I rattled the shopping carts, trying to pull one free of the line, but it wouldn’t budge. With a pathetic whimper, I folded over the handlebar, resting my cheek on the handlebar of the attached cart.
“For fuck’s sake, Chloe,” a familiar voice growled behind me.
Well, wasn’t that just perfect. Steven and I hadn’t talked since declaring a fragile truce at dinner last week. He hadn’t even sent me a single animal video. And now here he was, once again right on time to see me at my worst.
I stayed where I was. “Everything sucks and I’m dying.”
There was a pause, followed by the kind of gusty sigh most often heard from parents of rambunctious toddlers. “Move, princess.”
Steven nudged me with his body, hip to thigh to knee, and I sort of oozed aside and braced my back braced against the brick wall of the grocery store while he figured out the shopping cart situation with annoying competence.
“Here you—” Maybe it was the way I was glaring at the shopping cart like it had ruined my life, but his sentence died with another sigh. “All right. One cart. Text me your list.”
“What list?” I asked.
“Your shopping list.”
“I don’t have a shopping list. I don’t do that.”
He looked truly aghast, like I had told him I enjoyed swimming in the creek with open wounds. “Then how do you know what to buy?”
I shrugged. “Vibes. I buy what looks good, things that don’t involve cooking, and throw in some fruits and vegetables. Boom, done.” I looked up at him. “Do you have a list?”
The offended look on his face gave me great joy. “Of course I have a list,” he said. “I’m not here to fuck around, princess.” The glass doors slid apart as he pushed the cart forward. “Just keep your vibes to the back half of the cart, all right?”
I opened my mouth to say something hilarious, but instead found myself struggling to hold back a vomitous hiccup as we passed a pungent garbage can and a wave of nausea rolled through my body. I clawed at Steven’s forearm.
“What—” He glanced down at me and his eyes widened. “Shit—” With one arm looped around my waist, he hustled us out of the doorway and over to the citrus display. “Are you okay?”
The glass doors slid closed. I inhaled the sharp, sweet scent of oranges and grapefruit and my stomach settled. “I think…yes?” I said hesitantly.
His brows pinched as he studied me. “Are you hungover again?”
“No, of course not. It’s just been a long week.”
“It’s Tuesday,” he pointed out.
“Well, it’s possible I’m coming down with something. I’ve been tired and feeling off.”
He put the back of his hand to my forehead. “Do you have a fever?”
His hand was warm, dry, and a little rough. I was pretty sure the surface temperature of my skin had increased by another degree or two from his touch and the liquid feeling I wouldn’t let solidify that I might like that feeling against the bare skin of my hips.
My eyebrows arched, pushing against his knuckles. “You’re the one touching my face. You tell me.”
“I don’t know.” He lifted his other hand to his own forehead to compare. “We’re both warm.”
“Like…feverish warm? Or mammal warm?”
“Huh,” he said, looking perplexed.
I laughed.
He grinned and dropped his hands. “My mom always knew. She’s like a human thermometer.”
“Mine, too. Maybe it comes from practice.”
“That makes sense. I don’t think I’ve touched a lot of sick people. Not on purpose, anyway.”
