Disclaimer: In case you don't know I'm not S. Meyer so...I don't own any of her characters I just love them; no copyright infringement intended.

Zoo be zoo be zoo

Zoo be zoo be zoo

Damned song!

Who the hell used to sing it?

That one…the Italian actress…ah yeah, Sofia Loren.

How the hell do you put such death traps for neurons like these as the accompanying music in the lifts nowadays in 2014?

Zoo be zoo be zoo

Means that I love you

Holy crap!

Between all the days, just today I had to jump into this…thing?

Just today that my hormonal, moony, what the hell it is cycle, is freaking out?

I can't put this hateful song and all those luscious breaths out of my mind, that way of aspiring the vowels and the soft vaguely sensual insinuations in that hell of a song.

Well, maybe, it's just my hell of a cycle's fault.

Again.

It's since I woke up that I'm in this continuous state of excitement, such to make an annoying 70s song that usually makes me happy, turning into some kind of soundtrack for a low league porn, in my head.

Not that I could trace a well-defined line between low league and high quality porn, porn is porn.

Two, or more, human beings that go down to it as God commands and enjoy it.

Ok, maybe God has nothing to do with porn.

It's just hot, sweaty, acrobatic, sometimes really fake, sex.

Just what I'd need…without the faking part.

Instead, here I am, alone on a February Saturday evening scavenging into my worn out fake leather bag looking for that little plastic coin, giveaway of the big supermarkets.

Yeah, you know, that little round bastard that appears always in the least appropriate moments, like when you have to pay the bar or you've to buy something from the electronic machines, but that seems to disappear, sucked in the meanders of the four dimensions bag, every time you approach a supermarket and, so, need it?

Yeah, that one.

I keep on touching randomly partially astonished by the huge quantity of things I managed to cram into it.

It seems I can feel something that resembles it under my fingers so I insist on that precise spot in the hope it won't get stuck deeper into some of the fabric wrinkles of the bag but…still nothing.

The alternative of launching all the bag's contents on the floor to identify the bastard, seems quite appealing if it wasn't for the huge amount of chewing gum that cover up the concrete…what's the problem with you and the chewing gum, people? Why spill it on the floor with the high risk, if not mathematic certainty, of stepping on it in the future, once you'll be here again? Isn't it easier to roll it up into some piece of paper, even a receipt, and keep it into your bag until you could trash it into a bin?

- Oh shit! –

I exclaim between disgusted and exasperated when my fingers touch something sticky and humid inside my bag.

Yeah, it's one of my chewing gum.

God only knows for how long it's been there.

I erase every previous thoughts regarding gums and I seriously start to think of converting myself to the systematic spit of chewing gum on the concrete, while I pull out said sticky chewing gum and reach the bin, when I realize that little coin that was so damning me, is struck to this unformed mass of chewing gum and saliva.

Gross.

I know it's my own saliva, but it's gross nonetheless, I think while I try to free as much as possible the stocky gummy material from the little blue circle to avoid it from remaining indissolubly stuck in the shopping cart's slot.

I finally manage to enter the supermarket flopping over the shopping cart handle using it, so, as some kind of perambulator. God I can't imagine how will I be when I'll be older, when I'll really need a perambulator… will it be really different from this one?

I hope, at least, I will be easier to manage, moreover when curving, and I hope I won't get the one with the defective wheel with a given personality, as it happens all the time with the shopping cart.

I advance quite automatically bypassing with closed eyes the vegetables aisle that, yeah it may even be good for your health, but it's a pain in the ass to cook.

And I'm not in the right mood today, some frozen food would be better.

Yeah, you'd be absolutely helpful in a bit.

I say to myself even smiling a bit, looking at the tampons' box in my hands.

It's been a bit now that I've learned to understand in what part of my period I am, by a series of details. When I was younger they were the sudden appearance of little pimples all over my forehead and the difficulty to concentrate.

Now, instead, I'd say since I turned thirties, I can concentrate very well, in this period of the month.

Problem is that I concentrate on one thing only.

Sex, sex and sex again.

When I was with Jake, my ex, I just couldn't get enough.

Now I'm single.

Luckily I've learned to manage myself on my own.

That makes me think I need more gel.

I push forward the shopping cart through the aisle I'm interested in.

Tampons, diapers, lenitive napkins, disinfectants…zap! Here it is!

I've always found it a bit awkward the fact that almost all the supermarkets have decided to put the aisle "condoms and sexual pleasure's gels" in the same aisle of diapers and lenitive napkins for toddlers.

