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“You make time for me.”
A bubble of laughter tumbled from my stomach, my body light. “That doesn’t mean I have time to shop for my own groceries. I have Thornton for that. He does all the shopping and cooking while I work. Besides, I have never met anyone who likes grocery shopping.”
“It’s relaxing for me,” she said, walking down the aisle toward the pickles and smiling. She drew her fingers across all the glass jars, never stopping to pick one up, but continuing toward the ketchups and mustards.
My lips curled into a smirk as I remembered the story that she had shared with me the last time we came here, when she and her sister would play hide-and-seek inside the store and scare unsuspecting people.
She headed straight for the wide variety of cheeses without a care in the world, pausing at the selection of wheels. She hummed softly to herself, glancing at the precut cheese in the coolers.
I wondered who she would be spending the holidays with. Part of me wanted to ask her, but what would I say if she was spending them alone?
With five blocks of cheese in her arms, she walked back over to me and dumped them into the cart. “Follow me,” she said, walking toward the meats and seafood sections. Her high ponytail bounced up and down as she walked.
I didn’t want her to spend it alone, but would she even want to spend the night with me? I never saw any of my family on Christmas Eve; I would spend it alone at Radiant, which was usually dead.
“What kind of wine do Heather’s parents enjoy?” I asked once we picked up sliced meat and salmon and headed for the alcohol.
I gazed at the shelves. None of these would do as a gift. We’d have to pick one up from my wine cabinet back home before we left tonight.
“Oh, they will have tons of it.”
“What’re you perusing the alcohol for then?”
“To find the kind that I like,” she said, plucking a bottle of Afterglow from the shelf.
Once she placed it in the cart, she grabbed the back of the cart and hopped onto it while I pushed her to the checkout. People glanced over at us, throwing Sierra weird looks but she didn’t seem to mind it.
It was probably something that she and her sister used to do here.
Once we checked out, I stared out the glass windows at the pouring rain and frowned. “Stay here.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get the car.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“It’s pouring, Sierra. Stay here.”
She snatched the full cart from me and pushed it right out the sliding doors and into the sideways-falling rain. I cursed, pulled one of the paper bags to my chest, and followed after her, wanting to get to the car quickly before the rain soaked through our clothes.
With one foot on the bottom bar of the cart, Sierra propelled herself forward with her back leg and hopped onto the cart with both feet. The carriage glided forward on the wet pavement.
“Sierra!” I shouted, jogging after her. “You’re going to get hurt.”
“Live a little,” she said, her voice drifting over the loud thumping of rain between us.
The cart picked up speed near the car. She attempted to stop herself at the car, but her foot slipped on the wet pavement, and both she and the cart continued rolling down the parking lot toward the grassy area. Sierra tried to catch herself, but she tripped once more.
I dropped everything in the middle of the lot and ran toward her. The cart crashed into the grass, the contents spilling everywhere, and she fell over onto her stomach in a puddle on the concrete.
“Are you okay?”
Sierra grabbed my shoulders and pulled me down toward her, giggling like a maniac. I fell down onto the concrete with her in the middle of the pouring rain and caught myself before I slipped into the puddle beside us.
“Sierra, I told you to be careful.”
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice soft.
