Chapter 23
Jackson
Ellary’s fingers barely, and I mean barely, graze the pasta box on the top shelf in the grocery store.
She’s on her tiptoes, so if she can’t reach her favorite pasta now, she never will.
Shaking my head, I smile as I approach her.
She mutters a curse, strains a little more to bridge the two-inch gap between her finger and the box, then yelps, startled when I grab the pasta and pass it to her. “Here.”
“Thanks.” She takes it with a grateful smile, but avoids my gaze.
Things have been different between us over the last week, ever since she turned up at the kids' field hockey and stayed to talk afterwards.
We still meet once a week to sit on the swings and talk, mostly about the baby, but sometimes about something I learned in therapy. We never talk about the divorce, though I’m aware the six-month waiting period before the judge can finalize it is ticking down.
I don’t believe the divorce is the reason Ellie is suddenly acting so strangely around me. She rarely makes eye contact, and when our gazes meet, her cheeks flush pink and she looks away again.
But she surprised me by coming back to watch me coach.
Between teaching, I happened to glance over at where the parents who like to sit on the sidelines and eat snacks as they talk among themselves.
Ellie had brought a camp chair, a familiar one she must have pulled out from the garage, because the last time I saw it was at a barbecue at Wade’s house.
She didn’t say anything, just watched the practice with the other parents, and when it was over, she left.
I don’t know what it means.
“Want me to grab a couple more boxes?” I offer. “Or I could find out if they have more in the back.”
She looks briefly surprised by my offer, her eyes sliding from my face to the fifteen boxes of her favorite pasta. But she’s pregnant. Maybe this is a pregnancy craving, and all she wants to eat is whole wheat rigatoni pasta?
She shakes her head. “No thanks. I don’t even know how much of this I’ll eat. My taste buds haven’t been the same since I got pregnant.”
She places the box of pasta in her shopping cart.
“Any strange cravings?” I ask, wanting to tell her she looks beautiful in her dark green dress and brown sandals.
She wrinkles her nose and rubs her lower back. “No, just things sometimes taste a bit different. Not bad. I start craving something sweet, and as soon as I have a bite, I decide I want salty instead.”
I flash her a sympathetic smile. “That must drive you crazy.”
“A bit.”
My gaze dips, and I clear my throat. “You, uh, look nice. Is that a new dress?”
She looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “No, I wore it to your dad’s birthday last year.”
Idiot.
“Um, yeah. I remember.”
Now I’ve done what I walked down this aisle to do, I hover.
She’s not telling me to go away, so I take that as a good sign. She’s not walking away or making an excuse to leave either, so I see that as an even better sign.
Does she want me to go?
I was happy when I saw her this morning, not that I’ve been prowling the stores on the weekend, hoping to bump into her again.
Though now that I think about it, there was no reason for me to be passing by the pasta aisle when I’ve been living on frozen dinners, so maybe I’ve been lying to myself about my grocery store visits.
Stop staring at her. You’re making her uncomfortable. Go.
I back up, “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
As I turn around with my basket of groceries, she says, “Jackson?”
I spin around so fast I run into her shopping cart.
Instead of calling me an idiot or laughing, she studies me through serious brown eyes. “I haven’t done anything with the nursery.”
The trunk of my car has been slowly filling up with stuff Ellie said she liked and wanted for the baby during our weekly backyard swing talks. I haven’t told her yet because I don’t know how to tell her I bought these things for her and the baby without it looking like I’m trying to buy her love.
“Oh?” I say vaguely.
She waits until a woman grabs a box of pasta and walks past us.
“I want to do it with you. Clear out the spare room. Figure out a paint color and start getting the crib and dresser. Do you have time—”
“I’m free,” I blurt out, then wince at brutally cutting her off. “Sorry, I mean, whenever you want me to come to the house to do those things, I am available to do that. By that, I mean the things you said. And only those things.”
I inwardly wince.
Shit. I sound like an alien pretending to be human.
A flicker of amusement lights her eyes. “Okay. I’ve finished my grocery shopping. Do you have time today?”
She glances at my basket.
A carton of milk. Three microwave meals and a packet of candy are probably pathetic in her eyes, but I eat dinner with my parents most evenings, or I’m with Wade and his family.
When I’m at my apartment, I microwave something.
There’s no point filling a refrigerator when I barely cook and avoid my silent apartment any chance I get.
“I’m done,” I say. “I can help put your groceries in your car, and we can head to the house together?”
I have coaching later, but that’s hours away.
