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Soft pop filters through the overhead speakers of the supermarket as you push your trolley through the aisle, the place pretty much deserted because there’s only a few more hours before they close. A kid shelves ketch-up further down the aisle, and you do the awkward dance of trying to go around him but the two of you move towards the same side, and you laugh as he splutters out a shy apology when you finally slip past.
It’s not really a laughable thing, but you’re trying to find moments of optimism when you can. This week has been awful, and after this grocery run, you’re going home to curl up on your couch and put on Dead Poets Society to try and coax some tears out. The catharsis should fix you right.
The kid goes back to shelving tomato sauce as you eye the rack of herbs beside it, reading the same words over and over when they don’t register. Your brain is barely functioning; it takes a solid few minutes before thyme finally makes sense as a word in your mind and it isn’t an awful jumble of letters. Then you move onto the herb next to it, and you go through the whole thing again.
Rosemary, it reads. You keep reading it, thinking of a Mary in a bed of roses. God, you’re so out of it.
“Hey,” a familiar voice says from behind, “is that you?”
Then he says your name, and you turn around. Suddenly your headache magnifies by a factor of ten, and you take a moment to just stare at the man who is making his way towards you.
The boy has now moved onto the mayonnaise, and he gives you a nervous look when you don’t say anything.
“It is you,” Grant says, just as loud and obnoxious as the day you met, and he smiles so bright that you fear you need sunglasses to even look at his awful face. He clasps a hand onto your shoulder firmly, squeezing you tightly. “It’s good to see you, how have you been?”
“Fine,” you say, shrugging his hand off. He waits for you to ask him how he’s been, but you instead turn away back to the herb rack, praying for him to move on. God, the date had been terrible— how is he still here?
“Well, have you done anything exciting since we last saw each other?” Grant is either very good at not picking up on social cues or he has very thick skin, but either way, he’s starting to drain your already low energy.
“We saw each other last week,” you say, flatly, reaching up to pick a random herb. You don’t care about dinner anymore, you just want to go home.
“Yeah, but I thought you were going to text me back after dinner, you know.” Grant oh-so-helpfully reaches up for you and plucks saffron off the top shelf. “Here you go.”
You close your eyes, trying your hardest not to sigh. “That’s not what I want.”
“Oh. Take it anyways,” he says, smiling at you. “My treat.”
He’s not even going to pay for it, and you know that instinctively, but you humour him for a moment before placing it back on a lower shelf, out of place. The yellow is stark against all the brown spices its around, and when Grant turns to frown at you, you pivot and start to wheel your trolley away.
“Hey, wait, hold on,” Grant scrambles to keep up, his own bucket smacking against your leg in his haste, “can we talk for a bit? I thought we hit it off pretty well last week, actually. I was wondering if you wanted to go for a coffee?”
“Now?” You look at him, unimpressed, but he still sticks close to you.
“Yeah, sure, I’m down,” he says, beaming.
“It’s eight P.M.,” you point out.
He frowns, and you’re once against reminded of his extreme mood changes. “Look, no need to be such a downer about it. Since I’ve come out and invited you and all, the least you could do is come along.”
“Grant,” you start, but he continues, over you.
“I don’t even know why you’re acting like this,” he babbles, “not when you were such good company last week. I mean, sure, it’s Wednesday and you’ve probably got work or whatever tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a little kinder.”
You take in a deep breath, and resist the urge to tell him to fuck off. He’s the son of your mother’s friend, you can’t do her dirty like that, even though you really, really want to.
“So.” He clears his throat. “Coffee?”
Your shoulders raise up in tension, and you try to find the words that mean I really want to go home, so please leave me alone without coming off as rude, but before you can say anything, someone’s hand lands on the rail of your trolley and they gently pry it away from you.
“There you are,” they say, and you freeze. “I just got back from the milk section, here’s our usual carton.”
Grant makes a noise of surprise, jolting when he realises a full-grown man has somehow appeared without drawing any attention. When you look up, it only makes things worse, because the physical sight of your ex-boyfriend is enough to make this day shoot up to the top of the list of bad days ever to happen.
