Big shopping.

I would start working at the hotel in about a week, so since I stopped working at the coffee shop, it meant that I had that Saturday free to go shopping with the girls at the home improvement store. Mom was taking care of Cake and the dogs (mostly the dogs) so I had the afternoon free.

I went to pick up everyone but Diana and Sarah since they were really out of the way. They drove in their own cars and we met at the store. And I admit I was pretty excited about this shopping trip.

I hate shopping for clothes, but home improvement stores are actually kind of fun. There’s always plenty of things I know I’ll never need but still wish I had. Now I actually had to pick some of those. Furniture, flooring, lighting… It was a really good thing we were going in with a plan. And a list. Alice made a list. I love my girls so much.

It was a really big store, too. Wide, long aisles with variety up the wazoo. Hopefully we’d get most of the shopping done there and not have to look in other stores to find what we needed. Although Mark’s dad was a carpenter, so I wanted to commission a few things from him. Mark had shown me his work and his stuff looked better than store-bought furniture. I was thinking of leaving most of the library to him.

…

STILL feels weird thinking on this scale.

Anyway, we prioritized the stuff the construction company needed figured out early. Floors, walls, windows, doors, etc. We walked the aisles together, looking and considering everything.

“How about double doors for the entrance?” Alice asked. “It’ll make getting everything inside easier.”

“It should look good, too,” Grace agreed.

“Oh! How about these ones? They have windows so it’ll be better for lighting, no?” Mila suggested.

“Yeah, but I’m not so sure about windows in the front door,” Sarah said.

“Why? Not like we’d have neighbours peeking inside to worry about,” Mila argued.

“Yeah, but…”

“How about these?” Diana suggested, pointing to a set of sturdy, dark wooden doors with small windows of textured glass at the top.

“Yeah, I like those,” Noelle said.

Sarah and Mila looked at each other and both nodded. I liked those too, so we wrote down the item ID and took a picture of them to add them to the list.

As we kept walking, Alice began to walk right next to me and casually held my hand. I interlocked fingers with her and we shared a quick smile before continuing. Not long after, Sarah held my other hand and I was happy to walk with the two of them… until I realized something and suddenly got uncomfortable.

“Um…” I let go of both their hands and took a couple of quick steps forward to get away.

“Woah, what happened?” Alice asked.

“Sorry! Sorry! That just… It felt a little weird?” I said with a very sheepish smile.

“Weird? What, did it hurt your manly pride or something?” Sarah teased.

“Not my manly pride, but my… adult pride? Adulthood? I just suddenly felt like a kid being walked by his two moms,” I said with a laugh, knowing very well how stupid that sounded.

“Oliver, you’re ridiculous,” Sarah told me.

“Yeah, I have to agree there,” Alice said, chuckling. “That’s a really weird thought to have.”

“Is it? Let me check,” Diana said, getting between Alice and Sarah and holding both their hands as they continued walking.

The far taller Diana walking hand-in-hand with the two girls certainly made for an image other shoppers couldn’t help but stare at. A single minute later, it was Alice and Sarah who let go of Diana’s hands.

“Okay, no, I get it now…” Alice said, giggling shyly.

“I was the one feeling like a kid there…” Sarah admitted.

“Ah, so who’s ridiculous now?” I asked them.

Diana just laughed, and I had a strong hunch that she had done that with that exact purpose.

“Mmm…” Mila hummed in thought for a moment. “Sarah, hold his hand. Alice, grab onto his arm.”

“Oh,” the two girls exclaimed. They did as suggested and… Well, it didn’t feel weird anymore. Actually, it felt pretty good. Especially Alice’s boobs against my arm.

“You really are weird, Oliver,” Noelle told me, giggling.

“No, no,” Mila said. “Look, admit it. We girls can be pretty vain, right? We want to look good and be told we look good.”

“...”

None of the others denied it.

“Oliver is humble and soft-spoken, even now he still doesn’t talk all that much or says everything he thinks, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his pride,” Mila told them, arms crossed and frowning. “All men do. They want to be cool, be looked up to and be relied on. The worst you could say to a man is to call him lame.”

“...”

I don’t know if ALL men feel the same, but Mila sure did hit the nail on the head for me. That really had been purely a matter of ‘this looks kind of lame’ and I felt embarrassed. Stupid, yeah, especially considering I was holding hands with two of my girlfriends, but… but Mila didn’t begrudge me for it. She understood it and accepted it. It… It made me happy. It also made me feel even dumber for feeling embarrassed in the first place.

“Mila?” Grace said. “Do you want an iced coffee? I’ll buy you an iced coffee.”

“Hm? Sure, I’d love an iced coffee right now.”

I felt Sarah’s grip on my hand tighten while Alice planted a soft, tender kiss on my shoulder. They were quiet, but I think they were taking Mila’s words to heart. I don’t think it was all serious, but they still did.

We walked the aisles some more. We went down the list little by little, and even an hour in we barely had 20% of the list ready. We weren’t in a hurry and we were having fun, so we were happy to take our time.

At one point, though, we happened to run into a familiar face entirely by chance. The familiar face of someone I neither hated nor liked. He stared at me like he wasn’t sure what to think of, either, but our eyes had made contact and we could no longer pretend we hadn’t seen each other.

It was Eric, the drummer from the music club.

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