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I reached for a box of our usual flakes, but paused when my eye caught the colorful cartoon mascot on the box beside it. I could too easily remember Eric lying on his back on my bed, tossing the O’s into the air and trying to catch them in his mouth. He’d been procrastinating from studying bio, but it turned out we’d found more interesting ways to teach him anatomy…
“Shit,” I muttered, grabbing a box of cereal at random before fleeing from the memory at a jog, the shopping cart’s front wheel issuing a squeaky complaint before wobbling me off course. I just barely braked in time to avoid crashing into a display of granola bars.
I really needed to screw my head on properly, but nothing was the way it used to be. When it was just me and Cam, I knew what to expect. But lately, Cam had been acting extra weird. He didn’t seem unhappy, just really… intense. Like, he insisted we watch Eric’s game in Florida on TV, and when I got up to grab a snack, he told me I couldn’t leave because I might miss something, and he even made me wait until commercial breaks to run to the bathroom. Then on Wednesday, he’d asked me to pick him up from school when I knew for a fact Eric was already doing it. It was like my son was trying to fill my world with all things Eric, and it was getting nearly impossible to avoid the man.
After wandering around the grocery store for half an hour, I looked down into my cart and was shocked by the bizarre assortment of food staring back at me. Besides the cereal, I had peanut butter, cheese puffs, ham, bananas, ice cream, extra-garlic pickles, and a club-pack bag of chocolate chips. I quickly grabbed a few of our essentials and headed for the checkout.
“Whatever,” I huffed, beyond caring. I hadn’t really needed to do grocery shopping anyway, it was more an excuse to escape. My parents were having some quality time with Cam back at the house, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe with all the questions my mom was asking about Eric.
At the checkout, I started unloading my groceries onto the conveyor belt, when I turned and came face to face with Eric—or his dimpled smile, anyway. “Grrr!” I snarled at the magazine sitting in the rack, relying on being an impulse buy for customers on their way out. The headline read: “Meet Eric Van Leer’s Secret Mini-Me.” I didn’t want to buy the damn thing, didn’t want to read all the fan gossip about America’s favorite quarterback, but I needed to know what they were saying about Cam, so I snatched a copy of Chatter Magazine and threw it on top of my groceries before quickly paying.
I paused just outside the store’s exit, grabbing the magazine out of the bag and flipping through it until I got to the article. They had a full-page spread of pictures, mostly of Eric, but a few of him posing with Cam. They’d even managed to find one of me and Cam together. Why wasn’t I told about this? Didn’t they need my permission to print these?
As I scanned the article, I grew more and more angry, my stomach churning. I felt like I was going to be sick. It talked about Eric’s rough upbringing, about how his mom’s abandonment at an early age had left him vulnerable to being taken advantage of. The author didn’t outright call me a gold-digger, but the insinuation was there. They made it very clear that I wasn’t someone important to Eric, just someone from his past, and that the timing of me coming forward when he was traded back to the city was simply too perfect. I could already imagine the gossip, about how I was trying to land myself a rich husband and using my child as a ploy.
“Assholes!” I spat, throwing the magazine straight in the trash. My son was going to hear about it from someone at school. I couldn’t protect him from this. What would he think of me? I felt… dirty.
The sky above, dark and foreboding, was a perfect reflection of my mood, and as I pushed the cart through the parking lot toward the car, sleet began to flick down in a light patter. I was almost to the car when I finally looked up, and I jolted.
Eric was leaning back against my car, waiting for me, his arms crossed casually over his chest. He gave me a cautious smile, and I scowled straight back.
I resumed stomping up to the car, nearly colliding into him with the shopping cart. “What are you doing here? Are you following me?”
His expression smoothed out in feigned innocence, and his eyes flitted away. “Of course not. I just… needed some milk, and I was on my way to…”Yeah, right. He had nothing. He was a horrible liar. He needed to learn how to get his story straight before getting himself into a jam like this.
“Uh-huh, sure. Well, then I should let you get to your shopping. If you’ll excuse me.” I jerked the back hatch open and started to unload the bags from my cart into the trunk.
“Here, let me help you,” he said, taking the bags from me. “I know you’re not my biggest fan right now, but we need to talk about Cam’s birthday.”
I huffed. While it reeked like an excuse to corner me, he was right, we did need to talk about it. “You have until we finish loading these groceries in the car, but I have ice cream in here, and I don’t want it to melt.” Was it my imagination, or was he moving as slowly as possible?
“So, Cam asked me if he could have his party at my place, a sort of pizza party-slash-movie marathon. Are you okay with that?”
“Sure,” I mumbled. “It’s up to the birthday boy what he wants to do. As long as you don’t mind a bunch of ten-year-olds running around your house, have at it.”
His fingers brushed mine as he took a bag from me. “And you’ll be there too, right? You could invite your parents and brother?”
“Oh, that’s…” It was nice of him to suggest, but I wasn’t sure how to handle him being nice. Not when I was clinging so tightly to the idea of him being a manipulative asshole.
He sighed, refusing to put the final bag in the trunk, but there was no putting it off. He finally stowed it, but when he reached up to close the hatch, he paused. “I got you something.”
“Y-you did?” It wasn’t my birthday, and it was still over a month until Christmas. “You didn’t have to buy me anything.” In fact, I wished he hadn’t.
“I know.” He hiked a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s in my truck. If I go get it, will you drive away without me?”
I chuckled. “The thought had crossed my mind.”
His full lips quirked up enough to bring out that dimple, and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. “Don’t leave,” he commanded with mock sternness, then jogged to his truck. He came back with a box in his arms.
I frowned at the picture on the side of the box. “You bought me a new stand mixer? Is that like, ‘an omega belongs in the kitchen’ kind of present?”
“Wha—?” he sputtered, thrown off his game. “No, of course not! I noticed when I was making banana cake with Cam that your mixer had seen better days, and I thought I would do something nice for you.” He held it out to me, and I took an involuntary step back.
“I don’t want it,” I said shortly. “Take it back.”
“But you need it,” he insisted, holding it out again. “Don’t be stubborn, Jasper. I can afford to buy you gifts. Iwantto.”
“And what about what I want, huh?” I gritted out. With the sting from the magazine article’s accusations still fresh in my mind, I couldn’t stop from lashing out. “I don’t want your money, Eric! That isn’t why I told you about Cam.”
