“Listen, Tess, I can pick out tampons as good as any guy who has sisters.”
I stopped short, my shoulders drooped, and caught a glimpse of his smile before my hands covered my face.
“Are you serious?”
“Go get ‘em, Jailbait. Don’t be embarrassed. What else do you want? Chips? Chocolate? I know how this works.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks. I couldn’t believe I had been so dense tonotrealize this was happening and that Logan was being a gentleman about the whole thing, even after the way I’d treated him. With my humiliation level at an all-time high, I mumbled, “Chocolate.”
He bowed and dutifully turned, and I hightailed it out of there. I found tampons in aisle seven, next to the cat food. I grabbed the first box I could find that had the word ‘super’ on it and jogged stiffly toward the end of the aisle, looking for an employee or a sign above that told me where the bathroom was. Forget about buying it first, this was an emergency. I was in luck. Some smart person had placed the bathroom in the same aisle as the feminine product section. A small sign on a black door twenty yards up read:Employee bathroom only.
Not today, Satan.
Today, the bathroom read:Employee and girl-in-white-pants bathroom only.
I had already ripped the side of the box open like an animal in my desperation, grateful the grocery store seemed quite empty for a Saturday night. My sight was set on the door in front of me, now only ten paces away, sandwiched between the cheese and lunch meat. I was so close. I reached the end of the aisle and kept going, not slowing down for anything.
Except when I plowed into a warm body with long, light-brown hair who stepped out in front of me.
Bodies and tampons went flying.
My landing was surprisingly soft, but the body beneath me grunted as her head and sharp points of her body slapped against the cold hard floor beneath us.
Horrified, I crawled off the woman, my mouth gaping and my humiliation shattering into a thousand pieces.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” I whispered frantically. “Are you okay?” She was still sprawled out on the floor, her hair-covered face turned away from me, when another voice from behind me called out to her, sending sudden chills down my spine.
“Cam? You okay?!”
I stopped. My heart, my brain, my emotions. Everything stopped. For a second, I was washed in an array of colorless memories. Visions of holding hands, movie dates, talks of the future, and the back of his head as he walked away from me.
Tyler.
Which meant that the body not moving beneath me was Camille—the woman he left me standing at the altar for.
14
Logan
Two sisters.
One older. One younger.
I’d been the victim of PMS one week out of every month for my whole teenage life, which was why—when I made my way toward the aisle in the back that circles the entire store with my arms full of candy bars, M&Ms, chocolate-covered pretzels, and sour gummy worms—I was in search of the chip aisle for something salty.
I wished Tessa would have just told me. For some reason, it rankled that I hadn’t given her the impression she could trust me with something like that. But then again, whencouldI have given her that impression? I’d been deliberately keeping things light between us—surface level only.
There was a couple walking a few yards ahead of me, though I didn’t pay much attention. The guy stopped to look at a deal at the end of the aisle while his girlfriend kept moving forward—until a hundred-and-thirty-pound blonde left tackle came firing out of nowhere and took the other girl down.
It took me a moment to realize what had happened. Then, I saw the white pants and the blue shirt.
Tessa.
TESSA.
The takedown had been something my high school football coach would have given his signature impressed eyebrow raise over. Direct hit. Even the exploding box of tampons reminded me of the fireworks after our home team scored a point. Tessa’s face was white as the man approached her. She scrambled off the limp body with a look of such terrible dread that alarm bells began going off in my mind. The three were not awkwardly dusting themselves off and going on their merry way, laughing about the mishap. There was tightness and lingering and what looked like a sorry attempt at small talk.
Then, I knew exactly who they were. Apparently, they had finished their dinner at The Sassy Heifer. I bent down and picked up a tampon by my foot.
