Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,27

it’s not too crowded. Is it just me, or is being around people kind of…” I shuddered.

Casey pushed his hands into his pockets. “Nope. It’s not just you.”

We exchanged glances, and hell if I knew if we were just getting worked up because of all the coverage and panic, or if this was a normal response to everything that was going on. Did anything make sense anymore? No. No, it did not.

Inside the store, they of course wanted us to sign up for a membership like Costco or Sam’s Club would have. Looking over the options, I cringed at the prices, crunching numbers in my head to figure out if it was doable. Now I really felt bad for spending what I had this morning.

Casey held up the brochure and tapped his finger on the description of one of the memberships. “Let’s go with this one.”

I looked closer. It was more expensive than the others, but it had cash back you could apply to the next purchase.

“The cash back will probably be handy,” he said. “This probably won’t be our last trip.”

I shot him a look. He really was worried about this, wasn’t he? “You, um, think we can afford it?”

He shrugged. “I’ll put it on the credit card. I think in the long run, the cash back is the way to go.”

Wordlessly, I nodded. The moment Casey had admitted he was worried and that he thought we should go shopping like this, I’d felt the first inklings of actual worry—not quite panic, but close—creeping through me. That he was concerned at all had me on edge. That he thought we should think about stocking up like we would before a blizzard or a hurricane? Or that we should invest in a membership that would pay off over time because we’d probably be here more than once? Oh shit.

I kept that to myself, though.

We filled out the form and had our pictures taken for the membership cards. Casey paid, and now that we were officially members of the whatever-this-place-was-called club, we got a cart and headed inside.

Turned out we weren’t the only ones with this idea, but there were people who were definitely wearing their worry on their sleeves a lot more than we were. Loaded-down carts weren’t exactly unusual in places like this. The frantic “did we get enough of this?” and “we’d better make sure we get that!” was new. So were the carts overflowing with cleaning products, toilet paper, and hand sanitizer. It was just like what I’d seen at the grocery store, except bigger carts, bigger products, and bigger panic.

“Holy shit,” Casey murmured.

“Right?” I paused for a couple of pumps of hand sanitizer from the bottle at the end of one aisle, then started pushing the cart again.

Casey fell into step beside me, also rubbing on some sanitizer. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

We made our way down each of the aisles, gradually adding to our cart. Almost every time one of us picked something up, the conversation played out the same:

“Do we need it?”

“Eh, we might use it. Couldn’t hurt.”

“But is it overkill?”

A long, silent look because neither of us could definitively answer the question.

Then the item went into the cart, and we’d keep walking. Next item, same exchange.

At the far end of the store, we turned down the paper products aisle, and we both halted. In silence, we stared down the twin rows of empty shelves, a flyer blowing around under a vent like a tumbleweed. There was a handwritten note limiting customers to two packages of any one kind of paper product, but it didn’t really matter because there was nothing here to take.

“Whoa,” Casey said. “People weren’t making it up.”

“No they weren’t,” I breathed.

He swallowed. “Do we… Are we good on…?” He gestured at the shelves.

I nodded. “Yeah. I grabbed an extra pack this morning just to be on the safe side.”

With a quiet grunt of agreement, he started walking again, and I followed. As we continued up the empty aisle, he muttered, “Guess we know who the smart one is in this marriage.”

I just laughed, pretending that didn’t send a little flutter through me.

We’re not really married, remember?

I shook myself, and we continued through the store.

When all was said and done, we spent more than I’d hoped we would. Casey made a face at the total but paid for it without complaint.

As the cashier loaded everything back into our cart, I gnawed my lip. Did we really need all of this? I didn’t