You Before Me [dave east]

| thirty

Xiomara;

"How about these?" I ask my daughter standing in the produce aisle, obviously not expecting her to actually respond. I'm currently at Target doing some shopping. Usually Carmela does the supermarket runs for the house but she doesn't work today.

Maya blinks at me making me let out a light laugh as I put the bag of apples in the shopping cart. "Okay, I gotchu' girl. How 'bout these?" I say, holding up a banana. She giggles in approval since it's the only way she really knows how to say yes. It's adorable.

I smile and grab the bunch of bananas, putting them in the buggy too. "C'mon, we gotta go get you some baby food now." I say pushing the cart as I walk away.

I walk past the dairy aisle and stop to look at some yogurt. I was trying to get into that low-fat healthy stuff and apparently yogurt is supposed to help with weight loss. I'm still trying to lose the little that's left of this baby fat even though Dave says it looks good on me. We take runs together all the time but I still have a little pudge that's at least hideable.

I grab one tub of yogurt from the refrigerator after reading the label. I only take one just to try it out since I'm not sure I'm gonna like it.

"Well butter my backside and call me a biscuit." I hear somebody say from behind me as I turn around to put the yogurt in my buggy. It's already filling up pretty quick since I've been in the store for a minute now. "Girl from Malibu?"

"Excuse me?" I turn around with my eyebrows furrowed, only to be faced with the cop from a week or two ago. "Okay there's no way you actually talk like that." I say laughing after hearing him say that weird ass white people phrase that the south be using.

"No I'm just messing around." He chuckles. "You look different though. I didn't even think it was the same person without the long red hair."

"Well it's me." I bite my lip. "And that was a wig."

"Right." He nods, not taking his eyes off me as he licks over his lips briefly. "I didn't pin you as the type to have a daughter." He says looking at Maya.

"Well I am married. Kind of comes with it."

"I guess that's right. But hey, I finally figured out who you are."

I look at him in confusion and tilt my head to the side. "And who's that?"

"Well it took me a minute to realize your name isn't really Amber but I knew you looked familiar walking down that street. You're David Brewster's wife. That Lakers player."

"Ah, you got me." I say walking away with my buggy but he of course walks alongside me.

"It's sucks too. A police officer doesn't stand a chance against a professional basketball player." He slips in smoothly, shaking his head as he playfully mutters 'damn' under his breath. I'm a little taken aback that he admitted to admiring me so openly like that.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask, playing dumb because I sure don't have the energy to be turning anyone down right now. Plus, this one seems persistent.

"It means you're beautiful." He says and does that white boy smirk that I used to squeal over when I was like fucking eleven. Ugh, bring me my nigga.

"And married." I add with a smile.

"I guess I can settle for friends. So you're Xiomara. I'm Ryan."

"You pronounced my name right." I point out. Nobody ever pronounces my name right.

"Yeah well the media talks a lot about you and I have to admit, I watched a couple of those YouTube 'tea' videos. Heard your name plenty of times." He chuckles, shaking his head.