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“No girl, once you’ve survived a few winters up here you’re a Yooper.”
“I whine all winter, so I don’t think I’ve earned the compliment, but thanks anyway.”
A man clears his throat behind Leena. I look up to see Simon smiling. Oh, jeez. Leena turns around and then slowly turns back to me. Her eyes are wide when she mouths the word:Hot.
What the hell, who cares? “Leena, that’s Simon. He’s Ethan’s dad. Simon, this is Leena.”
The cashier, an older woman I don’t recognize, is taking this all in. Both the cashier and Leena are now looking back and forth between me and Simon as if there’s a tennis match in progress.
“Hello.” Simon shifts a bouquet of daisies dyed a peculiar shade of blue to his left hand, offering his free hand to Leena in greeting. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She’s practically breathless in response, whispering, “Hi.”
I can see my sixteen-year-old self in Leena’s reaction. Simon is tall, broad and lean. His features are defined but his smile is warm. His icy blue eyes don’t look distant the way they used to, now they sparkle with amusement. The overall effect is disarming.
She regains consciousness and waves Simon in front of her. “You’ve just got that one thing, go ahead of me.”
“Yeah?”
“I insist,” she says, giving him a dreamy smile. When he turns to pay the cashier, Leena looks to me and mouths:He is gorgeous!
I shake my head. Not to dispute the fact, but to express that it doesn’t really matter. He’s not mine.
“Funny running into you here,” I say, waiting on him.
He takes the bags from my hands. “I was looking for a flower shop but couldn’t find one. I need to apologize to this girl, figured a nice bouquet would be the ticket.”
“A nice bouquet, huh?”
“Yeah.” He looks down at the sorry bunch. “Blue is her favorite color.”
“How do you know?”
“She used to drink blue slushees…Made her tongue and lips turn blue. She used to love some nasty cereal with blue marshmallows…Ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“Boo berries. Her dad should have been locked up for nutritional neglect.”
“And she thinks I don’t know this, but she stole my favorite t-shirt, the faded blue one I got when I saw My Morning Jacket in Pittsburgh the year before I met her.”
I shrug to indicate I have no memory of this alleged theft, enjoying this back and forth entirely too much. “Do you think she’ll forgive you?”
“I hope so.” I open the back hatch and turn to take my bags from him. He holds them firm in his grasp, eyes searching mine. “I’m nervous about today and I could use her in my corner.”
I try and fail to shape my expression into a smile. The image of him with that girl haunts me, the pain bubbling up, as razor-sharp as it was that day in Chicago. I manage to nod. “See you at the house.”
Seeing how he’s in my rearview mirror, I will myself not to cry on the drive home. It takes some effort. He’s quiet when he pulls up alongside me, getting out of his truck at the same time, taking the bags from my car. The air is charged and my body feels weak in some zero gravity kind of way, unsure and unsteady. I don’t know if I can survive being this close to him. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, ditching the ha-ha-ha exhale they taught in my birthing class at the hospital. I was annoyed back then, seeing as I was scheduled for a c-section, but the relaxation techniques are coming in handy right now.
He follows me into the kitchen and puts the bags down on the counter. We see the drawing at the same time, the work of a child. There’s a big head with two spindly legs sticking out from it, dots for the eyes and nose, and a smile that stretches from one side of the face to the other. It looks like an effort’s been made to draw a baseball cap over the head. Next to it is a smaller version of the same figure, complete with a smile.
Simon picks it up from the table, staring at it. “He did this?”
“Yeah, this morning.”
“It’s me? With him?”
“Yup,” I answer, trying to go about the business of getting lunch together.
He pulls out a chair and sits down. I look over to see him transfixed, eyes glued to the paper when he asks, “What did you tell him about me?”
