Allesmarkt

The Allesmarkt had opened three months ago on the edge of town, in a building that looked, from the outside, like it had no business being a store at all. Too small. Wrong proportions. The kind of squat, unremarkable box you'd drive past without registering.

Inside, it went on forever.

Nobody talked about that much. You got used to it the way you got used to anything; by stopping to think about it.

She was reading the back of a pasta sauce jar when it happened.

Not even reading really, comparing. Two jars, one in each hand, trying to determine whether the difference in sodium content was worth the difference in price, which it probably wasn't, which she already knew, but she was doing it anyway.

He was four feet away on the opposite side, turned the other direction entirely, trying to remember if he already had diced tomatoes at home or if he was thinking of something else.

Neither of them was watching where they were going.

The collision was quiet and entirely mutual. Her shoulder into his back, his elbow catching her arm, and then her purse went sideways off her shoulder and the contents hit the floor in that particular way that purses do, everything at once, in all directions, with maximum audience.

She jumped. Actually jumped, a small involuntary thing, and took a step back.

He was already turning, already crouching, already gathering things before she'd fully processed what happened, her phone, her keys, a folded receipt soft at the creases. And then the lipstick, which had rolled further than everything else, the way they always do.

He picked it up and looked at it a half second longer than he needed to.

Rebel Rose.

Sarah's shade. He'd learned the name by accident, the third time she stayed over, picked up the tube without thinking and read the bottom before he knew he was reading it. A year later he'd found the last one in a jacket pocket on a Tuesday in February, fourteen months after she'd stopped returning his calls, and stood in his kitchen holding it for longer than made any sense.

Different woman. Same shade.

Just a coincidence. Just a color with a name.

He looked up.

She was watching him with that careful expression people use when they're trying to look patient but are actually bracing for something. Her hand was already out for the lipstick, the gesture almost apologetic, as if she were sorry for needing it back.

He reached toward her and her fingers closed around the tube at the same moment his hadn't quite let go.

Just a second. Less than a second.

Just long enough.

She looked down at their hands and then back up at him and something in the careful expression shifted, not much, just enough that he caught it - like a door opening in a room she'd thought was locked.

"Thank you," she said.

"Sure," he said. And meant nothing by it, which was the whole thing.

He stood up. She was still looking at him with that careful expression, the lipstick in her closed hand now, her purse back on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry about your purse," he said, which wasn't quite what he meant to say.

"It's fine." She glanced down at her hand, then back up. "I wasn't watching where I was going either."

"The diced tomatoes."

"The sodium content."

Something almost happened in her expression. Not quite a smile but the shape of one.

The particular silence that follows when two people have run out of the easy things to say settled between them, and neither one moved through it.

"Claire," she said.

He looked at her.

"My name. Since you've already seen everything in my purse."

Something loosened in him slightly. "Daniel," he said.

She nodded once, the way you do when something has been settled without you entirely deciding to settle it. Then she looked down at the pasta sauce jar still in her other hand, as if she'd forgotten she was holding it, as if the whole world of sodium content comparisons had happened to someone else entirely.

"I should finish shopping," she said.

"Yeah," he said. "Me too."

Neither of them moved for just a moment longer than made sense.

She turned to go, then half turned back.

"It was nice running into you." She paused. "Meeting you."

"Yeah," he said. "It was."

She nodded and went back to her aisle.

He stood there another moment, a can of something in his hand he didn't remember picking up, listening to the Allesmarkt settle back into its ordinary sounds around him.

He never did remember about the diced tomatoes.