Burn (11 page)

“I’m just Leach now,” Tracy corrected him. “I
dropped my ex-husband’s surname.”

“Zae and Cinder are two of my best students at Sheng
Li,” Gian went on. “Zae got her second black belt last
winter and Cinder is my prize pupil.”

The beauty of Cinder’s innocent surprise caught Gian
off guard. His heart surged, a breath caught in his chest,
and in the short second it took him to regain control of
h
imself, he was certain the three women could read his
burgeoning feelings for Cinder as if his heart and head
were transparent.

Tracy, a wrinkle like a hatchet mark appearing
between her overly tweezed eyebrows, very precisely said,
“Prize pupil?”

Gian kept his eyes on Cinder. “You’d never know that
she hadn’t had any prior training when she came to me.
She’s amazing.”

Cinder smiled, this one unfolding slowly, this one meant for Gian only. His appreciation for the gift was
such that had they been anyplace else other than the meat
counter of Freddie’s Market, he would have cupped her
face and drawn her in for a kiss that would have shown
her exactly how much he loved that smile.

“I’ll just bet she is,” Tracy muttered tersely through an
icy grin that shattered with the sound of a loud metallic
crash from the produce section. “I’d better see what my
darlings are up to. Good running into you, Gian.” She
gave Cinder and Zae a dismissive glance, saying, “Cindy,
May.”

At the end of the produce section, Tracy ran into a
group of women she knew. Another crash, followed by
the voice of an angry Freddy’s employee, sounded while
Tracy huddled with her friends, each of them doing a
poor job of sneaking glances at Zae, Cinder, and Gian.

“You might want to get out of here before the hyenas
finish strategizing, Gian,” Zae warned. “They look like they haven’t had meat in a long time.”

W
hile Zae and Cinder collected their neat white bundles from the butcher, Gian vanished into the cereal aisle
and raced for the two check-out stands.

Zae leaned in close to Cinder. “You better go after
him,” she directed. “Tracy Leach-Roche don’t play. She’s
been trying to fix Gian up with her motley crew of fellow
divorcees ever since he shot her down at last year’s
Christmas parade. She seems to think that getting him with one of her friends is the next best thing to having
him herself.”

“You know Tracy?” Cinder asked.

“I know
of
her. Her oldest goes to school with my
twins.”

Cinder and Zae steered their shopping carts into the
cereal aisle. Without looking at what she was doing, Zae
grabbed two boxes of shredded wheat from the shelf and
put them in her cart as she spoke. “You saw the way they
broke as soon as Gian left us. They’re on the hunt,” Zae
whispered through gritted teeth. “Go get your man, girl!”

“He’s not my man,” Cinder said.

“Do you want him to be?” Zae speeded up, narrowly
missing a shopper parked in the center of the aisle. “Then
you better get up here!”

Cinder’s heart drummed so hard, the beating rever
berated in her ears. There had been a time when asking a
man out had been as easy for her as blinking or
breathing, but a lot had changed in the intervening years.
She had changed. How much, she didn’t know. But when
she exited the cereal aisle and saw Tracy overlooking three
o
f her friends surrounding Gian, Cinder decided that
there was one part of her long-lost self she could recover.

She didn’t need the extra little push from Zae to shove
her cart through the gaggle of grinning ex-wives at reg
ister two. Cinder threw her shoulders back in a move that
would have made the most of the long hair she’d once had. Without as much as an “excuse me” or a nod of
acknowledgement, she shouldered her way to Gian.

“Would you care to have dinner with me?”

She congratulated herself on how normal her voice
sounded despite the nerves that made her stomach dance
and her palms moist.

One of Tracy’s friends, a petite woman with banana-
blonde waves and chocolate roots, pressed her right hand to
her throat. “Pardon me, but we were having a conver—”

“Yes,” Gian answered, cutting the blonde off. “I’d
really like that.”

Gian watched relief and joy shape Cinder’s face once
more into something so beautiful, everything and
everyone else fell away. The offended nattering of Tracy’s posse, the protests of Tracy’s children as she denied them
candy, even Zae’s attempt to tug Cinder into the check
out line went unnoticed until Cinder had backed away
with her cart to place her groceries on the conveyor belt.

“See,” Zae said, sneaking peaks at Tracy’s disgruntled
pals. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“No,” Cinder smiled proudly. “It was easier than I
thought it would be.”

She had been anxious and scared asking him out,
then exhilarated when he’d said yes. She reveled in her e
motions, reacquainting herself with feelings she hadn’t
experienced in a long time.

With fewer items, Gian was checked out before
Cinder. On his way to the exit, he paused near the bag
ging platform at the end of her check-out stand. “See you
at Sheng Li tomorrow?”

Cinder nodded, smiling in agreement.

“We can make plans for dinner then,” he added.
Cinder’s throat went dry. “Sure,” she warbled.

She watched him leave the store and go to his car.

Asking him out had been easy. Going on the actual date—that would be the hard part.

* * *

“You have beautiful veins,” the phlebotomist said,
patting the crook of Cinder’s elbow with two stiffened fingers. “I’ve got the Alaska pipeline here.”