Kyle smoothly slides a milk carton into your trolley, and to your horrid surprise, it’s the actual brand and type of milk you usually drink. When you look back up at him, silently gaping, he offers that charming smile that had your mother cooing the first time they met and he maneouvres your trolley with such ease that you’d think he does this every time you go shopping for groceries.
“Who are you?” Grant demands, placing a hand on your trolley before it can be fully claimed by Kyle. “What are you doing?”
“Grant,” you warn, “watch your tone.”
He seems a bit startled, probably because this is the first time you’ve ever snapped at him, but all you feel is vindication. The last thing you need is him antagonising Kyle, who you know is pretty hard to rile up, but once he is, he’s like a bloodhound. He’ll never cease until he feels satisfied, and if that means bodily harm, he’ll commit to it. You’ve only ever seen it once, with a drunk man who was trying to feel you up, but you can remember the broken nose and whimpers of pain vividly.
Kyle’s smile is picture-perfect as he turns to Grant. “I’m—”
“An old…friend,” you interrupt. Kyle just cuts himself off as he turns to smile at you instead, the familiar scent of his shampoo wafting around him. It makes you a little dizzy.
Grant sizes Kyle up. He must take in all the muscle and the evident fitness your ex is in, because he thinks before he speaks, unlike usual.
You need to speak before he does. You need to control the situation, even if all you really want to do is sit in a corner somewhere and cry. But you steel yourself, and you ask sternly, “Kyle, what are you doing here?”
“I’m on leave,” he says, leaning against your trolley as if it’s his own. “Was going to get some fresh food for dinner, thought I’d run into you here.”
His eyes flicker between you and Grant, and you think he’s drawing conclusions that aren’t too far from the truth. His expression is cordial, but his eyes ask, Is he bothering you? which is something that creates unexplicable chemical reactions in your stomach.
You haven’t seen him in months. You don’t know if it’s because he’s been working since you broke up, or if he’s been avoiding you. Still, he hasn’t changed since he had given you that parting kiss on your cheek, if you didn’t count the new scar he has across his nose.
You could even say he looks better. It makes your terrible mood infinitely worse.
“I’m Grant Stane,” your ex-date says, confidently, holding out a hand. “Chief marketing officer.”
Kyle shakes firmly. “Sergeant Kyle Garrick,” he says calmly. “British Army.”
Grant’s face loses the last of its colour when he pulls his hand away from the handshake. He glances over at you, frown deepening, and he says, accusingly, “Your ex-boyfriend?”
You feel as if your privacy has been distinctly violated. “What?”
“Your mum said the two of you broke up,” Grant says, bewildered, “she said it was awful or something too but that she was sure you’d gotten over him—”
“Oh my fucking god,” you say, because that’s all you can say. That’s the last time you ever tell your mother about your dating life.
“What the fuck,” Grant says, anger rising, “ this is the guy that you compared me to the entire night? Why did you just say so? If you were seeing him the entire time why would you even waste my fucking time—and going out to coffee as well, what the fuck were you thinking?”
You stare at him. What?
“Oh, she likes tough men,” Grant whines, and it takes an embarrassing moment for you to realise he’s emulating your mother. “I didn’t fucking realise that being in the army was a criteria. Oh, she likes it when you help her do things—you didn’t even take the chickpea powder, for fuck’s sake, have you been playing me the entire time?”
Kyle steps forwards, putting his body in between the two of you, but you place a hand on his back that has him stilling and you take in a breath.
Then you say, “It’s criterion, singular. Criteria is the plural. And you picked up saffron, not chickpea powder.”
Grant rolls his eyes. “That doesn’t matter, what does is—”
“What does is that we need to clarify a few things. Firstly, my previously dating life is none of your fucking business, because you and I have no relationship.” Grant splutters. You barrel onwards. “And you’re the one who suggested coffee, so please remember to mention that you’re the one wasting my time when you inevitably complain to your mother like a fucking child.”
