The sunlight pours through my window, bathing my bedroom in a pale white-orange glow. I gaze lazily at the ceiling listening to the light chattering of birds outside as my thoughts gradually became more coherent. It’s Saturday, I realize, and  promptly leap out of bed, my feet landing with a thud on the cold hard wood floor.
My mom is in the laundry room folding clothes that smell like lavender and cotton. “Grocery store?” I ask. We have gotten into a bit of a routine by now.
“The list is on the counter”, she says without looking up.
“Great. See you.” I grab the tiny scrap of paper filled with loopy blue writing from the kitchen counter and head towards the front door.
“Oh, and Paige?” my mom calls.
“Yeah?” I step back into the laundry room entranceway.
“Thank you so much for doing this, going shopping and running errands for me every week since you could drive. I helps so much and I don’t even have to ask. You really are growing up beautifully.”
“Oh, uh, yeah, of course.” To be honest, I have other motives besides being extraordinarily helpful. But she doesn’t need to know that. If she thinks I am just becoming super mature and responsible, that’s perfectly fine with me.

My keys jangle as I pushed them into the ignition. I feel the sturdy bump of my car leaving the driveway and speed up as I turn onto the main road. I’ve always loved the in-between times it takes to get from one place to another, the time where your body and thoughts exist in some sort of transportation limbo. I love the feeling of the road underneath me passing by and the tiny buildings in the distance becoming bigger lead to the feeling that something is about to happen, I just haven’t gotten there yet. I had been worried this feeling would go away when I got my driver’s license and began driving places myself but if anything its gotten more intense. Sometimes I turn on the radio and pretend I am in a movie, in the transitional part right before the main characters embarks on an amazing quest that changes her life forever. So, I love driving to the grocery store, but even that isn’t my main motivation for voluntarily doing it every week. No, that would be what is inside the grocery store, or rather who is inside the grocery store, in checkout aisle thirteen to be specific.
I take hold of a rusty shopping cart and enter through the sliding glass doors into the overly air-conditioned, fluorescent-lit universe of my local grocery store. No one comes here this early except old people, and of course him. Cashier number thirteen, with floppy brown hair, bright green eyes, and a lopsided grin on his face. He is wearing the required bright red shirt and crooked name tag. Jason.
Jason, Jason, Jason. I’d said the name so many times in my mind it had lost all meaning. I had forgotten to make note of it the first time I saw because I was too awestruck by how incredibly attractive he is. When he’d handed me my change I could hardly speak, because he had gazed straight into my eyes. I managed a quick “thank you” before I had left, nearly tripping on my own feet on the way out.
The second time I wasn’t sure if he would still be there or not. I went on the same exact time, on the same exact day of the week, but I still was halfway uncertain that he would show up at all. It seemed too good to be true, that there was someone like this who really existed in the world, and that I would meet him just by chance. It seemed too implausible, like something that happened to Jennifer Aniston in a romantic comedy, not something that happened to someone in real life, and certainly not someone like me. Yet there he was, like a pillar of hope, scanning boxes of cereal on aisle thirteen. That time I had stood up straight and remembered to smile at him. He smiled back at me for the first time and I felt my heartbeat speed up. As he handed me my plastic bags filled with fruit, meat, and dairy products, our fingers briefly touched. I nearly melted inside but managed to remain calm on the exterior.
The third time I was fairly sure he would be there but I still made it a point not to get my hopes up. If I expected him to be there and he wasn’t, I would be crushed. However, if I didn’t expect him to be there and he was, I would be completely unprepared. What if I made a fool of myself and ruined my chances? The entire drive to the grocery store consisted of me contemplating the possibilities in my mind, leaving me hopeless, not knowing what to wish for. While shopping, I had spent extra long picking out just the right brand of peanut butter so I could delay seeing him, building up the anticipation, then hurriedly skipped past the bread and cereal aisle so I could see him sooner. I couldn’t wait.
I had already planned to finally speak to him, but he beat me to it. “Hey, I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he said.
“Yeah, I think so. I mean I usually come here on Saturday mornings.”
“What’s your name?”
“Paige.” My hands were sweating and shaking.
“Paige. Like the pages of a book. I like it.”
“Thanks.” I beamed. He liked my name!
“I’m Jason by the way.” Jason. I wanted to say more, to ask him where he was born and if he liked working here and what his favorite color was. But I had finished paying for my groceries and there was no reason for me to stay, plus the people in line behind me had begun  tapping their feet and looking at their watches.
“Well, I’ll see you,” I said.
“I hope to see you soon.”
That was a full week ago, and here I am, true to my word, seeing him again. I load a cart full of bread, eggs, milk and ham, contemplating what to say to him. Will he even remember me again? The wait in line is one of the longest waits of my life, even though its really only about two minutes. I bite my nails, reading the headlines of various trashy magazines to distract myself. Finally he sees me and his face lights up into a smile. “Paige! I was worried you wouldn’t come!”
“Me? I… Hey, you remembered my name!”
“Of course I did! And do you remember mine?” He quickly covers his name tag and throws me a sly grin. “No cheating.”
“You’re name is Jason,” I says matching his smile with my own.
“Wow, you’re good,” he says. “And your total is 101.49.”
I slide my credit card as my heart pounds softly. Its now or never. “Hey, totally random, but would you ever want to go out with me some time?” I blurt out.
His green eyes twinkle in my direction. “I thought you’d never ask.”
The drive home is one of the best drives of my life. At the grocery store, talking to Jason had still seemed like a dream. But now that I was here, in the transition between the dreamy wonderland of the store and bland reality of my home, I can still feel and remember everything that had happened. Here and only here can I live both realities at once- the normal, boring girl who gets up early on weekends and does errands for her mother, and the brilliant exciting girl who asks out the cute boy who scanned her olives at the grocery store- the cute boy who said yes, by the way! I drive extra slow because I am afraid when I get home it will all fade away.
Astonishingly, it doesn’t, which is when I know that its real. I put the groceries away in the cupboard with a bounce in my step, humming and dancing around the kitchen. My mom notices and says, “Paige, you’re awfully happy. Did something good happen?”
“Something wonderful has happened,” I reply. “Something at the grocery store.”