She decided she was coming on a Saturday morning. She told me over coffee the way she told me everything she'd decided. It wasn't a question. She had the cup with the chip on the rim — the one she'd taken as hers without discussion — and she was using it like she'd always used it.

"The store you go to is inadequate," she said.

"It's the Ralphs on Vermont."

"It has limited produce."

I looked at her eating my cereal. Her cereal, effectively — she'd been working through it for two weeks. She had opinions about most things. I'd learned to tell the ones she was going to act on from the ones she was just sitting with.

This one she was going to act on.

---

Amber in public had a texture.

I'd noticed it the first time we went anywhere together, but the grocery store made it plain. She was in a gray pullover and jeans. Hair down. Carrying a basket like she'd done it before. Her tits filled the pullover in a way that made the casual outfit look like a decision. People stalled. The double-take, then the recalibration, then the small confusion about whether the recalibration was warranted.

A guy near the end-cap stopped reading his phone. Not dramatically. Just: reading, then not reading, then looking at his phone like he was surprised to find it in his hand.

She was reading the back of my cereal box.

"This has forty percent of the daily sugar recommendation," she said.

"It also has whole grain oats."

"Whole grain oats are the fourth ingredient."

"They're still present."

She put it back. She picked up the box next to it, a brand I'd never bought and didn't intend to buy, and read the back.

"This is better," she said.

"I don't like that one."

She put it in the basket.

The cereal situation had been resolved without my input.

---

She had opinions about every aisle.

The pasta was fine. She examined three boxes and put one in the basket without comment. The canned tomatoes required a comparison between two brands and an explanation of why one was inferior. Sodium content, consistency, something about the processing.

Olive oil wasn't an argument. She picked it up and moved.

I followed with the basket. Conversations dipped as she passed. A woman abandoned her shopping list to track Amber down the condiment aisle. A stock guy lost count of what he was facing on a shelf and started over. None of them knew why. I'd stopped being surprised.

She stopped at produce and found the stone fruit.

A peach got picked up, turned over, set back. She moved down the display. I stayed near the tomatoes because I needed them and she was going to have opinions about which ones.

A woman came up next to me.

Amber had moved further down toward the citrus. The woman was late twenties, dark hair cut short, nice legs in gym shorts. She was holding a tomato.

"Sorry — do you know if these are actually good?" she said. "For sauce. I can never tell."

You wanted the ones with some give. Not the hard ones shipped green. Not the fully soft ones that were going to fall apart before you got them home. I explained this. She asked about the Romas.

I was mid-explanation when Amber came back with a lemon.

She appeared in my peripheral vision. I glanced over.

She was watching. Nothing else. Not assessing, not deciding. Something quieter than that. Close to approval.

The woman wrapped up the tomato question and moved on. Amber came over. She picked three tomatoes and put them in the basket.

"She was talking to you," Amber said.

"Tomato question."

"She wasn't asking about tomatoes."

She'd waited until Amber was at the citrus to come over. "Possibly."

"Definitely." She looked at the tomatoes she'd picked. "They notice you more when you're with me."

"You're okay with that."

She looked at me. "I selected correctly. When other people confirm it, that's data."

She took the basket toward the olive oil.

I stood at the tomato display for a second. Other women hitting on me was confirmation she'd made a good call. Nine hundred years old and proud of her taste in men.

I followed her to the olive oil.

---

The checkout line was the most concentrated version of the whole thing.

Two registers open, shorter line, cashier maybe twenty-two. He looked up when we got to the belt. He stalled for about two seconds.

He recovered. But the math was on his face: her, next to the guy putting cereal on the belt, and no version of how this happened that made sense.

I put the cereal on the belt. The one she'd picked.

She had her phone out. Not performing indifference. Just not tracking the cashier.

I was tracking the cashier. Three months of this and I knew the look. The double-takes. The guys who found reasons to be near whatever aisle we were in. Math that didn't add up.

Her math disagreed with everyone else's. I was going with hers.