Yeah it's true that, you know… to make a tree you need a seed… and that, following a logic process, to make a baby you need to have sex but, the aim of the condoms shouldn't be avoiding to do the majority of your shopping in this aisle, should it?

Maybe, however, thinking about it, it was the best place for things like these.

Putting 'em in the "make up" aisle would have meant shocking the old prude women who were looking for their powder and the men who would have been pointed at by the aforementioned oldies; while putting 'em in an aisle of their own with even the sign above, would have created the pearly curtain effect for the hot sector, like in the old movie renters.

Yeah, thinking about it, this is the only aisle in which everyone, more or less, could buy such things without getting embarrassed.

It doesn't embarrass me anymore.

When I was younger it used to.

Now…no.

There was a time, I believe around twenty two years old, in which I almost hoped someone would see me buy a lubricant or a condom pack. It was a kind of personal sexual emancipation.

Now, simply, I don't care. I'm a grown and independent woman who has no intention to get some kind of sexually transmissible disease or to deprive herself of any kind of physical pleasure.

Even the solitaire one.

For this reason with my head up I let my sight wander between the different types of gel on the shelf and, when I spot my favourite, I stretch my hand in that direction.

- Interesting choice. –

a deep voice at my back makes me jump on the spot, holding to my chest the little box just taken from the shelf.

The presence at my back moves slightly on the left and a little forward, almost touching the cold metal of the shelves with the pikes of his hair.

I rotate through the shadow at my left not with the nonchalance I'd have liked.

What have I just said before on not being ashamed or embarrassed at being seen or doing such purchases?

Well, craps.

As soon as my eyes wonders briefly on the characteristics of the person at my side, all the embarrass felt in my teen years rises again. My blood seems to have abandoned the fingers of my hands that, as frozen, are holding the little card box, to concentrate all on my cheeks that seem to ignite with fire.

Copper hair pointing in every directions, as someone had passed their hands in it to mess it a little bit, green eyes, piercing and malicious, a long thin nose that ends just upon a pair of masculine, thin, straight, perfect lips.

Beside a man like this you can't be seen purchasing "a gel to increase feminine pleasure" as the box says. With a man like this at your side, you let him see you buying edible lingerie or some expensive satin sheets, perfect to glide on during moments of passion, not some kind of gel that yells "I'm alone and I do it by myself".

His eyes are scrutinizing me and seem to leave a hot contrail everywhere he looks: on my cheeks, my lips, my neck and even my shoulders.

I can feel his gaze lowering even more until it leaves my body to fix on the little box containing the gel, in my hands.

Free from his gaze, I'm not accompanied by that hot fire anymore, my superficial nerves tend, instead, creating goose bumps and a shiver through my spine. Like when you pass from a really hot space to a really cold one.

I feel cold without his gaze on me and, conversely, the little box in my hands seem almost to burn, scorching under his inquisitor and taunting eyes… how I'd like to let it drop.

But…what a terrible impression I'll make!

What impression am I making now? Frozen on my feet looking at a stranger with a gel to improve auto-eroticism in my hands?

I have to say something; any thing.

Then, I remember his words and a kind of rage mounts inside of me.

Who the hell does he think he is making fun of a perfect stranger on such a personal matter?

What the hell happened to me to accept that some perfect stranger like he is made me feel ashamed on a question that it's just mine?

I then decide to using a secret card.

- why do you say it's interesting? -

I ask him mimicking with my fingers the quote symbol to make him understand I was using his words.

- do you happen to have some suggestions? –

I then continue, inclining slightly my head to indicate the shelf facing me.

He doesn't appear as shocked as I thought he would be at such a frank reply. Was he expecting this kind of reply from me? What was it, some kind of new way to approach a girl? Are they doing it this way, now? You wait for a single, almost, attracting woman buy some gel to pleasure herself, to let her see other ways of reaching the pleasure state?

Or maybe was it some kind of test? A test like "let's see how shrewd are you"? perfect, now I'd have done the impression of a thick one.

Some kind of an half smile appears on his face and one of his hand rapidly rises to mess with his lips, as trying to hide it.

Oh, my dear stranger, I've seen it don't worry; every art of my body has seen that little smile of yours.

I'd like to blame my actual hormonal status to justify the reaction my body, moreover the inferior part of it, has had at that smile.

It would be easier to take it upon my hormones.

But, however, since we're on dance…let's dance!

He doesn't speak yet.

I indicate again with a little nod of my head the incriminated shelf, to incite him to respond.