“Okay,” she says with a smile. “I’d like that.”
The cashier at the register assumes we’re a couple, mixing our groceries together before I can ask her to bag my paltry weekly meals separately from Ellie’s healthier ingredients.
I’m still wearing my wedding ring, even if she isn’t, so it makes sense the woman at the register would start bagging everything into the reusable shopping bags that Ellie prefers to plastic.
Ellie has always loved to cook, and anyone looking at the items in her cart can tell she cooks from scratch. Me? One glance at my basket and anyone would know I’m a lazy cook with a firm grasp of using my microwave.
“It’s okay,” I tell Ellie, pulling out my credit card to pay for everything. “We can sort it out back at the house.” I pretend I don’t see the interest stirring in the cashier’s eyes as she glances between us.
I push the cart with both our shopping out of the store, Ellie walking beside me.
Ellie is so quiet that I glance at her, surprised by her amusement. “What is it?”
“The cashier was desperate to know what the deal was with us.”
“I know.” I grin.
My amusement fades almost as soon as it flares to life. She probably thought we were having an affair, and that is nothing to laugh about.
“What is it?” Ellie asks.
I shake my head. “Nothing. Do you want to unlock the trunk?”
“I can do it.”
“It’ll take me a couple of minutes,” I insist.
She sighs and relents, opening the trunk and stepping aside so I can place the bags inside.
Finished loading her trunk with groceries, I slam the lid shut and turn to her. “I’m parked over there,” I say, pointing to the other side of the parking lot. “I’ll take this cart to the corral and meet you back at the house. That’s if you haven’t changed your mind?”
“No,” she says softly. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
Fear that she might start having doubts about me going back to the house with her drives me to push the cart at a near-jog to the corral. When I glance over my shoulder, Ellie is watching me, a hint of a smile curling her lips. Probably thinking I’m crazy.
I lift my hand in a wave, and she returns it with a look that’s almost… warm.
No, it’s in your head. The sun is in your eye, and you’re seeing something that isn’t there.
She heads toward the driver’s seat, and I go to my car. If I practically sprint there, it’s only because I don’t want her ice cream to melt while I’m on my way home.
I don’t speed. But it’s a near, near thing.
At the house, she’s climbing out of her car as I park in the driveway.
I can’t help but notice the curious looks from our neighbors out working on their lawn.
They must all know by now that Ellie and I are no longer together.
Ellie would have mentioned it, and if she hadn’t, they couldn’t have missed the fact that my car is no longer in the driveway and Ellie isn’t wearing her wedding ring.
“Do you want to get the front door, and I’ll carry everything in?” I say.
We have too much stuff in the garage. I always meant to clear it out so Ellie could easily unload whatever she had in the car right into the house, instead of traipsing from the driveway and through the entryway to get to the kitchen.
After grabbing the first two bags of groceries, I follow Ellie into the house.
The first things I notice are the absence of pictures on the walls and the smell of peppermint from an unlit candle on an entryway table.
It looks like home, feels like it still, but there are signs—clear signs—that I don’t live here anymore.
She catches me looking at an empty wall where our wedding portrait once hung.
“It’s in the garage. I couldn’t…”
“Don’t apologize for that, Ellie,” I cut in gently. “You didn’t need to have our wedding picture in your face when you’re trying to heal from what I did to you. I get it.”
I set the first bags down on the kitchen counter, and while I go back for the rest, she unpacks the groceries.
A pang hits down low.
The last time we did this was… too long ago. I’d always bring the bags into the house, and she’d fill the cupboards, pantry, refrigerator, and freezer.
We’d laugh and talk, figure out what we wanted to make for dinner, or complain that we’d bought three of something we didn’t need because it was hiding behind that box of crackers none of us liked.
Now Ellie unpacks the groceries in silence as I bring them into the house and set them on the counter.
There’s no laughter or jokes, no planning out our meals for the rest of the day.
And I realize that I lost another simple pleasure I never appreciated as much as I should have.
Once I’ve brought in the last of the groceries, I hover in the kitchen doorway, noticing the one bag on the kitchen table she set aside, likely my things. “Do you want me to start emptying the spare room stuff into the garage?”
She pulls her head from the refrigerator and flashes me a bright smile. “Sure. I’ll be right up to help in a bit. I left your microwave meals in the freezer, so don’t forget to remind me to pull them out when you’re leaving.”
When you’re leaving.
It’s another dagger twist in my heart.
I force a smile to my lips. “Sure.”
Then I head upstairs, and she resumes quietly unpacking the shopping bags.