Authors: Amelia Whitmore
“Brayden!” Ro exclaims, and they both start jumping up and
down together, making me blush even harder. It’s a happy one, though.
“Shut up!” she says once they’re stable again; it’s an
exclamation, not an admonition. “That’s so awesome, An, and he’s so handsome
too!” I laugh, not only at my new nickname, but also at the handsome part.
“Oh, and I forgot to tell you something” I say, grinning. Ro
looks at me with wide eyes. “Spill,” she orders.
“Today, Sam Erickson tried talking to me and actually said
he’s sorry. I basically told him not to feel sorry for me and I think I told
him he had a cold heart,” I tell her proudly, thinking back on the
conversation.
“Holy fuck!” Ro nearly screams, making Jon stick his head
out and give her a dirty look. “I’m so proud of you!” she screams, hugging me.
“Thanks. It was the best thing in the world . . . Well,
almost,” I giggle.
“Who’s Sam Erickson?” Jake asks, walking up beside us to
clock in. He’s always about fifteen minutes late and, if it weren’t for his
excellent customer reviews, I’m sure he’d be fired by now.
“Some guy who did something mean to me last year,” I say
simply, hating to go into detail.
“Aw, good for you!” Liz tells me, smiling her infectious
smile.
A couple of hours pass and I can see the sky getting darker,
even though it’s only about five o’clock. That’s what happens during the winter
in Minnesota. I’ve lived here my whole life, but it’s still surprising. I’ve
been saving my break for when Brayden comes in, anxiously watching the door for
him to appear.
When he finally does, looking amazing in his dark blue jeans
and black button-up jacket with his beanie on top. I realized a couple of weeks
ago that when it’s cold out, he wears a beanie, and any time else, he wears his
green and yellow A’s cap. I quickly go into the staff room to grab my jacket
and pull him back outside. We walk around the side of the building to where
some benches are set up. Nobody uses them in the cold weather, but they’ll do
fine for us.
Brayden laughs and pulls me to a stop, wrapping his arms
against me until I’m up against his body. “Slow down, you didn’t even say hello,”
he says, rubbing his cold nose against mine.
I smile and wrap my arms around his back. “Hi,” I say before
meeting halfway to kiss.
Amazingly, his lips are always warm against mine. It makes
me wonder if my cold kisses feel nearly as good for him as his warm ones do for
me. I pull back and take a deep breath through my nose, before smiling even
wider and saying “You smell like a garage.”
It reminds me of all the times I’ve gone to see Dad at work,
or when he comes in from working on one of our cars, covered with black smears.
He bends his head a bit to sniff himself and says, “That’s
because I just got off work. You don’t mind, do you?”
I shake my head. “Of course not. I actually like it.”
We finish walking over to the tables hand in hand and he
makes me sit with my legs partially on his, our backs against the table. “So,
tell me about what happened,” he says urgently.
I go through it all with him, including the sympathetic
looks and notes I got. Once I finish, Brayden shakes his head. “I can’t believe
he actually apologized.”
“I know. I mean, I guess I appreciate it, but it wasn’t
really appropriate after what he did. If he’d done something like tripped me or
said something behind my back, maybe. But he humiliated me and made it
personal. You can’t just say you’re sorry for something like that and expect
somebody to forgive you.”
“Yeah,” he says with a frown as he rubs my cold hands with
his. Seriously, how does he stay warm when it’s forty degrees out?
“So, anyway, how was your day?”
“It was fine; kinda long though. Especially after you told
me you talked to Sam.”
I smile a little. “Sorry if I worried you.”
“Nah, I wasn’t worried . . . more
concerned about how you’d be feeling,” he admits.
I control my urge to make an “aw” sound. “I’m fine. Really,
I am. It felt really good, actually.”
“Good,” he says, smiling back. It’s almost funny how often
we smile at each other. “So, what are your plans for the rest of the evening?” he
asks.
“Unfortunately, I have some homework I need to finish and I
still need to eat dinner. Luckily, I’m off in an hour. Normally I work until
nine or ten.”
“You wanna get something to eat with me?” Brayden asks with
a compelling smile.
I bite my lip. “I don’t know . . . I do,
but I’ve been falling behind on my homework lately,” I explain.
“What if we grabbed a pizza and worked on our homework
together?” he offers.
