Filed to story: Penny and Navy Brother Asher
He makes a face like he’s already personally offended they haven’t called.
“They’d be fools not to pick you,” he says, like it’s a fact.
I feel my cheeks warm a little.
It’s stupid, how much it means to hear someone say that without a shred of doubt.
He glances down at my cart, eyebrows lifting.
“Essentials, huh?”
I look at the pitiful collection of bananas, bread, yogurt, and chocolate.
“Balanced diet,” I say gravely.
He laughs a real laugh, loud enough to make a couple of nearby shoppers glance over
Without warning, he starts pulling things out of his own cart and dropping them into mine.
A jar of pasta sauce.
A bag of frozen veggies.
A pack of chicken breasts.
Garlic bread.
“There,” he says, dusting his hands off like he just did something heroic. “Now it’s a real dinner.”
I blink at the growing pile.
“Mr. Hayes-
“Nonsense,” he says before I can finish. “You’re basically family.”
My throat tightens a little around the word, but I push past it.
“Thank you,” I say instead, meaning it more than he probably realizes.
He smiles, warm and easy.
“Actually,” he says, like he just thought of it, “you free tomorrow night?”
I nod automatically before remembering I’m supposed to check my nonexistent social calendar first.
“Good,” he says. “Come over for dinner. No arguments.”
“I don’t want to impose-” I start, but he waves me off.
“You’re not imposing. You’re invited.”
It’s said with such simple certainty that I can’t argue, even if part of me wants to.
I smile.
I’d love to. Thank you.”
He squeezes my shoulder, steering his cart toward the checkout.
“See you tomorrow, kiddo.”
I watch him go, my cart now twice as full, and feel a strange, stupidly happy warmth settle low in my stomach.
There’s something weirdly satisfying about a completely unscheduled day.
A fast, it felt wrong-like I was skipping school in missing a doctor’s appointnient i forget about.
But after about two hours of pure, guilt-free fredom, I decided that I might actually he built for this
Not the lines
I’ll always be a creature of ballet, structure, relentless perfectionism – but the fury of choosing to be proactive instead of being loved into 117
Yeah, I could get used to that,
After I got back from the grocery store, I spent the better part of the afternoon cleaning the house.
Not like, surface wipe down the counters” cleaning
Actual cleaning.
The kind where you realize dust bunnies have been waging a secret rebellion under your bed for months and you’re just now discovering the mprising
By the time I collapsed onto the couch, victorious and only slightly covered in lemon-scented cleaning spray, it was past three.
So I pulled out my laptop, cranked through some homework that had been haunting the bottom of my backpack like a cursed relic, and decided that if I was being this productive, I deserved to be a little bit reckless
Which is how I ended up curled under a blanket, binge-watching an entire season of a show I absolutely did not need to start.
Was it a critically acclaimed, emotionally moving, Oscar-worthy production?
No.
It was a messy reality show about people getting married to strangers and fighting over who finished the last Pop-Tat
Zero regrets.
I stretched, yawning, and grabbed my phone off the coffee table, typing out a quick text to Tyler.
What are you up to, superstar?
The answer came almost immediately, which made me grin.
Home Being lazy, You?
Same. Just discovered I’m actually REALLY good at doing absolutely nothing. Might turn pro.
I support your career aspirations 100%.
I smiled, tucking the phone against my chest for a second.
It felt good-this simple, easy back-and-forth.
No pressure.
No weird tension.
Just us
Outside, the pretty, Mue skled day had twined into that soft kind of rainy hare by midafternoon – the kind where you can smell i pavement and hear the soft hiss of tires on the street from three blocks away.
Now, though, it’s different
The tain has picked up, heavy and insistent against the windows, and the sky’s gone from mercest to fall on bruised purple,
Thunder rumbles low and long, like someone diagging a mountains across the ground.
I glance outside and decide, in my professional meteorological opinion, that it looks like the opening scene of mery home movie ever made,
You know, the one where the innocent girl’s alone in a house, watching reality TV, minding her own business, and then-
Bam
Serial killer in the n pantry.
Not today, Satan.
I get up, stretching the stiffness out of my legs, and head for the kitchen.
If I’m going to die dramatically, at least I’ll d do it well-fed
I crank up the TV volume a little first because everyone knows loud noise keeps the demons and serial killers away – and start rummaging -through the fridge.
Veggies first.
I toss a bunch of frozen broccoli and cauliflower onto a baking sheet, drizzle them with enough olive oil to make my shove them in the oven ancestors prout, and
Then I turn to the chicken.
I plop a couple of chicken breasts into a pan, season them aggressively with whatever spices I can reach without risking life and limb (read: salt, pepper, something vaguely Italian-sounding), and set the heat to medium.
The stove sizzles agreeably.
Thunder cracks again louder this time, a sharp whip-crack that makes me jump.
The lights flicker once, twice, like they’re considering giving up entirely.
I pause, hand on the stove dial, staring at the ceiling.