By nine p.m., the supermarket hums like a tired beehive—fluorescent lights buzzing, carts rattling, pop music from five years ago looping on a cracked speaker. My feet have disappeared somewhere below my ankles; in their place are two blocks of aching concrete stuffed into cheap sneakers.
I paste on my “Yes, I’m happy to be here, please don’t yell at me about coupons” smile and slide a box of cereal over the scanner.
“Did you find everything okay?” I ask the woman in front of me.
She doesn’t look up from her phone. “Mm.”
The register beeps, the belt whirs, the line stretches back into the aisles, and the clock above the customer service desk moves exactly one minute forward every geological age.
This is job number one. Job number two—the night shift at the copy shop—starts in an hour. I do the math on the bus ride between them the way some people do crosswords. How much I made, how much I owe, how much the interest ballooned while I was ringing up energy drinks and frozen pizzas.
There is no correct answer. Just “not enough.”
“Chloe, you good?” Trish calls from the next lane over, snapping her gum. Her braid is frizzing out of its ponytail, and she looks like I feel.
“Living the dream,” I say.
She snorts. “Dream’s got mold.”
The line shuffles forward. My hands move on autopilot—scan, bag, smile, repeat—until the next customer steps up.
Dark suit. White shirt. No tie, but the collar is sharp enough to cut. He’s tall, in the way that makes the air feel thinner around him, shoulders filling out the suit like it was built on him instead of the other way around.
He doesn’t belong here.
Not in this fluorescent graveyard, not under the sad paper banner that says SPRING SAVINGS even though it’s November.
He sets a basket on the counter. Coffee beans, the good kind in matte black packaging; a glass bottle of mineral water; pre-washed salad; a rotisserie chicken in one of those plastic domes that trap the smell of salt and fake rosemary.
My gaze catches on his wrist—watch, simple but expensive, the kind with clean lines and no brand name screaming for attention. Understated rich. The worst kind.
“Evening,” he says.
His voice is smooth, low. Polished.
I don’t look directly at him. You learn not to, when half the city’s power structure shops here on their way home from the office towers Sterling Enterprises owns.
“Did you find everything okay?” I repeat, because the script is easier than thinking.
A pause. “Not quite.”
I glance up despite myself.
His eyes are… not what I expect. Not cold, not bored. Blue-gray, sharp, studying me like I’m the one that doesn’t fit.
My chest does an inconvenient little flick.
“Sorry,” I say. “We’re out of unicorn steaks. Supply chain issues.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. It’s not a full smile, more like he’s not used to letting one out in public.
“Tragic,” he says. “I’ll make do.”
I scan his coffee. The price pops up on the screen: more than I make in an hour.
Of course he doesn’t flinch.
I’m reaching for the chicken when the belt jerks. Someone at the end bumps into the sensor, the bags sway, and I—too tired, too slow—knock the coffee cup balanced on the ledge of the register.
