Page 46 of The Woman with the Handcuffs

“Kind of?” I asked, grabbing a turkey wrap from the display case. “I wasn’t even mad when you punched me in the face.”

The man on the other side of the display looked over, brows raised, as he looked at both of us.

“Only because I broke my wrist doing it,” she said. “Those aren’t going to keep,” she warned when I reached for another clamshell.

“This one is for you,” I told her. “You can’t survive on sugar and salt.”

“You clearly have no idea how I ate in college,” she said, coming up next to me, her whole body brushing mine, and I tried to ignore the way my stomach flipped at the sensation. “Can you grab the club instead? I don’t love how wraps get when they’ve been sitting.”

With that, we made our way to the counter, where I had to pluck the items out of her arms because she had them piled too high to put them down without dropping them.

“No,” I said when her hands were free and she started to separate the items, then reach for her purse. “This is together,” I told the clerk as I pushed it all back into a pile.

“You got three things,” she objected. “I got, like, twelve.”

“Mmhmm,” I agreed, nudging her toward the end of the counter.

“Is this one of those ‘Because I’m the man’ things?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“But we’re not dating.”

Yeah, my stomach did that flip thing again.

And I tried to tell myself I was hungry.

Since any other explanation made no sense.

“Doesn’t matter.”

I pulled out the cash, handing it over to the clerk, then reaching for the bags.

“Your change,” Caitlin said as I started to walk away.

“Give it to the guy outside,” I said as she took the money from the cashier then followed me out, pausing to talk to the unhoused man sitting on the ground with the Army vet tattoo.

When I loaded the bags in the car, I turned to find her still with him, squatting down to talk to him at eye level.

I guess she was right about her old man’s trucker buddies being more her speed than people her own age.

She talked to the man for a solid fifteen minutes before making her way back over to where I was standing beside her open door.

“You must pass twenty unhoused people a day in the city. Do you stop and have conversations with all of them?”

“I mean, anyone who is on one of my usual routes knows me. I bring them leftovers when I make too much. They’re people with stories and feelings and needs. I hate that we treat them like they’re not. Besides, they keep their ears to the ground. They are always the first to tell me if something sketchy is going on in the neighborhood and who to look out for.”

“The family utilizes them sometimes too,” I admitted, not knowing why I would give her that kind of information. “They are always around. Makes sense to use them as scouts instead of kids like a lot of crews do. Lord knows they can use the money.”

With that, she climbed in and I closed the door.

We sat in the parking lot, drinking our coffee as she showed me the route from where we were to the yard where her father’s truck was parked. Which we planned to take on the rest of the road trip: first, for a place to stay; second, to go over it again with a fine-tooth comb.

“But this is where we have to stop,” she said, pointing as she took a bite off a stick of licorice. While I didn’t imagine how her lips would taste like the strawberry she smelled like from it.

“For the hitch.”

“For the butterfly lift.”