His long fingers gave another crumple to his wonderful thin lips, while the point of his ring finger slowly caresses the inferior part of his squared mandibular bone then, without alert, the same hand distance itself from his face and moves forward.

I unconsciously back away a little not understanding that, in reality, it's going to res on one other of the gel in exposition on the shelf, not surely on me.

I realize it when he poses that thing in front of me.

At the beginning I can not even focus it properly, since I'm magnetically attracted by that crooked smile that lingers on his face, freed from the protection of his hand.

I bat my lashes for a moment, not in a luscious or tempting way, just to focus my gaze where it should be and, holding the box I previously took with one hand, I move the other through his that's holding the other gel.

My fingers don't tremble as described in some kind of books for little girls, but a shot of energy and heat pass powerfully through myself, it almost bounce me away, when my finger prints slightly touch his nails to rest on the plastic cylinder he is offering me.

I then look at what I have in my hand and a questioning look, I am sure of it, appears on my face.

- fire and ice? –

I ask him with a risen eyebrow, noting the red and blue drawing chasing on the package.

He simply nods.

In reality, I have no problems to understand why he would have chosen something like this; the alternating of two different temperatures on the skin heightens the sensations.

However, and I speak from experience, when you have to manage it on your own, it's not the best choice.

So I decide to tell him, to take advantage of my solitude, if we could say it.

- ah I understood! The hot dilates the vases and relaxes, the cold contracts, surprises, makes on alert every nervous termination. Not a bad choice…but…on my own…you know, the cold risks to block everything…would I've been with someone else… -

I notice that he's not completely oblivion to my words, I can see it from the way his Adam's apple bounces up and down quickly to sedate his growing pulsations. I see his lips slightly part and the point of his tongue going to moisture them slightly, preparing to talk but…

- daddy –

A small, too closer, little voice, interrupts anything that was happening between us.

His eyes run over me, at my back and I, as a reaction, suddenly turn, following his gaze.

Behind me, sit on the child seat of the shopping cart, a little baby with green eyes and copper hair, is looking straight to the man with whom I've exchanged innuendos and cut breaths a moment before.

- Good evening little one. –

he reply with candour and a smile on his face that has nothing to do with the crooked one he had shot me until this moment.

I stay there completely immobilized and in a daze, invisible from the eyes of the baby in front of me, at what I can see now, of the father that now has eyes just for her.

Me, the tension of before, the innuendos…everything is dissolved.

- Daddy, biccuit. –

The little one chirps.

He just nods and starts to push the shopping cart over the aisle, quite forgetting about me.

I'm just about to turn, almost mechanically, when a strong and big hand places on my own, firm on my own cart.

- And, however, was it with me, you wouldn't have needed a gel…I would have know better how to keep you wet. –

He says to me.

I think I started to hold my breath the moment his skin touched mine, at the sensation of my hand so little in confront to his own, and even if time is passed I can't manage to blow it out at least not until I see him turning again and distancing from me.

With his shopping cart and baby.

Slowly my life returns to the present and I start to distinguish the normal customers of the supermarket that, obviously, are oblivion of what has just happened to me.

An old man is looking closely at two almost identical toothpaste packages, a boy in his fifteens is choosing between two types of band-aids and a lady is checking dates and information on a package of diapers.

Diapers, there's why he was in this aisle; and here's why I have to leave immediately.

I start to push my shopping cart in automatic in the opposite direction of the one he disappeared earlier.

A father.

Ok.

This had never happened to me.

Engaged, married, single, men form the sexual orientation not clearly stated yeah, but this is something new.

I keep on pushing my cart in the following aisle, trying to make clearance in what I need to buy.

Ok, Bella, you had the most mischievous cross talk over a gel for the intimate pleasure with a perfect stranger that you'd ever had (at least sober) but now you can't rest here immobilized for the rest of the day, can you?

And then he is there again.

Sure enough the supermarket is big, but not big enough.

Chances I get to see him again were all there; I should have taken that damned gel and flew home, if I didn't want to see him again here.

I see him from afar, righting a bit his back and stretching a harm to take a package from the highest shelf, while the other hand remains on the handlebar of the cart between those of his daughter.

I can see the muscles of his back flex and his shoulder blades appear under his coat that is now bending and rising a bit to humour his movements.

I swallow, I hope not so soundly, the not that's formed in my throat and I advance slowly but confidant.

I curse every damn divinity, formally that of the supermarkets, to have positioned the spice package I needed right on the shelf opposed to the one he is tending now, in this aisle.