“You have homework?” I ask, confused.
He grins, “Didn’t I ever mention that I’m doing online
classes?”
“No, you definitely didn’t,” I tell him, interested. “How do
you manage school when you’re working all the time?” I ask.
“Well, it’s kind of like you, only opposite. I usually work
during the day and do school at night. Only, if I miss a day or something, I
don’t miss out on anything. I can just play the lesson over the weekend and
catch up on what I missed,” he explains.
“Lucky,” I grumble, thinking about how if I miss even one
class I’m behind for a week.
“So, you want to?” he asks again.
I smile. “Yes, absolutely. I would love to be your study
buddy.”
“Study buddies with feelings,” he laughs, teasing gently. I
laugh too.
***
Maybe doing homework with Brayden was a bad idea. He’s a
very distracted boy. For the past thirty minutes, he’s been bouncing his legs
and tapping his pencil nonstop, to the point where I’m ready to punch his
family jewels. “Would you knock it off, please? Do you have ADHD or something?”
I ask, shaking my head in a mixture of amusement and irritation.
“Yeah!” he says, sounding proud that I guessed it.
“Wait, really?”
“Yep.” He’s still bouncing that leg.
“Oh, sorry,” I say, feeling bad.
He grins and gives me a quick kiss on the lips, “I’m not
offended. It’s a title I wear proudly. I mean, it’s not often that somebody can
be hyper and not work but still get special treatment,” he brags.
I roll my eyes. “Slacker,” I tease. “Lena’s got ADD. It’s
kinda sad. She loves art but, unless she takes her pills, she can’t concentrate
long enough to do anything.” Lena had a really hard time in grade school, since
Mom didn’t know what the problem was. Since Lena’s the oldest, Mom had no way
of knowing if every child had such a difficult time with homework, or if it was
just Lena. Eventually, she got tested and has been on Adderall ever since.
“ADD would suck,” he says sympathetically, making me smile.
Only Brayden would look at a condition similar to his and be sympathetic toward
it.
“Yes, it would,” I agree, thinking that even when I have
Brayden mostly figured out, he surprises me yet again.
This morning, Brayden called me and asked if I’d go grocery
shopping with him. Adrienne had plans all day and didn’t have time to shop, so
she asked Brayden. Turns out that the only thing Brayden knows how to buy is
junk food, so I agreed to join him.
Now, I have to be like the mother of a toddler. “Bray, you
can’t expect everybody in your family to want a two-pound bag of fruit loops in
their cupboard. You can get a normal-size box that you can actually eat within
a reasonable amount of time,” I explain to him slowly.
“But it’s such a big bag!” he exclaims excitedly, still
holding the cereal out in front of him with wide eyes.
Note to self: never bring Brayden to a Sam’s Club ever
again. Everything here comes in bulk sizes and it’s cheaper, so I brought us
here. As it turns out, he’s never been to any place like this and is acting
like a kid in a candy store.
“I know it’s a big bag, and when you decide that you’re
going to eat fruit loops and only fruit loops for the rest of your life, we can
get it. Until then, we’re getting a normal amount,” I tell him, pulling the bag
out of his hands and putting it back on the shelf.
The cart is already full of stuff he’d convinced me to let
him have, including a thirty-six pack of Mountain Dew, enough mozzarella sticks
to feed an army, and the largest package of hamburger meat I’ve ever seen in my
life. Around my house, we aren’t allowed to spend money so frivolously on
things we really don’t need, but Brayden assured me that his parents wouldn’t
mind.
“How are you ever going to eat all of this anyway?” I ask
him in awe, shaking my head at the overflowing mound in the cart.
He shrugs. “If I don’t eat it at home, I’ll take it back to
my apartment with me.”
I freeze. “What apartment?”
He tilts his head at me. “You don’t know about my
apartment?”
“How would I know something you never told me?” I ask,
giving him an annoyed look.
He grins, shrugging his arm around my shoulders and urging
me to move again. “You didn’t think I was a twenty-one-year-old guy with a
steady job still living at home, did you?”
I lift the shoulder that’s against the area below his armpit
and grin. “I never really thought about it. Now that you mention it, it does
seem a bit odd.”
He laughs a little. “I live in my own apartment, but a week
or so before I met you, half of it ended up burning down from shoddy wiring.
