Limerence

10:36. Damn it. 

Once again, I have overstayed the welcome of my car, forgetting the impermanence of my 15 minute break. 

Slinking through the back aisles of cheap vodka and wine, I make my way to the front of the store. 

Smiling sheepishly at my boss, I shrug off my coat, tuck it sloppily into a cubby under the counter, and remove the “closed” sign from the conveyor belt. 

My nose registers him before my eyes do. 

The same earthy musk with, today, a chemical undertone of… diesel fuel? 

Glancing up, the tall, wiry man that occupies my every thought stands in front of me, 

holding his groceries in the crevice of his bent arm like a father cradling his child. 

As he sets down his items, my stomach somersaults knowing that he chose my line. 

Four lines in this grocery store…  and he chose me.

I know she’s watching me. I often feel her stare as I wander the aisles. 

At first, I chose her line because, admittedly, I liked the attention. 

The flush of her cheeks as our eyes meet, the way she licks her lips as she counts the money I hand her, her dark eyes that follow me like a hungry animal on the prowl…

We’ve been playing this game for weeks now. 

I enter the store, wander aimlessly through the produce section, pick up a bottle of red from the back of the store, and check out at her line. 

I keep waiting for her to ask for my name, for my number, even to introduce herself- but nothing.

I know that he works next door, at the hardware store. I know that he lives nearby, close enough to bike. His bike is worn down, with a rusty bell sitting on its left handlebar. He never locks it up; he knows its futility. 

Yesterday, I followed his trail after dark, tracing the imprint of his tires on the dirt road with my work sneakers. When the trail turned to reveal a neighborhood, I heeled my shoes and socks off my feet, and tossed them down the hill aside the road. 

The dirt under my feet grounded me, and ignited me, beckoning me forward, tiptoeing barefooted towards his home. 

I watched his window until the sun rose again.  

I bite my cheek to hide my smile, recalling the secrets he had shared to me through the window. His pink, worn-down Hanes boxers silently flirt with me from beneath his Levi’s. 

He clumsily pulls his wallet out of his jacket, emptying the money slit. 

He is charming, in his boyishness. 

Out falls a crumpled 20, and a handful of miscellaneous coins. 

He counts out the coins, one by one, until he’s paid in full. 

Her eyes consume the silence that our voices are too timid to fill, sparkling with a mysterious knowingness as she checks me out. Handing me a crumpled receipt and my change, our fingers touch, and her hand jerks as if it had been burned. The coins rattle onto the counter, and a slight gasp escapes her lips. 

The sudden abundance of noise breaks the invisible wall that had been building tall for weeks. 

“Sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I’m such a klutz,” she says.

I slide the coins smoothly from the counter to my hand, and reach them back out to her. I notice how her freckled cheeks are flushed with color, her brown eyes tightly lined with dark makeup. 

“All good. I work next door, by the way,” I say, smiling. 

Carefully taking the coins from my hand, she smiles back at me and answers,

 “I know.”

I slide the coins off the counter between us and into the palm of my hand. After exchanging names and a few brief words, he turns to leave. 

I wonder if my eagerness has startled him, if he had smelled my desperation from across the counter. 

As I place his change into their assigned cubbies inside the register, I slip a couple of them into my pocket; a dime, a nickel, and a penny. 

16 cents won’t be missed. 

Later on my break in the privacy of my car, I close my eyes and pop his coins into my mouth, one by one, imagining the closeness of the coins to his wallet, his skin, and now my mouth. 

Flipping them around my mouth with my tongue, I relish the taste of metal, slightly tainted with laundry detergent and grime. It tastes like I’d imagine his sweat to taste; earthy and salty, slightly bitter. 

I swirl the tip of my tongue in a circular motion across the heads, their ridges almost abrasive. 

Spitting them back into my hand, I tuck them into my apron to return to the register.