The stretchy blue tourniquet tied just above Cinder’s
elbow popped her veins out so prominently that the
American Red Cross worker had no trouble finding a
good one to stick. “They say that every time I give
blood,” Cinder told her.

“Good veins, good blood, good attitude,” the woman
said. “You’re the kind of donor we love to see.” She
unwrapped a needle. “You’re going to feel a little stick
now . . .”

Cinder looked away. Needles didn’t bother her as long
as she didn’t watch them pierce her skin. Her technician’s
skill was excellent. Cinder barely felt a thing. “That’s the
b
est stick I’ve ever had,” she said. “Could I get your busi
ness card so I can call you anytime I need a blood draw
in the future?”

“I like to use butterfly needles,” the technician said.
“They’re more comfortable.” She looked up from the
pouch collecting Cinder’s blood. “Sounds like you’ve had a lot of experience with blood draws.”

Cinder nodded but didn’t elaborate. She looked
around the Hixson Junior High gymnasium. “It looks
like a MASH unit,” she remarked. “Like in that old television show.”

The technician agreed with a laugh, but Cinder was
distracted by a donor two stations away. Gian reclined on
a maroon padded chair, his left arm being drained. The
network of veins in his exposed forearm reminded
Cinder of vines along the trunk of a cypress tree. Gian
spoke amiably with his phlebotomist, who seemed thor
oughly charmed by the conversation, until his gaze hap
pened to land on Cinder.

His mouth stopped moving, he didn’t blink. His right hand rose in a casual wave, which Cinder returned. It had
been less than twenty-four hours since they had run into
each other at Freddy’s Market, but the unknowing
observer might have thought it had been years if judging
by the intensity of their connection.

“There you go,” Cinder’s technician said after
removing the needle. She peeled open a bandage and
adhered it over the draw site. “I’m going to walk you over to the canteen, where I want you to lie down for about
twenty minutes so we can make sure that you have no
p
roblems with dizziness, weakness, or nausea. One of the
volunteers will bring you some juice and cookies.”

Cinder was escorted to an empty gurney. A volunteer
adjusted the bed’s incline to make Cinder more comfort
able. Gian finished his donation a moment later, and was
ushered into the canteen by his phlebotomist. Cinder
was secretly thrilled when he chose the gurney beside hers
rather than the distant one his phlebotomist had selected.

“Hi,” he greeted her, climbing onto the gurney. He
rolled down the sleeve of his white button-down, cov
ering his draw site. “Are you stalking me?”

Cinder’s smile vanished.

“I was just kidding.” He chuckled. “We keep running
into each other.”

“Sorry,” Cinder said softly with a self-conscious
smile. “I knew that.”

“Guess what I had for breakfast this morning,” he said to keep her talking.

“Coco Puffs.”

“Nope. Try again.”

“You look like you might be the Fruit Loops type.”
“Yeah, when I was seven.”

An elderly woman in pearls pushed a cart laden with
paper cups of juice and a big circular tray of cookies.
“Can I get you something?” she asked brightly.

“Sure, what are you selling?” Gian asked.

The woman’s smile widened and she gave Gian’s foot a playful swat. “Orange, cranberry, grape, and grapefruit
juice, and chocolate chip, oatmeal, and sugar cookies.”
“I’d like—” Cinder started.

Gian cut her off with, “This is my treat.” He turned
to the refreshment keeper. “The lady will have . . .” He
studied Cinder. He had no idea what she’d like, and he
wanted to make the best guess. “A grapefruit juice and
two chocolate chip cookies.”

“I don’t like chocolate,” Cinder said.

“Seriously?”

“Can’t stand the stuff.”

“Oatmeal and sugar, one each?”

“Perfect, thank you,” she said.

Cookies and juice in hand, Gian and Cinder waited
for the refreshment lady to move on before they resumed
their conversation. But the woman simply stood between
the feet of their gurneys, watching them.

“I want to see you drink some of that juice before I
go,” she explained. “We don’t want you passing out when
you get up to leave.”

Gian raised his flowered paper cup in a toast and
threw back his grapefruit juice in two big gulps. Cinder
daintily sipped hers.

“Very good.” The volunteer took their empty cups
and replaced them with full ones. “Thank you for
donating today.” She returned to her cart to get two little
round stickers. She pressed one to Gian’s breast pocket,
the other to the short sleeve of Cinder’s airy blouse.
“Such nice kids,” she said affectionately, pushing her cart
to the next pair of gurneys.

“I can’t remember the last time anyone called me
kid,” Gian chuckled lightly.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-nine. Forty, in December.”

“Cream of Wheat.”

“What?” Gian laughed.

“That’s what you had for breakfast.”

“I said thirty-nine, not sixty-nine. Guess again.”
“I give up.”

“That’s not what I teach you at Sheng Li.”

“Stand or surrender.” Her eyes sparkled merrily. “I
surrender.”

“I had a vanilla long john with bacon strips on top.”
She laughed, almost spilling ruby red grapefruit juice on her lap.

“So why don’t you like chocolate?”