“Don’t speak to me like that,” Grant sneers. “If I had known you were such a bitch—”
Kyle moves. You’re suddenly horrified that he hit someone when he was off-duty, grabbing at the back of his t-shirt to hold him back. But all Kyle’s done is shove his body fully in front of your so Grant has to physically get past him, acting as a barrier. Honestly, you didn’t even notice Grant getting closer to you, or that he had raised an arm. But now that you have, you shrink a little behind Kyle’s protection.
“Back off, mate,” Kyle warns.
“Stop interfering,” Grant snaps, “this has nothing to do with you. Let me talk to her. We need to work a few things through, like how she’s been leading me on. Surely you can agree that that’s bitch behaviour.”
“You need to shut the fuck up,” Kyle hisses. “And leave, while you’re at it.”
Grant looks at you around Kyle’s broad shoulders. His look is one of utter disbelief. “You have a guard dog now?”
“I have nothing to say to you,” you state, fist bunching up the back of Kyle’s tee.
“Yes you do.”
“Let me paraphrase.” You inhale deeply. “I have nothing to say to you, otherwise I’ll say some very unsavoury things and do some things that I will regret. Like ask my ex-boyfriend to deck you across the face. Or, pull out my phone and call your mother and tell her exactly what a shitshow of a son she raised.”
Grant double-takes. You continue. “If you don’t leave my sight within the next minute, both of those things will happen, simultaneously. I think you’ll also be appreciative to know that I will mention that Kyle holds the record for the fastest clearing of the CQB test.”
“Close-quarters battle test,” Kyle clarifies, as if Grant isn’t already backing away. Then Kyle adds, “Both armed and unarmed.”
Grant takes a massive step back, placing enough space between him and Kyle that he’s out of arm’s reach. Then he points a finger at you, a threatening look on his face. Kyle tenses underneath your fingertips.
“I’ll,” Grant splutters, voice wavering, “I’ll tell your mother that you’re the one who stuffed this up—and that you,” he glares at Kyle, “crashed in and made everything worse. That you’re an absolutely—uh—asshole.”
“Don’t worry,” Kyle replies, not even fazed, “I can call her myself and let her know how you’ve been harassing her daughter.”
You look at him. “You still speak to my mum?”
“You still speak to mine,” he says, as if it’s not a secret you’ve sworn the lady to. This is not how you expected your day to go, but even with the unexpected collision of Grant and Kyle, you still didn’t think that your ex would find out that you’re still in touch with his mother even if the two of you haven’t spoke in months.
Grant turns impossibly red, stepping backwards rapidly, not looking at where he’s going. He tries to say something else, always needing the last word, even on that first and only date the two of you had gone on. You barely have enough time to call out in warning before he’s running straight into the kid with the mayonnaise, and the two of them tumble to the ground.
Mayonnaise splays everywhere.
Grant squeaks like a child, trying to get himself up, only to slip on the sauce again and barely catch himself on a shelf. Then he steps on the kid to stabilise himself.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Kyle hisses, shooting forwards to help the kid up, giving Grant a look that you know is a patented Garrick look of disapproval. When Grant doesn’t move his foot off immediately, Kyle unceremoniously kicks the man’s foot away so the kid can get up.
You’re by the kid’s side as soon as he steadies himself, wiping stray white sauce off the boy’s face. “Are you okay?” You try to get most of the sauce of of his cheeks. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Get lost,” Kyle says to Grant, deceptively calm. Out of habit, you reach out to cover his clenching fist with your hand, reminding him that he’s in a supermarket and not at base.
He loosens at your touch, but only slightly. He continues to glare at Grant even as the man flees, barely making it to the end of the aisle before slipping on some stray mayonnaise on the bottom of his shoe. He clutches at a nearby shelf to steady himself, before he’s giving you one last mortified look and he’s disappearing around the corner.
“What a tool,” Kyle mutters when he’s gone. You can’t help but agree. Then he turns back around to you, frown evident. “Are you okay?”
