tried to alter the topic slightly.
Heidi’s eyes widened, surprise echoing in her gaze. “I didn’t think you’d pick up on that.”
“Why not? You think I don’t also live this?” Lila grabbed some ground beef and set it in her cart. “I’m sure we have quite a few similar experiences.”
“I’m sure we do,” Heidi mumbled. She moved down the aisle toward the far side of the store.
Lila followed. She could always swing back by if she missed something, but she wanted to continue her conversation with Heidi. She was interesting. She’d never met someone so open and closed off at the same time. It wouldn’t be any wonder if Lila had ended up like her if she hadn’t had good therapy. She was lucky she’d had parents who supported her, and that her trauma wasn’t as awful as others.
