Oh, Keep Your Shirt On - Michelle Pennington Page 0,17
up and slapped the cold, soapy sponge into it. “This is yours.”
He stared at it, then burst out laughing. After rolling the window down and tossing it out onto the driveway, he put the truck in reverse. “Let’s go, girlfriend.”
I narrowed my eyes, letting him know exactly what I thought about that joke. Then I put his hoodie on because I was shivering. It swallowed me whole, but the warmth was certainly blissful. As I buckled up, I looked across at him and caught the smirk on his face, even though he was looking straight ahead.
Luckily, the nearest grocery store was just a few streets away, so Damien didn’t seem to mind my absolute silence as he drove. As he parked, I realized I didn’t have my wallet, so I opened my shopping app for the store to see if I could pay from my phone. When I opened the door to get out, Damien pulled the door open at the same time. I clenched my hand around the handle in surprise and nearly got yanked out onto my head.
“Whoa, there,” he said, bracing me by the hips.
I caught hold of his shoulder and stepped down, then pushed away from him. “I’m starting to think nothing but trouble comes from being around you.”
“That’s fair. But, hey. Trouble is fun, right?”
I raised an eyebrow and headed into the store. I grabbed a basket from the stack near the shopping carts and turned to smile at him. “Meet me back here in a bit?”
“What? You’re going to run off on your own and pretend you don’t know me? After I gave you a ride and everything?”
“You mean after you forced me into your truck and made me come? Yes. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“When we get back home, you’re going to have to explain to me exactly what you find so repulsive about me,” he said, pulling out a cart. He paused beside me. “Cuz other girls don’t.” And then he winked and strolled away, his swagger not one bit diminished by the fact that he was pushing a shopping cart.
Just to be safe, I headed off in the opposite direction. If he was going to the produce section, I was going to canned goods.
One of my biggest challenges in life had always been consuming enough calories. No matter how much I ate, I could never put enough weight on to get rid of my sharp angles and grow some curves. Worst of all, it was a problem that I tried really hard to hide because I’d long ago learned that eating rich, fatty food in front of other girls or talking about my struggle to put weight on was the quickest way to make enemies.
No matter how much I would sympathize over their dieting rants or compliment them on how they looked, I’d sooner eat toenails than share my own body-weight issues. But in the safety of my hermit-like privacy, I forced myself to eat as much peanut butter, full-fat dairy, and pasta as I could afford. Which wasn’t much. But a small jar of peanut butter would last a week. With some parmesan cheese, heavy whipping cream, and cheese tortellini, I figured I’d have enough to eat for a few days at least. I decided to splurge a tub of salted caramel gelato and then headed for the health and beauty aid section.
Another thing I had learned the hard way was that as horrible as my periods were, as soon as I was done with it, I didn’t think about it again until the next one came around. Too many times, I’d forgotten to restock on supplies and had to run out in the middle of the night. I definitely needed to grab some today, while I was thinking about it. Hopefully, I’d manage to avoid seeing Damien until I’d safely checked out.
I stood looking over the options, always hunting for the pads that would actually manage to keep up with my heaviest days. Long. Super-long. Regular. Heavy. Thin. Extra thin. With wings. Without wings. Without perfumes or dyes. Wait, so did that mean the ones I usually used did have perfumes and dyes? Why wasn’t there an extra thin, super-long for heavy days without perfumes and dyes? The only one that had all of those options had wings, which were helpful until they got stuck to all the wrong things in the middle of the night.
“You’ve been staring at the shelves for five minutes now,” a deep voice