And he skedaddled out the door before she could see the tears that threatened at basic human kindness.

He hadn’t always been that way. Somewhere around six months ago was the first time it had happened. He’d been left on the verge of tears when a little girl approached him at the grocery store and told him she liked his shoes. He’d thought little of it, assuming he was just in a strange mood. But it had happened several times since.

Now he wondered if deep down he’d known that Guy was not kind. Was, in fact, so starving him of kindness that the small offerings of others echoed inside him like a pebble dropped into a well.

Did Guy bestow all his kindness on his partner? (For some reason, Truman had been calling him Roger in his head.) Or was he stingy even with him?

Better question: what did you do when all the recent moments of love, desire, and partnership in your life were revealed to be betrayals?

Still better question: how would he ever trust himself again, when he’d proven such a phenomenally bad judge of character?

***

Truman couldn’t see going into a bookstore with five bags of groceries (especially since he was an inveterate browser and it really required both hands and no time pressure of melting ice cream), so he decided to go back to Greta’s, put his shopping away, and come back out.

He’d made it within three blocks of home when a vehicle slowed to a stop next to him.

“Truman?”

It was Ash.

“Hi.” Truman tried not to sound out of breath and gently suggested to himself that he work on his cardio.

“Hi.”

Truman was very taken with Ash’s slow, deliberate delivery, as if he thought deeply about each thing before saying it, but at the moment, he felt like his arms were going to detach from his body imminently.

“I was just going to your place. Greta’s place, I mean.”

“Oh yeah?”

Ash nodded. Truman bit his lip.

Ash blinked like he was waiting for something. “Did you want to get in?” he said finally, as if that had always been implied.

Truman weighed the likelihood of his arms falling off against the likelihood that this florist was going to murder and dismember him and got into the van.

“You’re not going to cut me up with shears and then turn my limbs into avant-garde floral arrangements, are you?” he asked.

“No,” Ash said evenly. “I’m more into traditional arrangements.”

Truman snorted a laugh. “Sorry.”

“It’s the van, I know.”

“Well, it’s the stranger thing, really, but the van doesn’t help. This is what you use for deliveries?”

“Yep, it’s refrigerated in the back. I realize that’s another strike against it.”

“Yeah, maybe don’t put it on your branding. Great for groceries, though.”