He looks away. At the ground. In the sky.

“What rumors, John?”

John clears his throat. “About the cops talking to you about…you know. Your husband.”

“What about my husband?” I inch closer. This has turned into a sociology experiment. I’ve become the alpha, absent of fear, and I’m measuring the impact of my aggression on the beta.

John doesn’t answer. Eye contact is no longer a thing.

“What, the rumors that I loved my husband?” I ask. “Or that we were living happily ever after until he accidentally overdosed? You have to say it, John. I won’t know what you’re talking about unless you say it.”

His shoulders hunch forward, a flower wilting in extreme heat. God, how easy. I never knew it was so damn easy to be dominant. All I ever had to do was shed my fear and stop caring, and then I become the one to be feared. If only I’d know this earlier in my life, how many different paths would I have taken? Where would I be now? Certainly not here, in the back of this grocery store, arguing with this man about taking an unauthorized break.

He mumbles, but I give John credit for finally saying it. “About…whether or not your husband was murdered.” He waits, swallows, then spits the next two words out like poison. “By you.”

Now I’m in his face, and less than six inches separate our noses. John doesn’t back away, but his eyes dart everywhere to avoid contact with mine.

“That’s some rumor,” I say. “I mean, that’s just crazy, right? And Nate… He doesn’t even live in Bury. How do you suppose he heard some kind of insane thing like that?” I lean just an inch closer, and only the thinnest of a children’s book could be slipped between our faces. I smell him, that sweet tang of middle-aged mediocrity, basted over with Old Spice and accented by halitosis. “Did he really call you? Or was it you who called him?”

He closes his eyes, swallows, then summons a modicum of resolve. “You really need to get back to work now, Rose.”

I pull my face back, almost feeling high. Dizzy and delightful. I untie the back of my work apron and then take it off.

“I like to consider myself a nice person,” I say. “Sometimes even too nice for my own good. That person was working checkout five minutes ago and just needed a break. Just a short break. A mental-health break, really. But you couldn’t even let me have that. Now that person is gone, and this one is here.” I drop the apron to the ground. “So fuck you, John. And fuck this job.”

“You’re quitting?”

His sublimely stupid remark makes me laugh out loud, pulling me back an inch from my anger.

“Yes, that’s what happening here. If you didn’t help spread those rumors, then no hard feelings, okay? But if you did, you’re a god-awful person.”

John turns and walks back inside, no other words spoken between us.