Our shopping carts are placing side by side but in different directions.

I'm trying with all my strength to not looking his way, opting for a fake nonchalance attitude, hoping he hasn't seen me yet, being still turned to the other shelves.

- I see you've taken them both. –

His deep voice makes me vibrate while I'm still turned and I hope with all my heart I managed to not jump for the surprise.

He's seen me.

I gave a quick glance at the content of my cart and I realize that, I reality, he's right; even if I didn't realize I've taken them, the lubricants.

Furthermore, I don't think he has the right to an answer for what it concerns this matter.

- I see you have a daughter. –

I answer, instead, mimicking his tone of a moment before, turning just a little bit my head over my shoulder.

He seems taken aback by my question, even if, being honest he would have expected it.

He shoots a glance at the baby, all concentrated in trying to open a pack of biscuits, without any result, and simply nods. I'm trying my best to not stare at him or a his baby who's starting to get annoyed.

He takes the biscuit's pack from the chubby hands of the baby and opens it with facility, before handing it back to her.

- A wife? –

I ask again trying to maintain a detached tone.

Let him be not married. Let him be not married.

Let him be not married.

I keep on saying to myself as a kind of mantra.

In the meantime, to avoid staring at him openly and so showing my hope, I bend to take the soy beans can from the lowest shelf.

Ok I admit it.

I don't really need those beans now. Well, yeah I should have bought them, but I could have postponed it and take, I don't know, maybe the tomato sauce that's at my chest level, without bending in such a theatrical way.

I do know, also, that I could have bent like a lady should do, arching my knees, and not like the horny one my hormones have turned into, leaving my knees well straightened and simply lowering my chest, making my butt bumping over a little.

However…

The slight rubbing of his jeans over my butt cheeks paybacks the terrible impression I'm risking to have.

And it gives me material for my lonely night.

I notice that he's moved a little, strategically in my opinion, to take the tomato sauce from the shelf over my head and that he indulges a little too much to take it.

Well, I think we're playing in two, then.

- no wife, just me and Nessie. –

I hear coming, literally, from my back.

Ok.

Single father.

Single father that openly flirts with me in such a intimate and unrecognisable way from the outside.

Why does this thing turn me on so much?

I can't elaborate my thought too much because one of the old ladies that, as I said before, would have been shocked at the sight of one of us flirting in the intimate pleasure aisle, makes me move to get to the tomato sauce herself.

The oldie puts herself in the middle and uses the firtator – single – father, to get to something that was too high.

I'm in terrible embarrass and the oldie and her cart seem to have created an insolvable distance between me and the handsome stranger that, by the way, is not even looking in my way, so I decide to continue my stroll without saying anything else.

I manage to pass the pasta aisle without any other encounters and to calm down my worked breath but, when I turn into the breakfast aisle, he is there.

The baby is holding a Coke bottles between her tiny hands and, smiling, offers it to her father.

- Too fizzy –

she says.

- uhm… too sparkling, you say? So do you want daddy to take the first sip for you? –

He asks her, joking.

The baby nods happily and I can't move my eyes from that innocent as lucky Coke bottle.

He takes it in his hand, holds it lightly with his long and thin fingers and takes it to his mouth. I hold my breath when I see them part a little and then plaster over the round slick edge of the bottle. He swallow a sip and it seems to me I can see the liquid rolling down his tongue and down to his throat. He swallows and then makes a theatrical "Ahh" to make his daughter laugh.

Or to make me tremble like a leaf in autumn; point of views.

That sound made to make a child smile, resounds in my ears as something extremely luscious.

Well, I have to go, absolutely.

I turn my shopping cart and decide that a couple of mornings without my cereals are definitely better than jumping over an handsome stranger, in the middle of a supermarket, in front of his daughter.

I point to the other side of the supermarket then, to try and distance me as long as possible, not completely trusting my willpower and I start to walking through the frozen foods aisle.

While I'm pushing quite automatically my cart, that sound keeps on repeating itself in my mind and I can't do anything different from rubbing my legs with each other, for as much the place I'm in allows, to try and calm down that kind of pain that's growing down there.

Images of his muscly back alternates with those of his lips closing around a little circle… even if this time it's not the edge of the bottle, but my skin sweetly constricted between his lips.

Ahh

That sound is obsessing me.

