Only Four Desire

Chapter 3

“Dear diary, today I stood in a*****e for twenty minutes debating whether body lotion was a necessity or a luxury I could do without.” Great, now she was talking to herself.

Suddenly feeling self-conscious, Roxie took her eyes off the shelves of ridiculously priced body lotion and checked that she was still alone in the aisle. The last thing she needed was for someone to think she was going crazy, or worse, hear her words and realize she couldn’t afford to buy herself body lotion without sacrificing a kidney or something just as vital.

A sigh of relief left her when she saw that she was still very much alone. Back to the problem at hand, Roxie looked down at the basket and the measly items she’d picked. A tube of the cheapest toothpaste, bathing gel for Josiah, tampons, and a box of Josiah’s favorite cereal.

With her calculator open on her phone, Roxie had already deduced that the four items took half the money in her pocket. That would have been fine if there weren’t still seven items left on her list.

“You know what? I don’t need lotion,” she muttered under her breath as she walked away without another glance. It was fine. Everything was going to be fine, she told herself. How did people in the past survive without all the fancy cosmetics? If they could do it, so could she.

Satisfied with her reasoning, Roxie hurried over to the medicine section of the store. Even though Josiah was with Elias for the weekend and hadn’t been sick when she’d helped him into the car just hours ago, her thoughts were always on her son’s wellbeing and she wanted to stock up on a bottle of Tylenol in case he developed pain or a fever in the middle of the night and some Milk of Magnesia for those stomach upset days. Of course, Roxie couldn’t leave the section without a pack of Band-Aids because Josiah somehow always found a way to get a cut.

Looking down at her basket again, Roxie felt more than dejected. That was it, her money was done, and the rest of the items on her list just had to wait until she finally got a job and a pay check. Great.

Not for the first time, she wondered if she should have fought harder for the terms of the child support. Because they had been given shared custody, Elias had argued that he didn’t have to provide child support because he would take care of their son half the time.

The court hadn’t agreed but told him he had to provide for Josiah’s education and fifty percent of feeding and upkeep. Roxie should have known Elias would find a way to make things difficult. He didn’t go against the court order; no. Elias was too smart for that. Instead, he made sure no money ever entered her hands, because he didn’t want her having his money.

Which meant he paid the school fees directly to the school and even went as far as to buy the food items and clothes. And since he refused to consult her on his purchases, it meant he bought clothes that didn’t fit right, food that Josiah either didn’t eat or was allergic to, and just didn’t cover what the boy really needed.

This would be better once she started earning her own money and could easily cover what Elias missed, but until then, it left Roxie in a stressful position of wondering if they’d survive the next day. It wasn’t as though she could go to her parents for money when they were already putting a roof over their heads. She cringed, a shudder running down her body at the thought of what her mother would say if she dared ask for a little money to take care of hers and Josiah’s basic needs.

Pushing the depressing thoughts away for now, Roxie turned into the beverage cooler section, hoping to grab a cold bottle of water to keep her company on the long walk back to her parents’ house.

Unlike the other aisles in the store she’d gone through, this one had a handful of people, including a woman pushing a full trolley who was in the process of cramming several bottles of soft drinks into every available space.

Irrationally, watching the woman tackle her bottles like a game of Tetris without holding a calculator in the other hand made Roxie want to turn and just walk out, avoiding the humiliation only she was aware of. Especially when Roxie saw that the woman seemed to have gathered at least three bottles of body lotion in her trolley and several tabs of ice cream, Roxie knew Josiah would have loved to eat until he was so high from all the sugar that he would be bouncing off the walls.

“Excuse me?”

Roxie startled, realized she’d been standing in the middle of the aisle staring at the woman like a creep, and blocking whoever was behind her.

“Oh! Sorry,” she cried out and quickly stepped aside before she half-turned to give the person she’d blocked an apologetic smile. The smile fell right off her face when she saw exactly who’d been behind her.

Mitch’s eyes went wide, a smile quickly forming on his lips. “Roxie? Wow! I didn’t know that was you. How are you?” he asked in his usual vibrant voice.

Too bad Roxie couldn’t summon the same amount of excitement at seeing the man. “Hi, Mitch.”

Mitch’s eyebrows shot up in an instant. “‘Hi, Mitch.’? That’s all?”

Roxie frowned, not sure what to say to that. How else was she supposed to greet her ex-husband’s work colleague, whom she’d only met a handful of times during her marriage to Elias, usually during company functions Elias had been forced to take her to as his plus one as per company regulations.

Sure, Mitch being an extrovert through and through, the man had always been open and cheery toward her from their very first encounter and had made it a point to seek her out during other company gatherings. Something that had always upset Elias for some reason. Still, Roxie wouldn’t have said they were or had ever been friends, so she didn’t see a problem with her greeting.

She shrugged. “I don’t know your last name,” she said, tearing her eyes away from him to sweep over the aisle again in search of a possible escape. Because let’s be honest, she didn’t want to hold any form of conversation with the man or anyone else she knew right then, while she held on to an almost empty shopping basket. However, to her shock, the woman with the overflowing trolley and the rest of the customers had moved on, leaving her alone with Mitch.

It wasn’t a very busy supermarket, which was why Roxie liked to do her shopping here. On any other day, the lack of people around would have been perfect for her. Not today and definitely not right now, as Mitch’s eyes remained fixed on her so hard it was bordering on creepy.

“Daniel. But that’s not the issue.” The man waved a dismissive hand in the air. He regarded her for a moment, so Roxie took the opportunity to take in the man.

Mitch wasn’t a tall man, barely beating her five-foot-five, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in muscle. A self-admitted gym junky, Mitch had well-defined muscles from years of hard training, yet he managed not to look like a gorilla on steroids.

Still studying him, Roxie’s eyes were drawn to what she’d always considered the man’s acts of rebellion against society. Because, as smartly dressed as he was in a baby blue button-down shirt and black dress pants, the man’s sleeves were rolled up to reveal ink that decorated both his forearms. The tie was missing as well, and the top two buttons of the shirt were open to reveal just enough chest hair to give a hint of what lay beneath the material.

“I thought I’d get at least a hug,” he said, a teasing smile tugging at his lips. “I haven’t seen you in ages.”

Roxie’s eyes immediately narrowed. “I don’t see why you would expect that. We have never hugged before.”

“True. But before you were married, and now you are not.”

Roxie froze, not having expected that, and for it to have been said so casually. “You heard about that?”

“The divorce? Sure. The whole company heard about it. Elias is doing a good job of self-promoting his newfound bachelorhood.”

She wasn’t surprised. And there was no doubt in her mind that she was the villain in the tale the man was telling the world. Oh, well. Nothing she could do about that. “Good for him,” she deadpanned.

“Good for everyone, I think,” Mitch retorted. He gave her a beaming smile, something she couldn’t decipher flashing in his eyes before he added, “It means I can now ask you out.”

Roxie’s jaw dropped, certain she’d heard him wrong.