She grinned and nudged him with her hip. “No, silly, but they’re festive.”
“I think having a Christmas tree and a couple of stockings over the fireplace is going to be plenty festive,” he said. “You get washcloths and dish towelsdirty.” He rounded the cart and leaned into the handle. “I think this is good enough.”
“Okay,” Lark said, and Cash turned the cart toward the front of the store from the outer recesses of this Christmas décor aisle. He’d been surprised that there weren’t many people here on Black Friday, but he supposed they had come closer to dinnertime than before breakfast, and the real crowds had probably shown up at five a.m.
The Christmas-centric shop had been closed by the time they’d made it out of the canyon with the tree, so he and Lark had resorted to the only big-box store in the area.
“Look, they have those tins of popcorn,” Cash said, pausing at one of the end-aisle displays. “Did you want some?”
Lark had fallen into her phone, and she glanced up, her expression confused. “What?”
He indicated the teal containers of popcorn. “You said you liked the cheddar cheese and caramel combo.”
“Oh, yeah.” The pretty little line between her eyes disappeared. “But we have so much food at the house.”
“You could take it back to your apartment.” He raised his eyebrows, seeking permission
Lark nodded, dropping her head to look at her phone again.
He put the tin of popcorn in the cart and continued toward the checkout at a slower pace as she texted frantically. “I’m just gonna call him,” she said, that familiar grumpiness in her tone.
“Who is it?” Cash asked.
“It’s Jet. He said Grammy called, but he couldn’t really get anything out of her.”
“She called Jet?” Surprise ran through Cash as Lark lifted her phone to her ear.
“Yeah, he said she told him she tried to get in touch with me, but the call wouldn’t go through.”
“We were up the canyon,” Cash said. It had taken them a good half-hour to get down, and they’d been out looking for a Christmas tree for at least that long as well. Her grandmother could have called a couple of hours ago and Lark wouldn’t have received it.
She half-turned away from him and paused on the corner of the seasonal aisle. “What’s going on?” she asked, bypassing the hello completely. She listened for a couple of seconds, and Cash could hear a tinnier version of his best friend’s voice on the line, but he couldn’t make out any words.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Lark said, which only set Jet off again.
Cash touched her forearm and nodded to the cash registers only ten yards from them. She waved him away, and Cash felt dismissed like a little child, but he walked away to start the checkout process, because he had the feeling they would be headed to her grammy’s place next. He opted for self-checkout, as that was the closest to Lark, and he wanted to keep an eye on her.
His heart squeezed when she finally joined him, just in time to put the last box of ornaments on the tiny shelf for him to scan. Part of him didn’t want to know what was going on, but the other part wanted every detail.
Cash had spent a vast majority of his time with this woman in the last seven days, and he wanted to know everything about her: her family, what made her happy, what upset her, her favorites, the things she didn’t like, and who she was at the core.
Because they’d been joined at the hip without worldly responsibilities, Cash felt like their relationship was six months old instead of six days. He glanced over to her with an abundance of caution running through him. “What’s going on?”
“I just tried calling her,” Lark said. “And she wouldn’t answer.” She shook her head at her phone, turned it off, and stuffed it in her pocket. “Can we go over there after this?”
“That’s why I came to check-out quickly.” He tapped the button to pay with his debit card and held the chip to the reader.
“I guess she called Jet, and she was in a real tizzy. The line was really fuzzy and kept cutting out,” she said. “But he swore he heard beeping in the background, like a smoke alarm.”
Cash jerked his head up and looked at Lark under the brim of his cowboy hat. “Like there’s fire in her condo?”
“Jet didn’t know,” Lark said. “He called her back a couple of times, and she wouldn’t answer. Now I’ve called, and she won’t pick up. We just need to go check on her.”
“No problem,” Cash said, and he swept up their last bag of ornaments and put them in the cart. “Let’s go.”
He knew enough about Lark to watch her disappear inside herself on the drive from the grocery store to the fifty-five plus community, which only took twelve minutes. He hadn’t seen her chew on her nails before, but she did now, and that only added to her anxiety symptoms.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Cash said, hoping to ease her nerves. “There’s no smoke in the air. Look.”
