Chapter 5
Chapter five
Colby
Grocery Store Rumor Disaster
I need three things.
Coffee.
Eggs.
Bread.
Considering I am a professional hockey player who regularly gets hit by men built like freight trains, this should not qualify as a high-risk mission.
Unfortunately, I live in Briar Cove.
I know something is wrong the second I walk through the automatic doors of Peterson's Market.
The cashier nearest the entrance looks up.
Freezes.
Then smiles.
Not a normal smile, a knowing smile.
The kind that makes a man immediately suspicious.
I nod cautiously.
She nods back.
Still smiling. That's unsettling.
I grab a basket and head toward produce.
An elderly man stocking apples spots me.
"Morning, Colby."
"Morning."
"How's the family?"
I stop walking.
He continues arranging apples like he hasn't just launched a grenade into my morning.
"The what?"
"The family." He gestures vaguely. "You know. Sadie and the little one."
I stare.
He grins, then wanders away before I can respond.
Fantastic.
I continue toward the dairy section.
Halfway there, a little boy in a winter coat nearly runs into a display of canned soup while staring at me.
His mother catches his hood. "Tyler, watch where you're-"
She notices me. "Oh!"
There it is again. That smile. That terrible smile.
"Hi, Colby."
"Hi."
Tyler points excitedly. "Mom, that's the hockey guy!"
"Yes, sweetheart."
The kid looks around me. "Where's Jillie?"
I blink. "What?"
"Where's Jillie?"
His mother turns bright red. "Oh my goodness. Tyler."
"What? They always hang out together."
I open my mouth.
Close it again.
Because somehow a six-year-old has managed to trap me in a conversation I cannot win.
The mother apologizes three times while dragging him away.
I stand there staring after them. I’ve played in front of twenty thousand screaming fans. I have faced reporters after playoff losses. I have survived rookie hazing.
None of that prepared me for today’s small-town grocery shopping.
By the time I reach the coffee aisle, I am beginning to suspect the entire town has collectively lost its mind.
Or maybe mine.
Possibly both.
I grab my usual coffee.
A voice behind me says, "That one's too bitter."
I turn.
Mrs. Bellamy stands beside a shopping cart filled with enough groceries to survive a natural disaster.
She studies the coffee bag.
Then she studies me.
Then she studies the empty space beside me, as if she expected someone else to be there.
Specifically, a baker and a first grader. I immediately regret leaving my cabin.
"Morning, Mrs. Bellamy."
"Morning, dear."
The word dear is never a good sign.
Neither is the sparkle currently living in her eyes.
"You shopping alone today?"
I narrow my eyes. "Was there supposed to be a group activity?"
She ignores that. "Well, I'm sure Sadie is busy."
Alarm bells. Every alarm bell. Everywhere.
I should leave.
Immediately.
Instead, I make the mistake of asking, "Busy doing what?"
Mrs. Bellamy smiles.
The smile of a woman who has already planned a wedding and named future grandchildren.
"Oh, you know. Bakery mornings. Motherhood. Managing a business. Managing a hockey player."
"No one is managing me."
"Of course not."
She says it in a tone that means absolutely everyone is managing me.
I put the coffee in my basket and decide eggs can wait. Bread can wait. Honestly, starvation seems reasonable.
Then the automatic doors open at the front of the store.
A small voice carries across the market.
"Mommy, can we get the cereal with marshmallows if I promise to eat the non-marshmallow parts too?"
Every muscle in my body goes still.
Mrs. Bellamy's smile widens.
I look toward the front.
Sadie stands just inside the entrance with one hand on Jillie's shoulder and the other gripping a reusable shopping bag.
Her hair is pulled back in a messy knot.
She's wearing a thick cream sweater beneath her coat, jeans tucked into snow boots, and the expression of a woman who has already survived three impossible things before breakfast.
Jillie spots me immediately.
"Colby!"
The entire store turns.
Sadie's eyes find mine over the top of Jillie's pink hat.
For half a second, she looks surprised.
Then resigned. Then suspicious. Which, frankly, feels fair.
Jillie runs straight toward me, her boots squeaking against the polished floor.
"You shop here too?"
"Apparently."
She looks into my basket. "That's not enough food."
"It's strategic."
"It's sad."
Mrs. Bellamy makes a delighted noise beside me.
Sadie reaches us a moment later, slightly breathless and very much trying not to look around at the dozens of people pretending not to watch us.
"Jillie," she says, "we do not run through grocery stores."
"I didn't run through the whole store. Just the important part."
"That is not better."
Jillie points at my basket. "Colby needs help."
Sadie glances down.
Coffee. One carton of eggs I picked up without noticing. No bread.
Her mouth twitches.
"That's your grocery shopping?"
"I had a list."
"Did the list say bachelor sadness?"
Mrs. Bellamy coughs into her glove. I look at Sadie. "I resent that."
"Do you?"
