My eyes landed on the candy rack next to me. Trying to look legit, I grabbed a Hershey bar from the shelf and tossed it into the cart. The shelf to the right of the candy held tabloids, so I picked one up and started to mindlessly thumb through. Until I hit page three.
My eyes bugged out of my head.
A picture of Griffin and me walking out of the restaurant.
I couldn’t believe it.
Griffin had one hand held out, making sure the photographers kept at arm’s length, and the other wrapped around my shoulders. My face was turned into his chest, away from the photographer, so it would be difficult for most people to even tell it was me from my partial profile. But of course, I knew.
I’m in the Enquirer.
Oh my God.
I read the caption below it.Cole Archer and mystery woman get cozy at Mariano’s in downtown LA. Is the crooner missing his old flame Eve Varikova by replacing her with look-alikes?My stomach sank.
I wasn’t sure what bothered me more—seeing my picture in a tabloid or the mention that Griffin could be trying to replace an old girlfriend. I knew the latter was ridiculous because Griff had told me about her—yet it upset me for some reason anyway.
“Earth to Luca.” I caught Doris waving in my peripheral vision. Looking up, I blinked a few times and realized Pinface was gone, and Doris had been waiting on me while I had an internal freak-out over some dumb magazine.
“Hi. Sorry. I . . . I . . .” I held up the National Enquirer in my hand. “I got caught up in one of the articles.”
Doris leaned over to look at what had captured my attention. “Cole Archer. I don’t usually go for men under forty, but I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers.” She wiggled her eyebrows and whispered, “I’d like to lick the crumbs off that one.”
My eyes widened to saucers, which Doris thought was the funniest thing. Of course, she thought it was because she’d shocked me by talking dirty about a young guy, since she had no clue I’d actually been in Griffin’s bed last week. My cheeks began to flush and I became flustered.
I put the tabloid on the checkout conveyor. “I like to read the articles.”
Doris chuckled, thinking I was being coy. “You and me both, sister.”
For the next ten minutes, I was in a total haze while emptying my cart and chatting with Doris. I couldn’t get over the fact that my face was plastered all over a supermarket tabloid. It gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, yet I wasn’t sure why. Being inside the grocery store always made me anxious, but this heightened that feeling. It felt like someone had violated my personal space, even though it was only a photo and no one would likely recognize me from it. At the last second, right as I was about to swipe my card to pay, I turned and grabbed all of the copies of the National Enquirer from the shelf.
Doris’s face scrunched up. “You want to buy all of those?”
“Yes.”
“They all say the same thing, you know.”
“I . . . I got a new bird and need something to line the cage.”
“Oh. I can probably get the manager to set aside some of the newspapers that don’t sell for you, if you want. We just rip off the front page and give it to the delivery guy for a refund credit. The rest goes into the recycle bin.”
“Um. Yeah. Sure. That would be great, Doris. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Doris scanned the tabloids, and I swiped my card to pay. “What’s his name?”
“Huh?”
Her brows drew down. “Your bird. What’s its name?”
God, I was digging myself deep. I said the first name that popped into my head. “Chester. My bird’s name is Chester.”
“That’s a good strong name.”
“Yeah. Chester the bird. He’s something else.” I tossed the last of my bags into my cart, anxious to get out of there. I’d been in such a rush, I almost forgot to leave Doris the items I’d picked up for her. I took a few steps back after saying goodbye and lifted the bag of treats onto the counter. “Have a good night, Doris.”
“You too, honey. I’ll see you soon.”
Once I was safely inside my car, I took out the tabloid again and stared at it. A thought hit me as I sat there with the engine idling—there had been a few photographers, so might I be in other papers, too? Maybe with my head at a different angle so that my face was identifiable? Even though being in the confines of my car usually brought me relief after my supermarket trip, I suddenly felt the same type of panic that I experienced right before going inside.