He finished ringing us up. He handed over the bag. Amber picked it up without being asked.

She walked out. He tracked her to the door.

I picked up the other bag.

"Have a good one," I said.

He said it back. He was already recalibrating.

---

Three in the afternoon. The parking structure was warm the way parking structures are in September. Level two. My car was near the wall.

We were halfway there when she stopped.

I stopped.

She looked at me. The face she made when she'd decided something before I knew a decision was available.

"We have produce," I said.

"The tomatoes will be fine for twenty minutes."

Saturday afternoon. Three empty spaces to the left. Concrete wall. A cart return about thirty feet away, empty.

My brain produced, without being asked, an inventory of how many times I'd seen a variation of this scenario. The number wasn't small. I had strong opinions about parking structures.

She was watching me do this math.

"I've had the complete file since week one," she said.

"I know."

"You had opinions about parking structures."

"I'm aware."

She took the bags from my hands and put them in the car.

She pushed me against the concrete pillar behind the car and dropped to her knees. She had my jeans undone and my cock in her mouth before I'd finished processing that this was happening at Ralphs. She took me to the base, her nose against my skin, the wet sound of her throat echoing off concrete. She pulled back and went down again, fast, her hand gripping the base, her eyes up on mine.

A Ralphs parking structure. Saturday afternoon. Grocery bags in the car behind us.

Her lips tight around my shaft, her tongue working the underside on every pass. The wet sound of it bouncing off the walls. On her knees on concrete in a gray pullover and jeans, deepthroating me like there was nowhere else she needed to be.

She pulled off. Stood, walked to the car, sat on the hood. She reached down and took off one sandal. Extended her foot toward me: arched, tanned, deliberate. She ran her toes along my cock, still wet from her mouth.

I'd seen this exact thing in reference material I wasn't going to name. The reference material hadn't prepared me.

Her arches closed around me and she started working me — the ball of her foot sliding along my shaft, her toes curling at the base on each stroke. She leaned back on her hands on the hood and watched. She'd offered her foot knowing exactly what I'd do with it.

I took her foot in my hands. I turned it and pressed my mouth to the arch. My tongue in the curve of her instep. Her toes in my mouth, one at a time. I sucked each one and her foot kept working my cock with the other foot, her toes gripping, her heel pressing. She watched me worship her feet without blinking.

"Come on my feet," she said. Flat. Direct. Like it was the only reasonable outcome.

I came across her arches, across her toes, hot on her tanned skin. She looked down at her feet. She looked at me. She put her sandals back on without cleaning up and got in the car.

I stood in the Ralphs parking structure for about five seconds. Then I zipped up and got in the car.

The tomatoes were fine. Nothing was wilted.

---

We drove home.

She was in the passenger seat with the olive oil in the footwell. About three blocks from the parking structure she said, looking out the window, "I have a plug in."

I kept driving.

"I put it in before we left this morning." Same register she'd use for the cereal or the canned tomatoes. "I've been wearing it through the store. Through the produce section. Through the checkout. Through the parking structure."

My hands were on the wheel. She'd been walking through the Ralphs on Vermont with a buttplug in her ass for two hours. Every aisle. The tomato woman. The cashier. The parking structure. And she was telling me now, while I was driving and couldn't do anything about it.

She knew exactly what she was doing.

"The cereal," I said, eventually, because I needed to say something that wasn't about the plug.

She glanced at me. The corner of her mouth moved.

"Next time I'm buying mine too. I'll buy both."

"You can buy yours," she said. "I'll eat it anyway."

I drove. Vermont to 6th. The B Line somewhere underneath. The woman at the tomato display. The cashier. Amber's face when she'd come back with the lemon and found me explaining Romas to someone who hadn't come over to ask about tomatoes.

Not jealous. Nothing like jealous.

She'd run the projection and the numbers had come back correct. And she'd done all of it with a plug in her ass.

I turned left and headed home. She put her window down halfway. The bags shifted in the back.

The cereal she'd picked was probably better. I wasn't going to say that.

I'd eat it anyway.