day. Sure, she felt gross and sweaty and crampy from her period, but for the first time in Adult Gina History, that was not actually the worst thing currently happening in her life. They should put her silhouette on one of those damn boxes.
Gina: bring on the clots!
She opened her trunk. Even the wonky wheel, which jerked the cart into her bumper, could not sully her mood. She tossed her bags into the car. She reached in for one of the Twix. Gina ripped open the wrapper with her teeth. She fed both crunchy, chocolatey bars into her mouth like a piece of paper rolling into a typewriter, a simile that anyone under the age of thirty would not understand.
Like an asshole, she was too lazy to walk all the way back to the store to return her cart. She had the decency to leave it on the grassy divider beside her car. She got into the driver’s seat. She contemplated getting the other Twix out of her trunk. But the ice cream might melt. So she should eat the ice cream, too. Should she go back into the Target and buy a spoon? Surely, she could not eat such a thing with her hands. Surely, she could not tip the carton and slurp from its wonders as the ancient gods took succor from helpless virgins.
Gina heard a noise from the backseat.
Her eyes nervously flicked to the rearview mirror.
She saw a man’s hand, then his arm, then his shoulder. Unusually, her gaze did not follow the natural direction toward his face. Her eyes snapped back to center, focusing on the flash of sunlight off metal. Her mouth, still full of Twix, dropped open. She felt her eyes go wide. Her nostrils flare. In slow motion, she followed the path of the hammer swinging back, then forward, aimed directly at the side of her head.
She had only one thought, and it was incredibly stupid: I was right.
20
Will stuck his hands in his pants pockets as he walked down the hall. The pain in his knuckle made him rethink the decision. A fresh streak of blood swiped across the back of his hand. Sara had said that she was going to put a Band-Aid on the cut. It wasn’t like her to forget, but they were both having to get used to new experiences.
She was giving him space, respecting his feelings. This sounded great on paper, but in actual life, Will had never once had anyone give him space, let alone respect his feelings. He wasn’t sure how to navigate his way back.
When he got mad at Amanda, she bullied and humiliated him until he dropped it. Faith over-apologized, groveling, calling herself a bad person, until he gave in to shut her up and put them both out of their misery. Angie had hurt him all the time, but then she’d go away and by the time she showed back up again, Will was over it. And sex-starved, which was another way she got him.
None of these strategies was going to work with Sara. The fact that she was unlike anyone in his life was one of her biggest draws. But this space thing was completely foreign territory. It felt like a very bad idea for Sara to expect him to fix it. What he really wanted to do was text her an eggplant, then she could text him a cowgirl, then things would go back to normal.
He ducked into the kitchen to wash the blood off his hand, but he found himself at the vending machine. Will hadn’t eaten in over an hour. He fed a dollar bill into the slot. The spiral turned. The sticky bun dropped. Will got back a quarter, which was half of what he needed for a Sprite. He had to twist around to get the change out of his opposite pocket with his opposite hand.
Will moved down to the sodas. He had a sick love of the high-tech machine. He fed in the money. He watched through the glass as the robot arm slid down the track so the robot hand could grip the can of Sprite and drop it into the bin below.
“’Sup, bubba?” Nick came up beside him and did that weird shoulder grip-pat. “I had some additional thoughts about that profile the FeeBees ran for the Chief.”
Will put his snack on the counter and washed the blood off his hand. The shoulder thing was starting to grate. Also grating: the way Nick