Anything might have set them off.
Ashley held up a dark green fatigue jacket that said “Anderson” over one breast pocket and made a show of measuring the fit against his chest. “You’re going to need some normal clothes,” she said. “How do you feel about green?”
You’ve colonized me. Don’t ask me how I feel.
He kept the thought to himself. With Ashley, he found that things went most smoothly when he voiced about one percent of his thoughts.
“Do you have a list?” he asked. A vain hope—she was meandering purposelessly through the store, picking up reams of onionskin typing paper and ancient combat boots creased with the shapes of strange men’s feet.
“In my head.”
Roman lifted a stapled pamphlet from the top of a pile on one gunmetal-gray shelf. “Army Field Manual FM 21-20: Physical Readiness Training.” The cover featured line drawings of soldiers in fatigue pants, combat boots, and T-shirts. One was doing a sit-up, another jogging into the distance. He flipped through the pages and then dropped the book into Ashley’s cart.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“A manual.”
“For what?”
“To keep me from losing my mind around you.”
She picked it up and studied the cover, and he wanted to tear the book out of her hands.
“Cute,” she said, tossing it back into the cart. “Are you going to run ten miles and do five hundred jumping jacks before breakfast? Maybe we should find you a vintage sweat suit to go with your vintage workout routine.”
He wanted to take her by the wrist and pull her out of the store, flatten her against the stucco outside and press right up against her, get right in her face and insist, insist, that she tell him everything about this trip she had planned. That she stop teasing him and taunting him and leading him around as though he were harmless as a pony on a rope.
He wasn’t a fucking pony. He was a tiger. He would claw and eat her. He’d rebel against her, and she wouldn’t even see it coming.
Roman crossed his arms and leaned back against the shelving. He tried to feel like a tiger while Ashley moved farther down the aisle and poked through a pile of canteens.
Easier said than done.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I wouldn’t get so close to that shelf if I were you. There’s a big glob of something.”
He just stared at her until she turned away.
Then he looked. Something black and thick—more like caulk than grease—was smeared along the edge of the shelf. All over the back of his jacket.
He took it off and assessed the damage. The jacket was Italian. Imported. Roman’s favorite.
Garbage now, like all this other garbage.
Balling it up, he dropped it on the floor and kicked it as far as he could along the aisle of the yellow-lit, foul-smelling, offensively miscellaneous store.
Reaching above his head, Roman clenched the edge of a shelf in both hands, disturbing the arrangement of stained canvas-covered helmets, gripping it hard and closing his eyes until the wave of rage passed.
Ashley’s hand landed in the center of his back and she … Jesus, she was patting him. He wanted to tear her limb from limb, and she was patting him.
“Poor Roman,” she said. “This is hard for you.”
She stroked over his shoulders and down his back. In his mind’s eye, he saw what they must look like. Him in his shirtsleeves, bent slightly, feet wide, with his head down and his arms spread. Ashley soothing him. Stroking him into submission.
He wanted to hate her for it, but his dick grew heavy and hot.
She kneaded his deltoids, her voice dropping to a husky secret. “After this place, we’re going to find a grocery store and load up, okay?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”