“Check the kid for injuries,” you demand, knowing he has more experience than you do. Kyle obeys, turning to the kid with a gentle and placating smile, holding out his hands to telegraph his movements.
“I’m fine,” the kid grumbles, shaking himself out your grasp. “Really, I’m fine!”
Kyle still eyes the kid for bruises, eyeing the spot on the boy’s hip where Grant had stepped on. “If it hurts, go to a doctor. With a man that big, you could have broken something if he put weight on the wrong spot.”
“What are you, a doctor?” The kid sniffs. “I’ll be fine. It’s just the mess.”
“I’ll help,” you volunteer. “It’s my fault, anyways. I shouldn’t have antagonised him.”
The kid gives you a look that makes you think you should reevaluate your life choices, but it’s Kyle who says, “Bullshit. He was harrassing you.”
“You need to get back to work,” you say to him, ignoring how the boy flits his eyes between the two of you with a nervous curiosity. “Your mum says that you’ve been in town for two weeks already, surely your leave is up.”
Kyle squints down at you. “So you do speak to her.”
“You speak to my mum,” you retort.
He doesn’t acknowledge that. Instead, he asks, “Have you been avoiding me these past two weeks?”
“Wh-what?” you stutter. “No, I didn’t—I didn’t even know where you were. I just knew you were in town.”
“You’re shopping for groceries. Out here.”
“Yeah, and?”
Kyle gives you a look. “There are four other supermarkets closer to your apartment.”
You don’t reply. The truth is, you really haven’t been avoiding him. It’s just, whenever you hear from Kyle’s mum that he’s back in town, you decide to take longer trips just in case you do run into him at your local haunts, because that just makes things so much more complicated. Like today, for instance.
Okay, so maybe that’s avoiding him. But still. He’s never around anyways, how would he know if you still frequent the areas you used to frequent?
The boy clears his throat. “Uh, look, I’m just going to get a mop and clean this stuff up. You guys should just head off. That frozen food might be melting right now.”
“No,” you say, turning to him, “let me help. And it’s just dumplings, I’m sure it won’t be life-threatening if I let them thaw a little.”
“Honestly,” the boy says, with a deep breath, “I kind of want to do this alone. So.”
He avoids your gaze when you stare at him. He’s covered in mayonnaise, and he still has a cart behind him to shelve. He taps his foot anxiously, and then it occurs to you—maybe he doesn’t want you there. You could be annoying him, actually, by constantly trying to push yourself onto him. Even if you landed him in this situation in the first place, he might appreciate you fucking off more than you sticking around like a fly that’s impossible to get rid of.
The full force of your god-awful day hits you centre in the face. This morning, it had been a new, closer deadline on a project that you’re sure isn’t going to be done in time. Then it had been you dropping your lunch. Then it was needing to call Grant’s mother to lie about how much you enjoyed her son’s presence so she doesn’t yell at your mother, seeing both Grant and Kyle, and now you’ve ruined this poor kid’s day too.
For fuck’s sake, the only person here who can even remotely help you is your ex-boyfriend . Who you broke things off with.
God, you’re such a fuck up.
Kyle’s hand lands on your shoulder, and unlike Grant’s oppressive grip, he manages to soothe your intensely taut shoulders. “Hey,” he says softly, “let me help with clean up. I’ll be able to get the top shelves, and you can go checkout everything in your cart.”
“It’s fine,” the kid insists.
Both of you ignore him. You take in a shaky breath, and you have to dig your fingernails into your palm to keep your head screwed on straight. Honestly, you just want to go home. But you need to fix this mess first.
“Go,” Kyle says. “I’ll meet you at the checkout.”
Then it’s all too much. His kindness is the thing that pushes you over the edge, and you feel the tears spill. The boy’s face turns from uncomfortable to ungodly uncomfortable, and he stutters out a “I’m just, uh, gonna look for a mop,” before he disappears leaving footsteps of mayonnaise behind.
