The cashier gives me a sympathetic smile.

I try another credit card.

Declined.

“What is going on?” I try every credit card. They are all declined. I try my debit card. I know I have enough money in my bank account to cover seventy dollars in groceries.

Nope. Declined.

The voices in my head give my emotions a pep talk.

Keep your shit together.

Don’t cry.

Don’t cry.

Don’t cry.

“Do you have cash?” the cashier asks with pity in her hushed words.

I have thirty dollars in cash. When we stopped for gas, I was planning on getting more cash from the ATM.

“I’ll just take the water.” Food is overrated. I can live for days with just water. It’s the perfect time for a cleanse. My skin will look almost as amazing as Jake’s.

“Just the water?”

I nod, blinking back the tears.

She calls someone from customer service to void the transaction and rings through just the water. I stop outside of the entrance, out of sight from Jake’s truck, and call Anthony.

“Avery,” he answers in a cold tone.

“What the hell have you done? None of my credit cards work and neither does my debit card!”

“Funny … I said those same words when I found my BMW trashed.”

“You fucked the cook, you asshole! You’re lucky I didn’t do to you what I did to your car. I have nothing. I’m traveling across the country with a complete stranger, my sister’s dog, and thirty dollars in my purse.”

Twenty and change after buying the water.

“How did you even get access to my account?”

“My brother is your banker. All I had to do was show him my car.”

“I’m going to sue his ass, Anthony! And yours too.”

“Baby, we can make this all go away. I want you back. You have a place in my life, all you have to do is say yes. I’ll get a driver to bring you and the mutt home. We’ll get all this silliness with your bank account straightened out. It will be like it never happened.”

I stare at the water spots on my leather sandal and the chips in my manicured nails. I think of camping with a stranger and chasing dangling turds. But then I think of what I saw on Anthony’s computer and his hidden love of chocolate, and I press End.

“Three bottles of water? You were in the store for that long and you got three bottles of water?”

I smile through the pain and my fading confidence. I smile through the humiliation. “I had other things, but then I got to the checkout and one of those magazines on the rack had a feature on cleansing, so I put everything but the water back. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

He eyes me with suspicion as I fasten my seat belt. “Occasional cleansing is good.”