I’m strolling down the canned vegetable aisle when my Friday afternoon decides to kick me in the teeth.

“Excuse me? Hi, um...”

The familiarity of the voice behind me thrills my skin with goosebumps. I’ve never seen Jake Tate in this store before. Did I conjure him with my guilty daydreams about his biceps? I stumble, then recover, checking the way my arms are placed on my cart to be sure they feel natural and not too stiff. Good? Good. I have successfully proven my ability to ambulate and wildly fantasize about strangers at the same time. Next step: get a life. 

“Not sure you remember me... Jacob? With the newspaper, and the window?”

I turn around, and my smile falters as his brightens a notch. Sweet baby Jesus riding a duck, he has beautiful cheekbones. And I’m wearing an old Audioslave tee shirt I swiped from Danny.

I flick my hair back over my shoulder, irritated with myself. I wear whatever’s comfortable these days, but apparently I still haven’t broken my habit of thinking about my looks in terms of men’s approval. He’s the vandal—I’m not the one who should be worried about making a good impression. “I don’t think we got around to names. But yeah, I remember you. What with the disappearing act and the mysteriously appearing board and the tip you left, it’d be a little hard to forget.”

As soon as I say the word “tip” his jaw flexes and he looks down.

“I am going to pay for it,” he says in a low voice. “It’s not like I thought thirty bucks would be enough, it’s just that I—”

“Thirty-seven.” I figure he should get credit for the seven extra bucks, but he jerks a single solemn nod, as if he’s taking responsibility for a crime, and I cringe. That came out sounding all wrong.

“It was everything I had on me that day, and I thought you’d rather have a down payment instead of waiting until I could get it all.”

“No, no, of course!” I hesitate, trying to choose my words more carefully this time so I don’t make him feel any worse. Of course a guy considerate enough to board up the window wouldn’t just drop a few bucks and run. My eyes fall as I think and then I realize he doesn’t have a cart—just a handheld basket with a single can of gluten-free lentil soup.

My own cart sits accusingly between us, the pile topped with kale, organic tomatoes, extra creamy Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream, and oil-free acne wash. I reach in and casually bump the kale over until it covers my face wash, wishing it were a sleek bottle of Products for Beautiful People Who Don’t Need Products. I swear, grocery shopping is way too personal to do in public. The last time a cute guy stopped to talk to me in here, my basket was headlining anti-fungal cream.

“Payments were very thoughtful, and I wasn’t dogging on the amount or anything.” I shrug one shoulder. “It’s just that if I were going to pick a random amount I would have gone for forty-two.”

“Right.” He grins. “The answer to everything.”

He got my Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference. A smile tugs the corner of my mouth up.

“I should have scraped up another five bucks to be witty. Live and learn.” He heaves a sigh that jumps my eyes up to his, which is definitely a mistake. I don’t know if it has to do with the gentle color or maybe the tiny lines of worry at the corners but...he has the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen. And it absolutely murders me.

I clear my throat. “Well, thank you for boarding up the window, Jake.”

“Jacob. Some people call me Jake, but...” He exhales. “Call me Jacob, please.”

I like that better—the name matches his eyes instead of his letterman jacket shoulders. Except I shouldn’t be thinking about either of those things. “It was nice to officially meet you, Jacob, but I should get going.” I lean into my cart and head down the aisle.

“Hey, hold on a sec.”

For a second, I consider pretending I don’t hear. This man calls up every flirtatious impulse I have, and silence would be easier than corralling my conversation into the “platonic” zone. I mean, it’s not that I particularly love being single, but I definitely like myself better when I’m not twisting myself up in knots to please a guy. Also, I’m up to T-minus eighteen months since the last time I ruined someone’s life. Not too shabby.

“I never caught your name,” Jacob says, matching my stride.

“It’s Jera.” I flash a quick, polite smile. See, Granna, I’m not totally a lost cause. “Jera McKnight.” Part of me braces for the inevitable “What kind of name is that?”

Jacob brightens instead. “Jair-ah.” He spaces out the syllables. “Am I saying it right? That’s a cool name.”

I shrug. “Hippie parents, you know. It happens.”

“Don’t they normally go for the New Age ones, you know, Rainbow and Aura and all that?”

My lips quirk in spite of myself, and I peek up through my lashes at him, leaning on my cart. “It’s a freaking acronym. Come on, if that’s not hippie, what is it? OCD? Bureaucratic? Irresponsible?”

His eyes go vague as tries to puzzle it out. “Oh God, why did you do this to me?” he mutters. “I’m not going to be able to think about anything else all day.”

“Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Roger Waters and Art Garfunkel,” I rattle them all off in one well-practiced breath and he grins, nodding along with every famous musician that I list. “It took my dad until I was two to confess to my mom what it stood for. She just thought it was pretty.”

“It is.”

Breath, meet lungs.

