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Sofi walked into the mercado, walking around until she saw a few boxes in the middle of an aisle. That must have been the place Mario had left. He was restocking boxes of arroz and Sofi set to work, her thoughts quickly displaced by the conversations surrounding her.
“I couldn’t creer he spoke to her como eso. Y frente a su abuela,” a woman in the next aisle spoke.
“That’s what she gets for dating a man her mamá told her not to date. Pero she’s a smart girl. She’ll break it off with him soon,” another woman said, their words flowing smoothly between Spanish and English in a way that made Sofi grin. She loved all of Blue Falls, but she loved their little mercado community most.
Sofi continued eavesdropping, her grin growing with each interaction. Ten minutes on the floor and she already knew who was pregnant and not ready to tell people the news yet, who was getting married and shouldn’t be, as well as who all of the tíos thought would win the next big boxing match.
“Sofi?” Sofi jumped up at the mention of her name. So far she’d been able to stay pretty undetected by her boxes of rice. And Mario was probably never going to trade jobs with her again, considering she’d stocked a mere thirty bags in ten minutes.
Sofi turned to see a face she’d never expected to see at the mercado. Not after the way she’d left things with him.
“Bash?” She stood, taking a random bag of rice with her. Of course at the same time, the Tías’ little heads peered down the aisle after Bash. She hadn’t even known they were here this afternoon. But she realized she should have—where there was fodder for gossip, the Tías would be near.
“Hey,” Bash said as he nervously shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“How are you doing?” Sofi finally asked when the silence had grown long enough that it had begun to feel awkward.
“Good. I’m busy working. I’ve actually been dating a lot,” Bash said with a half-smile.
Sofi wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She was pleased that Bash was dating. He was a nice guy and deserved to be happy, and she didn’t want him to be pining after her. But because the last time she’d spoken to him was about not wanting to date him anymore . . . it was a weird topic of conversation.
“I just . . . ” Bash continued so that Sofi didn’t have to answer. Thank goodness. “Are you still hung up on Austin?”
Sofi dropped the bag of rice in her hand. She took back her mentalthank goodness. She’d rather talk about Bash’s dating life than her lack of.
“Um,” she hedged as the Tías’ ears almost visibly perked up, they were so intent on hearing her answer to Bash’s question. “Maybe we should go in the back,” Sofi offered, pointing to the stock room.
Bash nodded and the Tías groaned. They knew Sofi would be shutting them, as well as anyone else standing around, out of the conversation. But since Sofi had just been one of those eavesdroppers, she knew how easy it was to “overhear” everything in the mercado. This was the last conversation she wanted anyone to listen in on.
She picked up her bag of rice and tossed it into the box. “You guys can stock that box if you’re looking for something to do,” Sofi teased the Tías as she led Bash out of the aisle and into the empty stockroom. She thought about locking the door behind her but figured that was going a bit too far.
She offered Bash a rolling chair that, for some reason, had been left in there instead of in her dad’s office but he just shook his head, waiting for Sofi to speak.
Knowing she could avoid him no longer, she said, “I think I always will be.” The words caused shivers to run up her body because she felt the absolute truth of them. Even as she continued to push him away for now, she couldn’t help but love Austin. She had for nearly all of her life and she couldn’t envision stopping now. Especially now that he’d said he loved her too. But did he truly mean it? She worried that he felt forced to say the words out of concern that he might lose her friendship rather than because he truly felt the same love for her that she did for him. She didn’t know what would be worse—never having Austin as her one person or having him but watching him realize he’d fooled himself into thinking he loved her.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Bash said. He sighed and took the offered chair as Sofi leaned against a stack of boxes. “I kept dating these women. Great women, beautiful women, but my thoughts kept going back to you. I had to make sure you really weren’t available to me before diving back into the dating pool.”
Sofi pursed her lips. How easy would it be to choose Bash right now? A man so into her that he couldn’t even think about other women when he was on dates with them. She knew that was what she wanted. But even though Bash offered it to her, she couldn’t take it. Because she craved that exact devotion from just one man.
Would he ever show it to her? Would Sofi ever give him a chance to show her? She realized that second part might be as much of a deterrent to their future as anything else.
“So are you two a thing, then?” Bash asked tentatively. As if he didn’t want the answer but had to know the truth.
Sofi shook her head.
“Is he still being a tool and calling you his best friend?” Bash asked.
Sofi didn’t realize she’d bared so much about herself and Austin to Bash. Maybe she should be more discreet with future guys she dated.
Even as she thought the words, her chest clenched, telling her there would be no future guys to date except for one. Either she would choose Austin or she wouldn’t. But there would be no other man. Years of dating had taught her one thing: there was only one man for her. But could he say the same about her? He’d said that he could . . .
“Kind of.” Sofi went on to tell Bash what had happened and when she told him about the date he lifted a shoulder as if what Austin had done wasn’t that big of a deal.
Sofi’s eyes went wide. She’d expected him to take her side.
“I’d be a hypocrite if I condemned him for that. Because if you’d told me today that you had Austin out of your system, even though you broke it off with me to go after him, I’d take you in a heartbeat.”
A stab of pain shot through Sofi’s chest, so sharp that she rubbed the spot as her eyes dropped to the floor. She hadn’t realized she’d made such an impact on Bash. Another reason she was done with dating, unless things worked out with Austin. She wasn’t the only one who got hurt when she dated someone else.
