She bumps her shoulder against mine, cigarettes and sweet shampoo flooding my senses. “Look,” she whispers. I follow her gaze and see an elderly man in a motorized scooter. He eases a can off of the shelf and slips it into the pocket of his oversize cardigan.
“Poor thing,” she says. From her frown, she really does pity him.
There’s a wad of cash in her purse. She could go full Mother Teresa if she wanted to help him. But she only goes back to the tomatoes.
The man drives up the aisle. He picks up a bag of pretzels, considers it, and puts it back. As he does, he hooks his sleeve under a toothbrush hanging on an end display and it slips into his sweater.
“I’ve been there,” I say.
“Yeah?” Dara looks at me, and I don’t know what to make of her expression. Searching, but cautious.
Befriending her is a necessity, but it will also be a risk.
“Not a lot of money in singing,” I say. “And a girl’s gotta eat.”
She gives me a closed-mouth smile, and it warms her eyes. Obscure as she is, I know I’ve just scored a point.
At the checkout line, I pull out my phone again.
As the cashier counts out my change, I think about what to say.
Thankswith a smiley face? Bland. He’ll think I’m not interested.
You’re so sweet? Generic. He’ll think I’m too pure.
Maybe we can do a duet sometime? God, just kill me.
I can clean a man’s blood from the tiles. I can ease the plastic bag from his lifeless face and soak it to remove the DNA and then use it the next morning to hold my flowers at the farmer’s market. I can cut off his limbs while I’m fully naked so that I won’t have to do the laundry, and bury all the pieces. But figuring out what to say to a man you’re trying to seduce is its own brand of frustrating.
When we get to the parking lot, Dara sidles up against me again. To anyone walking past, we’d be best friends, even lovers, the way she carries herself as though she’s known me forever. “So,” she teases, “what’s their name?”
“Whose?” I try to feign ignorance as I load the bags into the trunk, but she only laughs.
“I saw the way you were looking at your phone,” she says. My cheeks burn. If Moody were here, she’d call me a helpless virgin and kick me in the shin.
I look at Dara again and I consider. She’s married, and nobody plays music that loudly in the middle of the night because they’re sleeping. She knows about love. Knows about passion.
You’re Jade, I remind myself.Sissy may be an idiot at love, but Jade is as seasoned as you want.I slip into the role like I’m sinking into a warm bath, and the calm slowly washes through me.
“I’ve historically made bad choices, romance-wise,” I say. “This one is still new. I just don’t want to screw it up.”
She gasps, hands on her hips. “Name!” she whispers playfully.
“Edison.” I hand this to her like a precious breakable heirloom. “I met him at church.”
I load the last bag, and Dara closes the trunk door with a slam. “Achurchman, huh?” she says. “The choirboy kind, or the son-of-a-preacher-man kind?”
“A little bit of both,” I guess. “We just started talking and we’re at that awkward part where everything I say makes me sound like a dumb schoolgirl.”
There’s a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Go get your guitar out of the back seat. We’re going to make this man love you.”
Dara records a clip of me singing the first stanza of “Stairway to Heaven” while I pluck at the chords on my guitar.
“Trust me,” she says. “He’ll go wild. This song is magic. It makes people think about how lonely they are.”
She holds my phone between us, and we both watch the clip play back. My voice sounds out, soft and slow, with just a touch of a rasp.
“What if he doesn’t like Led Zeppelin?” I say.
