The employee whipped her head around and glared, along with an elderly woman that was having the woman check her out, which totally defeated the point of a self-checkout.
Without an immediate answer, I bellowed again.
“MARCO!”
Nothing.
I moved slightly to a more centrally located spot and then did it all over again.
“MARCO!”
There was no way in hell she didn’t hear me.
“Sir,” the employee closest to me scolded. “You’re going to have to stop or we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled another time.
And another.
And another.
Until I heard an angry set of flip-flops slapping against feet.
Hiding my grin, I turned to see Perry flip-flopping her way toward me with a ferocious scowl on her face.
It didn’t take her long to get to me.
In fact, she rounded the corner and glared at me so hard that I couldn’t contain the laughter.
“You are not funny, Banner Spurlock!” she growled. “Stop it right now.”
I pointed at myself. “I miss you.”
“We’ve been apart for like, twelve minutes,” she grumbled, her face softening slightly.
“Actually, it’s been more like three hours and fourteen minutes, but who’s counting?” I shrugged, grinning at her sheepishly.
She looked away and that was when I saw the shine of tears in her eyes.
“This isn’t funny,” she whispered.
I sobered and reached for her hand. “I never said that it was.”
Her chin trembled and I pulled her into my arms.
“It’ll be okay,” I promised.
“I can’t go with you,” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “What am I supposed to do without you?”
“Perry…”
“Why did you make me love you, Banner?” she moaned between tears. “Why would you do a thing like that to me?”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I wanted her to love me.
Even more, I was excited that she did.
“You still love me?” I asked, feeling my voice crack halfway through the question.
This wasn’t her first time to say it to me, and hopefully wouldn’t be the last, but hearing her say it now left my heart feeling so full that I couldn’t help but pull her into my arms.
She’d been mad at me.
Very, very mad.
So mad, in fact, that I could only hope that she got over this aversion to the military and decided to stay with me.
“It won’t be forever,” I said softly. “We still have three months until I have to leave. And only six weeks after that before you can see me all over again. I’m not sure what the next year and a half will hold for me placement-wise. I know that I’ll be in either Coronado, but I don’t see any reason at all that we can’t find you a school to go to close to there…”
She laughed. “Hopefully they take volleyball scholarships.”
I squeezed her into my arms and dropped my mouth to the top of her head.
“I’ll pay for your damn school if they don’t. It’s my fucking fault you’ll be out there anyway,” I told her.
She sighed and pushed farther into my arms.
“I left all my dad’s stuff at the back of the store,” she mumbled.
I couldn’t help but ask, “Where were you hiding?”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “I was in the book section reading the epilogue of a recently released book. I saw you walk by twice, but since you saw the short shelf, you assumed that I would be able to be seen over the shelves.”
I couldn’t keep the chuckle in as I said, “You’re bad.”
She shrugged. “I’m yours.”Chapter 27
My new diet consists of looking at pictures of Symphony until I lose my appetite.
-Perry to Banner
Perry
October
I felt the ball hit my fingers and I screamed for Blue to get it.
She did, setting the ball toward our outside hitter who promptly slammed it into the opposing outside hitter’s face.
The ball went wild and flew into the stands, and I found myself jumping up and down with excitement as the referee blew her whistle.
It was official, we were district champs.
The crowd around us went wild, and I couldn’t help jumping into Blue’s arms as I screamed at her how beautiful she was for getting the ball.
Blue laughed right along with me and twirled us around.
Soon the entire team was surrounding us with excitement.
District champs.
Again.
It was fucking awesome.
“Here we come playoffs!” Blue screamed.
I hugged her tighter.
When I turned my head to look for Banner, I found him grinning his cute little ass off clapping his hands right along with my dad. Though, my dad was doing it quite awkwardly thanks to his prosthetic hand holding onto his cell phone at the same time.
There was a strange man sitting next to my dad, talking to him, and I frowned.
Banner winked, showing me that it was all okay, and I shrugged and went back to my celebration.
“Whew!” Coach Beasley said as she threw her arms up in the air. “Now that that’s done, I’m going to have a baby!”