“All right, but if someone dared you to eat ketchup, you could do it?”
“Why would someone dare me to eat ketchup?” He balked.
Clara shrugged. “You’re playing one of those games. Truth or dare.”
“Have you ever played truth or dare?”
“Of course I have.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder.
“Yeah . . . but I bet you only ever picked truth.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve completed many dares.”
Josh’s mouth pulled to one side. “Oh yeah? Name one.”
Despite a prolonged sip of coffee that she used to barter for time, nothing came to mind. “Well, I can’t think of any off the top of my head. It’s been a while.”
“That’s a shame.” Something bright sparked behind his eyes. “Dares are fun.”
“Fun for whom, exactly?” Why did her voice sound so breathy?
“Everyone?” A blast of charm accompanied his words.
Spoken like someone who’s never been mocked. “No, they’re fun for the person issuing the dare and various spectators. The person performing the dare feels mortified at worse and inconvenienced at best.”
“So dares are against the rules, huh?”
“Guidelines,” she said automatically before clearing her throat. “I think it’s safe to say they are now.”
A high-pitched jingle sounded from her nightstand.
Clara grabbed her cell. Crap. She forced false cheerfulness into her tone. “Hi, Mom. . . .”
Yes, everything’s fine. . . .”
Mm-hm. Just unpacking.” She glanced over her shoulder to find Josh watching her with obvious interest.
“Everett?” Clara shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “Um, no. He’s not here right now. He ran to get coffee.”
She lowered her voice. “Sure, I’ll tell him you said hello.” Clara was so not ready to confess her humiliation to her perfect mother.
“Listen, Mom, I have to go. I’ve got a pot on the stove. . . .”
Yes, I’m cooking. . . .”
Uh . . . soup. And it’s burning. . . .”
Okay. I love you too. Bye.”
Josh narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t tell your mom about Everett bailing.”
He could have at least pretended he wasn’t eavesdropping. “She’ll worry.”
“Right.”
The silence between them brimmed with awkwardness.
“So, grocery store?” Josh gestured to her abandoned mug. “I can’t drink black coffee to save my life.”
“Wait. Did you make coffee, realize you didn’t have milk, and pawn off your leftovers on me?”
A guilty grin cut across his face. “Can’t a man make a nice gesture and responsibly repurpose resources? Come on. I’ll drive.”
“All right.” She followed him into the hallway. “But I’m buying like three bottles of ketchup.”
* * *
• • •
CLARA’S EYES TRAVELED from Josh’s well-formed backside to the items currently occupying the grocery cart he’d insisted they share.
Cereal with a higher sugar content than most candy, enough frozen burritos to feed a family of five for a week, and a jumbo-sized bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos. How could a person eat all of this and still look like that? The math didn’t add up.
She glared at the lone container of nonfat yogurt in the cart, her only contribution thus far. Clara felt better when she avoided eating things with too much sugar or salt, but all the leafy green vegetables in the world wouldn’t make her look like the svelte fitness moms in this L.A. grocery store. No matter what she ate, her prodigious boobs refused to shrink. At least her posterior had caught up over the last five years to create an illusion of balance.
By the time she looked up, Josh had managed to add an outrageous flavor of toaster pastry to his haul. He seemed to navigate the store based on spontaneous whims, completely disregarding the carefully constructed layout.
Clara parked the cart beside him. “Can I ask you an impertinent question?”
He lowered the frozen waffles in his hand. “Only if I get to ask you one back.”
“I suppose that’s fair.” Why had she let her life slip so far out of control? “How do you eat so much junk food and stay so . . .” Mouthwatering, her brain supplied unhelpfully. “Trim.”
He raised a single shoulder. “I fuck a lot?”
Clara succumbed to an alarming coughing fit and had to wave off the worried glances of several concerned shoppers. It served her right for asking.
Seemingly unperturbed, Josh led the way to the produce aisle and helped himself to an unsanctioned sample of grapes. “Okay. My turn. What’s your plan here?”
Clara held up the watermelon she’d just picked out. “I thought I could make a summer salad.”
“No. Not what’s your plan for the produce. What’s your plan for L.A.?”
She adjusted her sundress to avoid meeting his eyes. “My plan pretty much blew up in my face.”
It was only a matter of time before her mother found out Everett had split and politely suggested that Clara return to the coastline of her birth. “I suppose I’ll try to lie low for a few weeks. Lick my wounds. If I’m lucky, the gossip hounds won’t sniff out my humiliation before I can slink back to New York and make my excuses.”
She shivered. If anyone from back home realized Everett Bloom hadn’t bothered to stick around long enough to give her a proper brush-off, she’d have to move to Guam to escape the satisfied snickers.
“Wait a minute.” Josh stopped walking and she had to yank the cart to a halt to avoid running into his heels. “You can’t just go back. Maybe Everett got you out here, but if your old life was so good, you wouldn’t have jumped at the first chance to leave it.”
He plopped a massive bottle of root beer into the cart sideways. That was definitely going to explode and spray everywhere when he opened it.
“I don’t buy for a second that you didn’t make contingencies.”
Clara didn’t appreciate his attempts to diagnose her within a day of making her acquaintance, but she couldn’t fully deny his argument. “I don’t think my backup plan wants to hear from me.”
Did it count as a backup plan if the plan was a person? A person who would have every right to slam her door if any Wheaton came calling. After all, some hurts don’t heal, and Clara had a suspicion this one hadn’t faded, even after a decade.