You drop to your knees, sobbing. You haven’t cried since you and Kyle broke up. It’s like all the tears that have refused to even brew had suddenly decided to spawn into existence, and you cry like you’re not in the middle of the herbs and spices aisle, but you’re at him under your covers with a movie running on the background.
Kyle gently wraps his arms around you, tentatively as he tries to gauge your reaction. He crouches on the grocery store floor with you, offering comfort that you’ve so dearly missed, and he fits just so perfectly around your frame that you wonder why you even broke up in the first place.
“It’s okay,” he whispers to your forehead, lips moving against your skin, “it’s okay. Let it all out.”
“It—” you hiccup, crying even harder. “It’s all my fault—Kyle—please—I just—”
“It’s okay,” he repeats, “it’s okay.”
“I just want today to be over,” you whine pitifully, burying your face in the crook of his neck. He traces soothing patterns on your arms and your back, letting you burrow yourself deeper into his embrace.
“I know,” he coos, tightening his arms around you, “it’s been a bad day. It’s okay. Just let it out.”
You keep sobbing, hiccups cutting your air supply like nobody’s business, and you struggle to even maintain consciousness for a few solid minutes as you cry. Your tears come in floods, staining Kyle’s dark t-shirt that you swear you’ve seen him wear before, but he doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seems to hug you tighter, letting you use him as a crutch.
“It’s okay,” he says, and you believe him.
You let everything out. The pain, the loneliness, the sheer will it took for you not to text Kyle out of the blue and beg him to take you back because you had made a stupid decision when you were stupid and hurt and you knew he didn’t want to hurt you, but he did, and it just made you so sad that you though cutting him off would make it all better. But it didn’t, and it only made it worse, and now you were wallowing deeper and deeper into a pit of depression and your friends and family couldn’t take it anymore.
It’s the reason why your mother tried to arrange so many first dates for you. The first guy after Kyle was nice and all, but the entire time you had just been reliving you and Kyle’s first date, and so halfway through, you had to admit that it wasn’t working. Then it had been one of your co-worker’s friends, which again, was just a poor surrogate for a date with Kyle.
Then it was Grant, and it was the first time that you were present at the moment, enjoying someone else’s company. Then it had all gone wrong the moment Grant started talking about making you a housewife, making fun of your job, and the sheer insecurity he emanated by the end of the night had you blocking his number and tell your mum never to arrange a date again.
He’s such an asshole, you realise. The first few dates, it had been you, who was fucking everything up, that you admit. But with you and Grant, it was whole-heartedly his problem.
“I hate him,” you sniff, once the sobs have subsided.
“Grant?” Kyle nods. “Yeah, me too. What an asshat.”
“I hate you,” you continue. Kyle has no response for that. “You make me hurt,” you complain, pressing your eyes shut as you speak into the side of his neck. “I can’t—I can’t make it stop. It just keeps growing, and I’m scared I’m going to lose myself in it one day.”
“Oh baby,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to the side of your head. The familiarity and fluidity of how the nickname rolls off his tongue makes all your hairs stand on end. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I never wanted you to get hurt, I promise.”
“You almost didn’t make it,” you whine.
“I know,” he murmurs.
“You didn’t even tell me,” you say, louder.
“I know.”
“I had to find out from your ex,” you say even louder, this time angry. “I had to find out—find out that you had four bullets pulled out of you from that bitch who always thought you’d go back to her.”
“We never even dated,” he maintains, weakly.
“I hate you,” you repeat.
He hug you so tight you think he’s trying to meld you into him. “I know,” he whispers.
“I hate you,” you say again, just so he gets it. He just presses his face into your neck, and for a wild second, you feel something wet press there too.
He’s crying, you realise. Oh my fucking god, he’s crying.
Kyle cries all the time when you watch sad movies, or when he gets sentimental. But he never cries when he’s sad, or going through a tough time, and it had gotten to a point where you had to ask him outright if he was feeling upset because he refused to show it. He never even frowned if he could help it, but sometimes, you’d catch him when he’s in the bathroom alone, just staring down into the sink with the lights off.