As I try to manage my own response, his eyes flick from my face to my hair, which is still drifting long and wavy from the rain I biked through this morning. My pulse ticks up at his interest and yeah, I’m so over riding that particular rollercoaster. I scrape my hair back into a strict knot, then dig one-handed in my messenger bag for a pencil to skewer it with. Jacob’s gaze follows my fingers with a flicker of disappointment.

“I won’t get paid again until next week, but maybe I could do some chores around your place, work off a little of my debt in the meantime.” He clears his throat and shifts his basket from one hand to the other.

“Nah, the house is in good shape,” I lie, my pulse thrilling to the Diet-Coke-commercial-like images of him shirtless on a ladder: nailing on fresh shingles, or fixing that wheezing rattle in my ventilation system. “The money is no big deal, really.”

“Can I be honest?”

No. Christ, no. “Sure.” At the single word, the trepidation in his eyes abruptly matches the trembling in the pit of my stomach, and I hate to see him look so nervous. I smile to cover it, for both of us. “Hey, if you can’t make a confession in front of the canned beets, where can you make one?”

Relief rebounds into his face and he says, “I’m about to the point where I’d sell a kidney to take back that window. I’m glad I got the chance to meet you, but I don’t want you to think that I...”

“What, that your best pick up line is vandalism?”

His grin debuts back into the canned vegetables aisle and it’s possible that I might dissolve into a semi-liquid state right here, puddling amidst the Veg-All and the lima beans.

“Actually, while we’re being honest, that very well might be my best pick up line.”

“Oh?” I manage.

Flirtatious I can handle. Confident I can walk away from without a hitch in my step. But sheepish? How am I supposed to give the cold shoulder to sheepish?

He peeks back up at me and his smile goes crooked. He rests a finger across his lips. “Don’t tell.”

My resolve lies, tattered and gasping, under the wheels of my grocery cart.

“No worries,” I rush to assure him. “It’s covered under vegetable aisle privilege. Lawyers and doctors have nothing on us.”

“So, can I...” He edges out of the way of a passing cart. “Help you shop? To work off my debt?”

He is killing me. Absolutely killing me.

“Don’t you need to get your own things?”

“Nah. I mean, it can wait.” He shifts, then considers the rows of pickled beets. “Actually, I sort of saw your car. In the lot.”

“How do you know what my car looks like?”

“It’s parked in your driveway every morning when I deliver your paper.”

I consider face-palming at my own stupidity.

“The vines...the cool spiky ones on the bumper, you know? I haven’t seen them anywhere else. Did you pay someone to do them?”

I drop my eyes, looking only at the kale. Kale is safe. Clean. Moral. “No.”

He pauses for a beat.

“I guess I didn’t think Sharpie would last so long on a car.” The basket jiggles in his fingers. “Or that anybody would be brave enough to just go for it. Permanent ink, you know? On metal.” He sounds wistful. “Not that I think you’d screw it up or whatever. It’s just that...”

It’s just that permanent is so damned real. 

“Yeah. I know.” I clear my throat. “I didn’t do them myself, though.”

The main thing Danny had to be trained for when he became a tattoo artist was how to deal with people’s indecision. He just couldn’t fathom how someone wouldn’t know what images they wanted their bodies to showcase for all the uncountable decades to come. Sharpie on a car bumper doesn’t even register on his commitment scale.

“So, what were you looking for?”

I startle. “Excuse me?”

He tips his head, his smile lopsided. “As your personal shopper, ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to be a little more specific.”

“Uh, corn?”

Jacob smiles as if I’ve said something amusing. “Okay, can do.”

As soon as he turns away, my fingers start plucking at my shirt, and I slam my hands back onto my cart. My body has gender role issues: I’ve got tomboy arms, all corded muscle and agile, tree climbing shoulders, but somewhere along the line, my bra size filled out from “adequate” to “obvious” and my hips traced themselves into a line more suited to 1950s dress catalogs than to pipe-legged skinny jeans. I used to dress to play up my best features and hide my worst, but I gave all that up a year ago. Now, I throw on whatever’s convenient because I need my body to run and drum and dance, and I love it for doing all those things. It doesn’t have to please anybody else, not anymore.

I hate Jacob a little bit for making me so conscious of my appearance again, even though he hasn’t done a thing wrong.

He adds a can of corn to my cart, and when he looks up from that to my face, tingles expand warmly across my skin.

Crap, what’s wrong with me? I’m not doing this again.

“You know what? That was it.” I yank the pencil out of my hair and snap a dark line across the last item on my shopping list, holding it up as proof. “The last thing I needed.” My hair tumbles down around my shoulders, drawing his eyes.

I duck my head, stuffing the shopping list into the messenger bag at my hip, then shove my cart down the aisle toward the cash registers.

He comes along as if he didn’t recognize my brush off, and I bite my lip. I really don’t want to hurt his feelings, and I’m not sure how to make myself clear without being rude. Sweetly shy guys like Jacob don’t usually pursue me.