"Somewhat."
Jillie takes my basket from my hand with enormous purpose.
"We can help."
"No," Sadie and I say at the exact same time.
Jillie beams.
"You said it together again."
Sadie closes her eyes.
I look toward the ceiling and silently request a trade to a city where nobody knows what brand of coffee I buy.
Too soon. Definitely too soon.
Sadie takes the basket from Jillie and tries to hand it back to me.
"We don't need to interrupt your shopping."
"You're not."
That comes out too quickly.
Sadie's eyes lift to mine.
For one second, the grocery store fades slightly. There is only her, standing in the coffee aisle with snow melting on her boots and worry tucked behind her eyes.
Then Jillie grabs the front of Sadie's cart and pushes it directly into my shin.
Pain shoots up my leg.
"Ow."
"Sorry," Jillie says cheerfully. "The wheel is wobbly."
"It attacked me."
"Grocery carts do that sometimes."
Sadie gives me a helpless look.
"Welcome to errand day."
Somewhere behind us, Mrs. Bellamy whispers to another woman, "Errand day," like it’s a sacred romantic milestone.
I hear it.
Sadie hears it.
Jillie does not, which is probably for the best.
Sadie turns very slowly. "Mrs. Bellamy."
"What? I said nothing."
"You whispered very loudly."
"That's because my hearing is selective."
"That's not how hearing works."
"After forty-three years of marriage, everything becomes selective."
I should not laugh. I laugh.
Sadie shoots me a look. "Don't encourage her."
"I think she arrived encouraged."
Mrs. Bellamy points at me. "He's clever. Keep him."
Sadie's face turns pink. Jillie looks between all of us. "Keep him where?"
"In the community," Sadie says quickly.
"Like a library book?"
"Exactly like that."
I lean down slightly. "Does that mean I come with a late fee?"
Jillie considers this seriously. "Only if you don't bring cookies back."
"Strong policy."
We start moving because standing still in Briar Cove with Mrs. Bellamy nearby is basically volunteering to become news.
Unfortunately, moving does not help.
The moment Sadie and I begin walking in the same direction, the entire store reacts.
Not loudly.
Worse.
Quietly.
An older couple near the soup cans exchange a look. Two teenage girls near the freezer section whisper. A man comparing pasta sauce turns his cart around so slowly he might as well be wearing a sign that says I want to see where this goes.
Sadie keeps her chin high.
Jillie swings between us, chattering about cereal like our accidental grocery parade is completely normal.
"Mom says we can get one fun cereal and one responsible cereal."
"Responsible cereal?" I ask.
"The square kind that tastes like cardboard with feelings."
Sadie sighs. "It's whole grain."
"That's what I said."
We reach the cereal aisle.
Jillie immediately points to a box with cartoon penguins and marshmallow snowflakes.
"This one."
"That is dessert wearing a cereal costume," Sadie says.
"But it's winter themed."
"So is frostbite. We don't eat that either."
I pick up the box and read the label.
"It says here it's an excellent source of twelve vitamins."
Sadie looks at me like I have betrayed democracy.
"Do not join her legal team."
"I'm simply presenting evidence."
"You are aiding and abetting sugar."
Jillie gasps. "Can he be my cereal lawyer?"
"Absolutely not."
I set the box in the cart.
Sadie removes it.
Jillie puts it back.
Sadie removes it again.
I glance down at Jillie.
"We may need a plea bargain."
She nods gravely. "Half the box?"
"You're six. That's not how negotiations work."
"It's how mine work."
Sadie finally laughs under her breath, and it is quick, unwilling, and completely real.
The sound does something to me.
Again.
Which is becoming inconvenient.
I like making her laugh. Not performative laugh. Not polite customer laugh. Her real laugh. The one that escapes before she can stop it.
That is a problem.
We eventually settle on responsible cereal plus the smallest box of marshmallow penguins. Jillie considers this a victory. Sadie calls it a hostile compromise.
I call it Tuesday.
We move toward bread next.
Sadie picks up a loaf, squeezes it gently, and rejects it.
I watch.
"There's a technique?"
"There is always a technique."
"For bread?"
"Especially for bread."
I pick up a loaf and squeeze it.
It collapses in my hand.
Sadie stares.
Jillie stares.
A woman at the end of the aisle audibly gasps.
I hold up the dented loaf.
"I found the bad one."
Sadie's shoulders shake once.
"You're banned from bread selection."
"Probably wise."
Jillie pats my sleeve. "Mommy's very serious about baked things. Once Darren bought sandwich rolls from a gas station and Mommy said she needed quiet time."
Sadie's smile disappears so fast I nearly feel it.
There it is.
That name again.
I hate him a little more in that moment.
Not because he dated Sadie. Not because he cheated.
Because even in a grocery aisle, in the middle of a ridiculous morning, his absence still has weight.
I reach for another loaf, carefully this time.