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“I really stepped in it, didn’t I?”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“Well, for the record, I think you should do whatever would make you happy. Was this our first fight?” he asked playfully.

“Let’s make it our last,” I said, and he fist-bumped me.

We approached the deli counter. “I’m going to get something for lunch,” he said. “Do you want anything? I owe you an apology sandwich.”

“No, you don’t. I’m good.”

He pulled the number fifty-five from the dispenser, but the board said they were only up to forty-eight. “Do you want to go on? I may be here a while,” he said.

“It’s fine. I’ll wait with you.” A three-year-old boy stood up inside his cart. His mother had parked him next to a case of different kinds of cheese as she was waiting for her number to be called at the deli counter. The boy began grabbing cheeses and piling them on top of himself. Michael walked over and handed the boy more and more cheese until he was covered in Cheddar, Brie, Havarti, and Gouda. Michael quietly slipped back next to me. The boy began giggling loud enough that his harried mother turned around. She was still putting cheese away when they called her number at the deli counter.

“You’re so mean,” I whispered to Michael.

“But kids love me,” he whispered back.

I laughed and then heard someone call out my name. It was the mother of one of Gia’s newer friends. She was in her late forties and had blond hair down to the top of her butt. She wore a belly shirt with leggings and over-the-knee boots. We’d only met once at the mother-daughter tea, and now I was at a loss for her name. All I could remember was that her husband had left her for a drag queen. I waved in a way that said,I know you, but I don’t want to talk to you, and I hope you don’t come over. That hope was quashed as she excitedly rushed over as if we were best friends.

“Hi, Maggie, so good to see you.” Ms. What’s-Her-Name scanned Michael from chest to legs before introducing herself. “Hi, I’m Jessica, and your daughter Gia is friends with my daughter, Samantha.”

I was flustered; this woman thought Michael was my husband. I wondered if it was terrible of me to be happy that she thought I could get a guy this young and this hot to marry me. But if she thought he was my husband, why was she looking at him as if she wanted to have him for lunch? I couldn’t believe how rude that was. Wait a minute, he wasn’t my husband.

“He’s not my husband,” I said. “My husband’s at work. We’re not together. This is my friend Michael. That I ran into here.” I knew I was blabbering on with information she didn’t need, but my guilt that Michael and I were together was overwhelming.

Jessica seemed relieved that Michael was only a friend and not my husband. She reached her hand out and shook Michael’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Michael said. Jessica didn’t let go of his hand, and the look in her eye made me wonder if she would’ve had sex with him right here. Michael casually dropped her hand.

I wanted to say,Goodbye, crazy lady, but because Gia liked her daughter, instead I said, “Bye. Nice to see you.”

Jessica turned her whole body toward Michael, cutting me out of the conversation. “Shelton is such a small town. I can’t believe we’ve never met before,” she said.

“Yeah, strange,” he said.

The woman at the counter called Michael’s number. “That’s me. Bye,” he said and walked over to the counter.

Jessica watched him for a moment and finally left, not too happily, I might add. I joined Michael at the counter as the man helping him asked what he wanted to order. Michael asked if he could taste one of the salads. After he sampled that one, he went on to taste three more. The man helping him was getting frustrated. Michael said he liked to try everything that life had to offer, even if it was just salads. I liked his attitude, as I was always worried about what other people thought. In the end, he ordered two of the salads and a sandwich.

As we left the deli counter, I purposely walked ahead of him. In case Jessica saw us again, I wanted it to look as though we weren’t together. And then it hit me: What if at the next school function, she told Jim she saw me with Michael? Or what if she told her daughter, and her daughter told Gia? Now I was going to have to convince Gia that Jessica’s daughter had a bad reputation or that she had a drug problem and she should stay away from her. That would be a new low; I couldn’t malign a girl I didn’t know. Besides, what could Jessica have seen anyway? It wasn’t as if she saw Michael and me kissing.

Michael caught up to me in the meat department. “You don’t like that woman, do you?”

“Was it that obvious?”

“Probably not to her. She seemed more intent on meeting your husband.” He indicated himself and laughed.

“I think she was hoping you’d ask her out,” I said.

“She’s not my type. I like women with coupons.” I did a coupon happy dance in my head. Michael picked up a package of chicken breasts and a package of ground turkey and looked at the nine things in his basket. “I’m done,” he announced.

“Me too,” I lied. I still needed at least a half dozen more items. I resigned myself to knowing I’d be back again tomorrow.

Michael waited for me to pay and then carried my groceries to the trunk of my car. “Why don’t you give me your phone, and I’ll put my number in. Then you can text me the next time you’re going to work out, and we can meet,” he said.

What was I supposed to do? I handed him my phone. “I’ll give you my number too,” I said. It would’ve been rude not to offer. We exchanged contact information, and then he snapped a picture of me, so when I called, my picture would come up on his phone. For obvious reasons, I didn’t take a picture of him.