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Ronin pulled into a parking lot and shut the car off. “We’re here.”
Naia lifted her head, scanning the lot and the large building at its end. “Where are we?”
“A grocery store.” Ronin exited the car. “I haven’t been home in a week.”
She hopped out as well.
Mortals sauntered in and out of automatic sliding glass doors. Exiting the store, a woman with a messy ponytail struggled to calm her wailing child in the cart. A couple walked side by side, their arms tightly interlocked, supporting brown paper sacks in their free hands. The entryway was abuzz with a family of six, as four young children jostled for space.
There was something incredibly mundane about trailing alongside Ronin, scouring the large aisles. The shelves were filled with a dizzying array of products, blurring together as she whizzed by. Her shoulder knocked into a man browsing the many choices of beans—pinto, black, red, kidney. She mumbled an apology and extended her stride to keep up with Ronin as he wheeled their cart down the next aisle.
He grabbed two bags of white rice and chucked them in.
“How, um…” Naia mentally ran through her words, but there was no way to phrase it without appearing strange.
Giving up, she exhaled. “I’ve never been grocery shopping before. How does it work?”
He paused in the middle of the aisle to look back at her.
A long second passed with him staring, doing the thing where his eyes scoured her face for any traces of her thoughts.
“We pick the items we want and then pay.” He rotated towards the front of the store and gestured to where several people lined up at what appeared to be a series of registers. Some didn’t even have staff standing behind them. The customers were scanning their own groceries and paying through a machine.
A simple process, then.
Naia averted her gaze onto the open freezer compartment in the middle of the aisle stocked full of frozen fish filets, her mind jumping to one thing.
“Where do they keep the pastries?”
He smiled as he started off in a direction. “This way.”
Naia walked at his side, aware of the proximity between them, making sure their arms didn’t accidentally touch.
“Have you ever had cream puffs?” he asked.
With a shake of her head, she gracefully sidestepped a woman in a motorized vehicle cruising down the lane.
“I think you’d enjoy them.” Ronin stopped and lifted his hand from the cart. “Care to take over for me? I need to grab a few loaves.”
“Sure.”
He surfed his arm above her head and crossed into an aisle stocked from top to bottom with loaves of bread.
Clutching onto the handle, warm from his palms, Naia meticulously surveyed the items in the cart, acknowledging her new role as the guardian of these belongings, determined not to lose track of them, even if a captivating distraction emerged.
Ronin placed the bread in the cart and strolled ahead.
Naia followed. Driving the cart was fun. Being in control of something, choosing the speed and which route to take when rounding a person idle in the walkway.
She stuck close to Ronin, cursing under her breath every time he halted in front of her and came close to scuffing his heels.
Ronin stopped abruptly to glance back at a row of freezers, and Naia failed to brake in time, ramming the end of the cart into the back of his thighs. He scuffed forward on his feet.
She tensed, preparing herself for a haughty reaction. “I apologize, I?—”
Ronin turned his head to look over his shoulder at her, grinning. “You’re a terrible driver.”
The muscles in her shoulders relaxed. “You give no warning when you are about to stop!”
