Page 4 of Old Flames and New Fortunes (A Moonville Novel #1)

Chapter Four

SWEET PEA:

Your memory is a lingering presence.

THEN

It’s Alex King. Again.

“Hey, Romina.”

“You buy stuff from here a lot,” I reply wonderingly, passing a Milky Way across the checkout scanner and tossing it into a bag.

“Oh, that’s all right, I don’t need a bag,” he says quickly.

I size up his other purchases: a bottle of Windex, three cans of Red Bull, a bag of chips, a tub of potato salad from the deli, and a pack of double-A batteries. “Why not? You want to hold it all?”

“Uh.” He flushes as red as his plaid overshirt, which probably wouldn’t button up all the way if I were to try it on. He’s skinny as a needle, and I spent my summer losing my best shirts to puberty. All of my friends who are boys don’t know how to act around me anymore; I’ll walk by and they’ll start punching each other’s ribs or try to show me how they can staple their socks to their pants.

“Suit yourself.” I pluck his candy bar out of the white plastic bag and start piling his stuff up on top of the bagging carousel. He doesn’t look at me, twisting to survey the busy store, the other two registers beeping nonstop as my coworkers and I rush each shopper through the line. His hands fidget with his pockets, in and out and in again.

“Thirty-eight seventy-two,” I say. Then say it again, louder, because he still doesn’t turn back toward me.

“Oh, right.” He fumbles with a credit card, sliding it the wrong way at first. I raise my eyebrows. My parents would never trust me with a credit card. I’m sixteen, so the only money I ever get is crumpled green bills that I end up spending on bowls of baked mac and cheese at Our Little Secret.

Alex wears his hair like a privacy curtain, golden brown ringlets hanging in his eyes. He sits near me in world history but doesn’t talk much. All I know is that teachers adore him because he makes straight As and doesn’t give them any trouble. (Like I do.) My friend Yasmin and I got paired with him for a group project freshman year and he did all the work while Yasmin and I sprawled on my bed, trading magazine quizzes. All he said during the two hours he was in my house was “Do you have any markers?” and “I’ve never been in a girl’s room before.”

“Thanks, bye,” he tells me, ducking his head as he grabs all his stuff and holds it to his chest. One of the Red Bulls slips out, lip denting when it hits the floor. A slow dribble of reddish liquid seeps out onto the linoleum tile.

“You want to grab a new one real quick?”

His reply is barely audible. “Nah, it’s fine.” He picks up the drink, which begins leaking down his arm. I’m both fascinated and disturbed by his weird behavior, just standing there with his wounded drink, pretending he doesn’t notice it’s getting all over him.

“I think you need a bag.”

I can tell he agrees, but that he’s going to double down on the poor decision out of embarrassment. He glances at the line of people behind him, carts full, attention magnified. He blushes again, throws the Milky Way at me. I watch horror spread through his wide eyes when the candy bar catches me on the chin.

“Oh god! Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to hit your face.”

“Why did you throw your candy at me?” I try to hand it back to him, but he swerves it for some reason. Confused, I place it on the ledge next to the credit card machine.

“I’m so sorry.” He drops the Windex. “Crap. Sorry.” I don’t know why he’s apologizing to me for dropping the Windex. Maybe he’s apologizing to the Windex.

“Do you need some help?” the lady in line behind him asks.

“See you,” Alex murmurs, then runs off without the Windex.

“Probably tomorrow” is my reply, since he comes by the store just about every day after school and sometimes multiple times a day on weekends, but he’s too far away to hear me. He must have plenty of money to burn on snacks. When he reaches the automatic doors, he dashes through the ENTER ONLY side, another one of his items tumbling from his grip right as somebody walks in with a cart, wheels crunching this poor kid’s jalapeno chips. The expression on his face is pure misery as he casts a hasty glimpse at me over his shoulder, apologizes to whoever ran over his food, and is gone.