“I love you so much, you know that?” Kyle whispers, and now you’re the one supporting his weight. “I just—it’s so much that my heart can’t hold it; a lifetime’s worth of time spent with you won’t be enough to spend all of it.”
“Kyle—”
“I need to say it,” he says, cutting you off, “I need to. They told me that surviving those four bullets was nothing short of a miracle, but Price had just looked and me and said that I was lucky that I had someone at home I was ready to defy death for. And then—you know that Ilse’s brother’s on base—everyone on base knew about it, and I didn’t even think that Ilse would hear about it before I told you—”
He breaks off, hyperventilating. You’ve never seen—or rather, felt him be so disheveled. “I didn’t know how to tell you,” he says, finally, “because I didn’t want to consider the possibility of leaving you alone.”
“Kyle,” you say quietly, “that’s so dumb.”
He laughs through his tears. “I know,” he says, “trust me, I know. ”
The two of you fall silent then, just embracing each other on the floors of a local supermarket. There’s a mess of mayonnaise just nearby, and you can smell it now that it’s been lingering in the air for a while. The two of you are definitely disgusting messes of tears and snot, but for the first time in a long time, you’re almost…content.
“I love you,” Kyle says, firmly. “I need you to know that. Even if we aren’t together.”
“I know,” you say, lifting your face away to press a kiss to his forehead. “I’ve always known.”
The two of you take each other in, and even though his eyes are rimmed red and there’s an odd few spots of red from where he’d pressed his face too hard into the crook of your neck, he’s just as beautiful as you remember him being.
He brushes a thumb over your cheekbone, collecting a stray tear. You have the sudden urge to kiss him.
“Uh, I brought the mop.”
The boy stands awkwardly behind the two of you, mop behind his back. He rocks on the balls of his feet, not looking at you directly as you stagger to your feet, wiping at your face with the back of your hand.
Kyle is much more steady, hand stabilising on the small of your back, and he forms words much faster that you do. “Sorry about the mess,” he says, voice hoarse.
“All good.” The boy bravely tries not to look at your faces. “Uh, look, my manager’s coming to help out and all, so thanks for offering, but I think you guys should get going. We’re closing soon.”
You slip your hand into Kyle’s, needing the support. Kyle squeezes and a smile flickers onto his face. “Are you sure?” you ask the boy, ignoring the way your voice cracks.
“Yeah, yeah, definitely.” Then the boy pulls his hands to his front, mop coming with him, but there’s also something else in his hands. It’s bright pink, and a small plastic packet.
He thrusts his hands out, offering it to you. “We’re just going to throw it out because it expires tomorrow,” he says hastily, “but I thought you might like it. Bad day and all.”
It’s a packet of peach candies. It’s probably ninety-five percent sugar and five percent unhealthy preservatives, but it’s the best thing you’ve seen all day. You stare at your hands when you gently take the gift, and the bright pink just brightens your entire world.
You throw your head back and laugh. The boy finally looks at you.
“Thank you,” you say, sincerely.
“Yeah,” the boy replies, suddenly shy as he turns around to show you his back, “whatever. Have a nice night.”
As if cued, the boy’s manager scrambles into the aisle whilst dragging a bucket of water and a second mop behind her. She’s evidently tired, definitely annoyed at the situation, but she plasters on a fake smile in your direction when she arrives.
“Let’s go,” Kyle says gently, leading you back to your trolley.
You nod at him. “Thanks,” you say to him.
“Thank you, ” he echoes, squeezing your hand again.
“No,” you say as you leave aisle nine of international foods and spices, “thank you. You’ve made my day.”
Kyle smiles down at you, a newfound softness in his gaze. “I love you,” he says.
You grin up at him as you hold up the packet of gummies. “Want one?”
“Yes.” Then when you cheekily pop the one you were offering him into your own mouth, he rolls his eyes and swiftly presses his lips to yours.
The kiss tastes of peach. It’s perfect.