When we round the aisle, Jacob replaces his lentil soup on an end cap of identical cans directly across from the door, avoiding my eyes. An achy kind of heat licks down my whole body as I realize he only picked up the can as a prop after he saw my car and decided to fake a grocery shopping mission. And then proceeded to blow his own cover by not buying the soup and telling me he came in here to talk to me.

I’m starting to think guys like Jacob don’t usually pursue anyone.

He folds the handles of his basket and half-jogs to the front door to put it back on the stack. I push my cart into line, placing a bright rack of magazines between me and the temptation to watch the man returning to my side.

He arrives just as the conveyer belt in front of me turns over an open spot, and he starts unloading my cart: cans and bottles first, then cardboard boxes, then the more delicate items on top. This guy has obviously been doing his own shopping for a lot longer than the first couple of years of college. Is he older than me?

“Hey, you don’t have to do that.” I grab the last couple of items and put them on the belt.

“I don’t mind helping.” He pushes my cart through to the end of the check stand and unfolds my wad of mismatched reusable bags.

I shift, at a loss. It seems oddly intimate, letting him handle my shopping bags. Especially since he blurted out that he felt guilty for being attracted to me because of how we met. What signal am I sending by letting him bag my groceries? Is this one of those things like on Seinfeld where “going up for coffee” is not at all about beverages, caffeinated or otherwise? I’m totally letting him “bag my groceries” right now, aren’t I?

Damn it, I’m like a grocery store slut.

“Miss?” the cashier says, possibly not for the first time. “That’ll be $64.12.”

Yeah, and I thought that was going to be twenty bucks cheaper. So much for a quick run to the store.

Jacob’s head comes up. His hand twitches toward his back pocket but then he blushes and looks away.

I swipe my card, take my receipt from the cashier, and Jacob and I step away from the counter as if we do our shopping together all the time.

“You know, I’ve nearly blushed at my grand total a time or two, but this is definitely the first time someone else has.” I risk a sidelong glance in his direction.

Jacob swings the cart around toward the exit doors. “My dad was Iroquois and Puerto Rican, Mom was Norwegian/Irish. Blushing is kind of a genetic lottery I lost.”

Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve never seen anyone with such gorgeous olive skin tones be able to turn so startlingly red.

The doors whoosh open in front of us. The sun has weaseled its way through the thick clouds for a moment, and wisps of steam rise from the damp pavement as my cart rattles its way to my VW under Jacob’s guidance. Apparently, he’s walking me out now, which is a shade more intimate than just talking in the store. I shouldn’t lead him on, but is there any non-jerkish way to repossess your grocery cart from someone?

“I liked the vines,” he says out of nowhere, pushing the cart to the front of my car. Somehow, I’m not surprised he knew the trunk of a VW Bug isn’t in the back. “I didn’t mean to make you think I didn’t.”

Warmth pulses in the very center of my chest and I stop next to him and use my key to open the trunk.

“Like I said, I can’t take credit for them. But thank you.” I straighten. “A good friend did them for me. There’s something about the smoothness of the curves contrasted with the thorns that’s always caught my eye.”

His lips tip upward, brown eyes glowing lighter out here in the sunlight, and I snap my mouth shut before I bore him half to death. Something about that gentle smile of his makes it way too easy to keep talking, but it’s not like he cares what I think about the shape of vines, for crying out loud.

He moves before I do, turning to lift my bags into the car. I scoot to help him and the last bag is loaded in seconds. He shuts the trunk and then turns to me, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Any chance you’d let me buy you a cup of coffee, since you won’t let me work on your house?”

No, no, no. Please do not ask me direct questions to which I must say the word no. I can only be around a man like this if I can keep him securely banished to the Friend Zone. But if he notices my attraction to him, he’s going to expect me to act on it, and both of us are going to end up an ugly kind of disappointed.

I wrap both hands around the strap of my messenger bag, my toes curling in my leather flip-flops. “I really sh—can’t. I have ice cream in the car.”

“Okay, but it’s rainy, so it might last a while. Besides, today, I have two hours before I have to be anywhere, which practically makes it a holiday.” He takes his hands out of his pockets and smiles, just a little. “I can’t think of a better way to spend it than with someone else who knows a towel is the most important thing you pack on your spaceship.”

Another Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference, heaven help me.

“I...” Say no, you idiot. No is safer.

“It’s just coffee. If you want. And I’ll make it up to you if the ice cream melts.”

I bite my lip. He really does seem sweet, and there’s no reason to punish him for my baggage. Hanging out is fine as long as I stick to my golden rule: I won’t change a thing about me to appease anyone’s expectations. As a friend, he’s safe to take it or leave it as he wants, and that way, I can be me without hurting anyone.

Jacob tips his head, as if he can sense me wavering. “Please?”