No Rep by Lani Lynn Vale
CHAPTER 5
Life is short. Smile while you still have teeth.
-Taos to Madden
TAOS
I hadn’t expected to see her again that day.
In fact, I’d more than expected not to see her again for two days because that was when the next bootcamp was scheduled.
But there I was, walking through Target heading for the supplement aisle, when I heard her voice.
I couldn’t stop myself from walking toward it, either.
I found her on the aisle for dog food, struggling to get the fifty-five-pound bag into the cart while also not sending the cart sailing.
“Need help?”
At the sound of my voice, Fran slammed her hand down on her chest and nearly busted her ass as she backpedaled to get away from me.
I instantly felt horrible.
“Sorry if I scared you,” I apologized. “I heard you talking and came to see you.”
I probably shouldn’t have admitted that.
It might’ve made her uncomfortable.
Except, the grin she sent me upon seeing my face made me feel somewhat relieved that the desire to see her was definitely mutual.
“It’s no problem,” she admitted. “I’m just a jumpy person.”
I hated that for her.
Usually jumpy equaled hurt in some way to cause a person to be jumpy.
Which, in Fran’s case, was true.
She was definitely a jumpy person, as per what obviously happened this morning with her freeze up at the front door when she heard me tell them to go run.
“Do you need help?” I asked curiously, jerking my chin in the direction of the dog food.
She smiled. “I would love some help, actually. I have to pick up this bag and two more. As well as some cat food.”
I nodded. “For your dog?”
I helped her get the first bag into place before she answered.
“No, someone else’s. Remember, I told you that I run errands? I do the things people don’t have time for, or they aren’t willing, to do. This is an errand for a mechanic shop in town. I do this every other week. Pick it all up from his place of choice, run it over to him, and he pays me for it,” she explained.
I got the next two bags for her as well and then jerked my head toward the cat food. “Which bag?”
The baby in the cart chose that moment to throw the phone he was chewing on, and I lurched forward and caught it before it could hit the ground.
I grimaced at the slobber that coated my fingers.
“Oh, shit,” Fran cursed. “I knew I shouldn’t have given that to you, Vladimir!”
My brows rose at that name.
“Vladimir?” I asked. “For real?”
Fran rolled her eyes. “The day that Mavis went into labor, she was watching Hotel Transylvania. There’s a Mavis on there, and she thought it was really cool. So she named her son Vladimir. I call him Imp. Or Vladimir when he’s in trouble.”
“Imp?” I asked curiously.
“Imp. As in Vladimir the Impaler. Imp for short.” She grinned wickedly.
“That’s bad.” I shook my head. “Cat food?”
She pointed at the cat food, which also happened to be the biggest bag Target made.
After getting it in the cart, I said, “What else do you do?”
She knew what I meant as she whirled the cart around so that the baby was facing us and she was pushing it down the aisle.
I fell into step with her as she explained.
“I do a lot of everything. That prescription you can’t ever manage to pick up? I’ll do that. Someone back into your car, and you need to take it to the shop? I’ll do that, wait around for it, or just take it and leave it and find my own way home. I did that last week, actually. Waited there for two hours before the guys said they’d need more time, then I had to walk home because my sister was at work.” She paused. “Thank God it was during the daytime. I don’t think I could make it during the dark.”
Before I could ask her why she was so afraid of the dark, the kid in the cart decided that he needed to start digging into Fran’s purse that was sitting beside him. He came out with a fistful of tampons.
“Imp, no!” she cried, grabbing them from him.
But, funny enough, the kid had a grip of steel and held on for all he was worth. By the time she finally wrestled them out of his hand, one was out of its wrapper, one was bent almost completely in half, and the other was on the ground hitting me on one foot.
I bent down and retrieved it, all the while chuckling softly.
“Your nephew is cute,” I told her.
She grinned at me. “He really is. Like, on a scale of one to ten, he’s a ten. For sure.”
I agreed. Kid was adorable.
Normally I didn’t find kids cute. Honestly, they were all pretty ugly to me until they were about two or three, when they finally developed a decent amount of hair. But Vlad was actually adorably cute, and he had a headful of blond curls. So that might’ve been the reason why.
“I guess the curls and the navy-blue eyes run in the family,” I surmised as she finally made it past all the animal products and into the food section.
“Oh, yeah,” she confirmed. “I think every single baby in our family, from the beginning of time, had blond hair and navy-blue eyes. Even those that marry in can’t break the gene seal. My dad had brown hair and brown eyes. Still, we won.”
I wanted to ask her more about her family, but I could tell by looking at her closed-off expression at the mention of her father that she chose not to willingly stay on that topic.
“I came here for fruit,” I said. “I’m out.”
She gestured toward the plethora of fruit on display.
“Pick your poison,” she teased.
I did, then ended up wandering around Target with her and buying a few more things I didn’t need. Mainly knit shorts that I’d been meaning to grab, but hadn’t had the chance to yet.
By the time we made it to the front of the store, I was more than ready to leave, but didn’t want to stop talking to her.
After a few stints in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and a few tours that I couldn’t even talk about, paired with my years as a police officer, I saw threats everywhere. Literally, everywhere. Even the little old lady that could barely push her cart through the store.
Someone that could barely lift her own arm, let alone a gun.
But still, places that had a lot of people were very stressful for me.
But Fran made it bearable.
She likely had no idea that she did, either.
“I need three separate tickets,” she said to the cashier and started to unload things.
That’s when Vlad decided to let himself be heard.
And what he wanted us to know was that he was very, very tired of being in that cart.
Fran stopped what she was doing and picked him up, only for him to launch himself my way the moment he was close enough to me.
I caught him around the upper body while Fran was desperately trying to hold on to his slippery bottom half.
“Shit,” Fran breathed at the same time I said, “I got him.”
She looked at her nephew disapprovingly, then shook her head and looked at me. “You okay holding him?”
I nodded. “I am.”
Five minutes later, we checked out and left, me pushing the cart and holding the baby, while Fran searched in her bag for her keys.
Her face was bright red when she looked up at me next.
“Want to come have lunch with us?” she blurted.
Of fucking course I did.
Even though I tried not to go out and eat because eating out meant eating bad in my book. Because I couldn’t seem to resist the sweet tea or the cookie at the end of the meal. No matter where I went, or how bad or good the sweet tea was.
I tilted my head. “Where?”
She frowned hard. “Well, that is a good question. My normal spot is Mexican food, and I have that pact going on with the gym that I’ll try to eat better. I guess we could try Uncle Sam’s. I could have some eggs and bacon.”
I grinned. “I’ll take you somewhere. Follow me.”
After leaning over one more time to make sure that the baby was securely in the car, she closed the door and then said, “I have to make a single stop first and unload all this. It’s at the mechanic’s shop in town. Then we can leave from there?”
“Murphy’s?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I’ll meet you there,” I said.
A flush crept up over Fran’s face. “Sounds good.”
Then she was getting into her car and heading in the direction of Murphy’s Garage. Murphy who happened to be another member of our gym. Though he was strictly a five a.m. class goer. Fran wouldn’t have had the chance to meet him at the gym just yet.
