Bitter Sweet

'Twenty pounds, fifty-five.' 

A please would be nice. Claire wanted to bore a hole through the young woman behind the checkout but was too busy rescuing some of the more vulnerable groceries, rolling haphazardly down the brake rollers and clogging up the packaging area. 

She hated it when the Aldi cashiers bullied her into speeding up her packaging; zipping the items past the scanner, leaving them to tumble to their fate, while sighing repeatedly at her slow reactions and stunted performance.  

Claire succeeded in cramming the shopping bags in record time; however, this did not mollify the woman. With her lips frozen in a rictus of annoyance, she flicked a look at the next customer and rolled her eyes. 

Seething Claire, hovered her phone over the credit card reader. Before the beep could resound, the cashier had already scanned the next client's first item. 

Hauling the two heavy bags off the counter, Claire swerved around to make a beeline for the exit, missing a full collision with a man.  

'Whoa!' The man in question deftly deflected the impact and, unlike the irritated cashier, smiled. 

 Too stunned to react, she stared as the man headed for the exit, his smile and a zesty scent still lingering, reminding her of the sea and summer evenings. 

Anchored by the two heavy bags pulling at her arms, Claire watched through the shop window, as he opened the boot of his sensible Toyota Corolla. A dependable man. Single? Claire liked ‘dependable’. She gazed at the arm muscles flexing, as he lifted his shopping bag into the boot. A single bag. He was surely a bachelor. She sighed. With his good looks and smile he was bound to have a girlfriend.  

Haphazard love encounters only come true in books and films. 

She dared herself a last glance. He turned and looked at her and smiled, adding a small wave. 

Blocking the customer behind, Claire stood still, dumbstruck. What should she do? Wave back of course! 

Claire had been waiting to meet someone for the last year, refusing to succumb to one of those dating sites. She was young enough to find a man without having to expose herself to the world, like an item on a shelf.  

His smile spoke of promises, pleasure, and peace. She felt a bond with this man already. Her hands were sweaty, and a wave of heat whooshed up from her feet sending tingling shocks up to her hairline. Gone was the vexation towards the cashier; in fact, she could have hugged her.  

She would head towards the parking lot and casually walk past Matt’s car — Claire decided he was a Matt. He would laugh and say, 'Watch out when you back out.’ Claire would smile at his playful chiding — he really did have a great sense of humour — and retort with another witty comment. Laughing he would get out of the car and come towards her, offering to carry her shopping bags to her car. Their fingers would brush lightly as he took the bags from her hands, and they would gaze at each other a little longer than would be deemed casual. 

 Having loaded the boot for her and slammed it shut, he would lean, casually on her car and tip his head to the side, as if fishing for her thoughts. 

‘I’m Matt, by the way.’ 

Of course, he was. ‘I’m Clumsy Claire,’ she added with a laugh, ‘I really am... clumsy I mean.’ 

Losing all sense of time, they would stand there talking in that parking lot as one car pulled in and another out, until finally, Matt would ask her for a drink. 

That first drink would trigger a storm of emotions, pulling her into a vortex of breathless and rapid heart-beating expectations. 

Returning from the bar, Matt would kiss her on impulse as he handed her a drink. She wouldn’t draw away; they both knew. Dinner would follow. It would be hard for her to push down that surge of trepidation when he walked her back to her car. Claire was old-fashioned; she didn’t want him to think of her as an easy woman. But to hell with it, just this one time. She knew Matt was her man.

She would sweat out the next twelve hours after their passionate lovemaking, checking her phone for his messages. Clinging to the hope that the encounter with Matt would turn out to be much more than a banal incident.

She found herself weaving in and out of her daydream, and soon they were falling in love. Matt was such a tender and attentive lover. For next summer they had decided to spend a week on a Greek Island. Walking along the seashore hand in hand, they would watch the moon as it trailed its silvery fingers along the surface of the inky expanse and lie down on the cool, damp sand of the deserted beach to make love. On the last evening, over grilled calamari and chilled white wine at their favourite haunt, a small, unpretentious restaurant overlooking the village port, he would say, 'I love you, Claire, from the moment I set eyes on you at Aldi’s.'  

The word 'Aldi' shattered her reverie. What was she standing there dreaming for? She had to act now. Turning around to ease her bags onto the counter and respond to Matt's wave, she came face to face with the cashier. The crabby expression was no longer pasted on the young woman’s sickly pale face; she too was smiling and waving.  

Claire dropped her bags, one landing on her foot and swivelled around to look through the glass. Matt’s car was pulling out of the driving lot. 

'That was my husband,’ the cashier said, her cheeks slightly flushed, ‘this morning at breakfast I told him we’re having a baby.' 

A chilling draught of guilt and sentiment of pure foolishness surged through Claire. 

'Poor dear, I've been so crabby this past month, it must be the hormones. I guess he’ll have to put up with it for the next few months until I go on maternity leave.' 

Claire nodded, her eyes had dropped to her shopping bags, no longer able to hold the young woman’s gaze. She was too entrapped in her beguilement, now a glaring blunder to feel for the woman’s discomfort. Mixed emotions prevailed over any idle remark; envy, sadness, regret, and acceptance of the finality of her future life. 

She retreated to her car and sat there for a while, scrolling through the dating apps on the phone. Eventually, she tapped the one with the highest rating.