Since then, they’ve been fixing up everything electrical around the whole building.
It’ll still take another couple of weeks to finish and get things back to how
they’re supposed to look, but once it’s done, I’ll be moving back out,” he
explains.
My eyes widen. “You live in the Craycroft apartment complex?”
He nods, looking confused as to how I know this.
“I used to volunteer in the daycare there over the summers.
When it burned down, they called and let me know that it wouldn’t be reopening.
They’d been looking for a reason to close it for a while, and after the fire,
they’re turning the area into a gym.”
“That’s so crazy!” he says, amused. “We totally could’ve
seen each other before!”
I smile. “Must be fate.”
“But it’s more than just that. I mean, I wouldn’t have even
been at the Fall Fest if I hadn’t been living with my parents. The only reason
I went was because they decided last minute to make it a family day.”
“Oh my god,” I whisper, thinking about all of the
coincidences that have happened thus far. “Your apartment burned down, causing
you to live with your parents. Your parents managed to get you to go to the
Fest. I convinced Ro to join me. Ro gave you my number. You came by the coffee
shop to see Carlos, and found me.” I take a pause and look up at him with wide,
excited eyes. “Brayden, it really is fate.”
“You know, I always thought all that fate shit was, well,
shit. But I guess that fate has a way of surprising all of us,” he says.
“I’m glad,” I say, hugging him to my side.
“Me too,” he agrees, placing a light kiss on my temple.
We continue walking through the store, both of us a bit
distracted by what we’ve just realized, when I see a woman smiling widely at
us. I grin back and nod my head a bit to say hi. Apparently, that’s me inviting
her to have a conversation because she quickly walks over and holds out her
hand. “Hello, I’m Helena Rose,” she tells me confidently.
Brayden and I both share confused looks before we each shake
her hand. “Anna,” I say after Brayden introduces himself.
“I know this must seem strange to you, but I’m a
photographer and I’ve been looking for models for a shoot I had in mind. You
two are virtually perfect and I’d love for you to be a part of it. Here’s my
card, please give me a call after you’ve discussed it,” she says, smiling again
before walking away.
Both of us are staring at her retreating figure with open
mouths. Models? Sure, I could see Brayden doing that, but me? No way.
“Well that was weird,” I say, turning to Brayden.
“Yeah, it was. Seems like a cool idea, though,” he says,
checking out the card she handed us. I look and see that it’s very professional
with a modern edge to it.
“It is a cool idea; too bad we’re not doing it,” I tell him,
beginning to push the cart again.
“Wait, why aren’t we doing it?” he asks me, walking with his
arm around my waist again.
“Um, maybe because I’m definitely not a model?” I say sarcastically,
like it’s obvious.
“Okay. Firstly, quit hating your body. Yes, I realize that’s
easier said than done, but I’m still saying it. I love your body; almost
everybody else loves your body. Believe me, I’ve seen guys checking you out. It’s
obnoxious. Secondly, if she didn’t like your body, she wouldn’t have asked,” he
harrumphs, sounding irritated.
I sigh. “I’m sorry, but I hate getting my picture taken. I
can’t imagine actually modeling for somebody.”
“I’ll be there the entire time; I’m sure it’ll be fun,” he
assures me hopefully.
I look up at him warily. “Fine, but if it’s not, I’m never
kissing you again,” I threaten.
He grins. “That’s okay. We don’t have to kiss to—“ I cut him
off by slapping my hand over his mouth. There are children in this store. He
waggles his eyebrows at me.
“That too,” I say quickly.
He frowns. “But you added that on after. It shouldn’t count,”
he whines.
“Well it does, and you know why?” I tell him confidently.
“Why, dear?” he asks, clearly only to appease me.
“Because I’m the girl. So I’m the boss.”
He starts laughing and says, “Okay, you win. I can’t compete
with your vagina.”
I immediately start blushing, feeling like he’s now thinking
about my, er, private places. He’s laughing even harder as we arrive at the
checkout.
To shop at a store like this, you need to be a member.
Luckily for me, Lena worked here last year and got to add a few family members
to her account. I walk ahead and hand the man my ID card. One thing I really
don’t like about Sam’s Club is that they don’t give you any bags. Even if you
just got small items, you’d have to bring your own bags or carry them in your
arms. It’s annoying when you’re unloading groceries.