I shut down my eyelids trying to shoo it away but everything I get is the image of my hands wondering over his body, ripping one piece of clothes per time at the rhythm of that evil music I heard before that is now turning into the soundtrack of my personal porn, since when I imagine his face and his thin lips that exhales a soft breath "Ahh Bella".

Oh god, now it's too much.

I open wide my eyes and grip the handle of the first freezer on my left.

I feel like I'm burning and, for this reason, I take the first think I find and put it on my nape.

Like hot metal immerged into water, my skin seems to release hot steam at the contact with this freeze and letting my eyelids crashing a bit one on the others, I let my head down and exhale a relief breath.

I'm just tempted to say "ahh" has he had done earlier in my mind.

- Wow! –

The same voice stops me again.

Any cold thing I had on my neck, so much dreamt some seconds before, becomes the object of my frustration, and I hold strong to it with my fingers.

I take a big breath and the turn around.

Here he is, at my back, behind his cart. The baby is giving me her backs, playing with something on the baby seat.

My eyebrow jumps high, surprised and incredulous at my ability to confound reality and fantasy.

He raises a finger, indicating, the frozen food package strangled by my fingers.

- Anything has made you do that sound, I want it too. –

he continues joking.

The crooked smile is the only vaguely joking thing in his semblances. His eyes are darker, the breath worked and the tone he used is full of malice.

Good.

- You know… -

I start to answer back, quite unconscious of myself moving a step in his direction.

- You should stop coming at the back of strangers unexpectedly. –

I finish while I let the frozen pack in his cart, realizing just now that it was a pack of spring peas.

Yeah, I've used too a kind of malice in answering. I also know I used the term "come".

I could have used "appear", "emerge" and other synonyms but I'd say "come" was the most adapt in this case.

What am I, 13 years old?

I'm just to explode laughing at the realization of the strange way my brain works and, to avoid ruining the pure expression of pheromones I've just done, I take my cart and start to point through the cash registers, forcing a nonchalance I'm sure I don't have in this moment.

Surely, I couldn't not notice the sudden stiffening of his shoulders at my words, nor the way his fingers have gripped over the handlebar of the cart, until they made the plastic paper covering it squeaks, nor the quick movement of the tip of his tongue over his lower lip.

I push my cart through the queue of consumers at the cash registers. I put myself at the end of the last queue, the one dedicated to those with less than fifteen objects because, let's admit it, I'll have to do all my shopping soon since I ended with not buying everything I needed.

My gaze falls upon the gels and an involuntary smile appears on my face. Who would have imagined that an afternoon at the supermarket would have given me so much material for an evening with the company of my own?

- Card? –

the shrieking and annoyed voice of the cashier wakes me up from my wonderings.

- Ehm, sorry? –

I ask him surprised, having not understood the question.

- I said…card? –

The shrieking and even more annoyed, if possible, voice repeats.

- Ah…no…I forgot it. –

I then answer even without looking for it in my bag, having already checked before, when I was looking for the coin earlier.

- Too bad, there were great sales. –

the cashier tells me.

I limit to shrug off my shoulder. It will be for the next time.

- she can use mine. –

the same deep voice that grounds me on the spot says.

I turn around and fix my gaze into his. There's a glimpse of the malice of before, but it's just an hint.

He moves forward a bit to give the card to the cashier and, to do so, I find him close, too close. I can even smell his scent.

- Edward Cullen? –

The cashier asks giving his card back.

I haven't managed to unlock my eyes from him, given the proximity of his body to mine.

Some seconds before he distance himself, his gaze locks with mine and it seems to me they're making some kind of unspoken question; something on the line of "and you are?".

So I do what every civil human being would. As soon as he distance from me to allow me to breathe decently, I extend my hand.

- Bella Swan. –

he smiles. I've figured the question.

He stretches his hand and holds strongly to mine, as to combat that strange power that now I believe he feels to when we touch.

- Pleasure to meet you, Bella. Now you're not a stranger anymore. –

I look at him puzzled; what a strange thing to say.

I'm thinking he's going to release my hand but, instead, he pulls me lightly through him until his lips are just centimetres from my ear.

- Since you're not a stranger anymore, now… can I come freely? –

I open my eyes wide.

I think about my malicious word game of before and how I felt an horny adolescent.

Well, it seems like I found bread for my teeth.

And what better place for something like this if not the one where the bread is sold?

I turn to the cash register and take the pen generally used to validate coupons or something else, the one attached to the register with a little chain you know, and I move it closer to Edward's palm, still linked with mine, and I write my cell phone number on it.

- I hope, Edward, I hope so. –

Fin