for you

Part 32

We reached the place after several minutes. 

"That thing is not comfortable" I said as soon as I got off. "Why are we at a grocery store?" 

Ethan simply smiles at me and motions me to come in. A cashier waved at us when he saw us entering. 

"Hello Ethan! Haven't seen you in so long" he smiles. He turns his gaze over to me. "I've never seen you with a girl before" he smirks. "What's this about huh?"

Ethan rolls his eyes. "Mark, this is Ruby. My friend. I brought her here because what better place there is than this exact Trader Joes am I right?"

"You're never wrong" he chuckles. "Well have fun. And don't forget to pay!"

Ethan pulls up a thumbs up and walks towards the back of the store. I followed him. We ended up at the refrigerated section and he takes out a bottle of chocolate milk. 

"What do you like?"

"Definitely not chocolate milk."

"Then what?"

"The normal one." He hums in response and hands one to me. He sat at the corner of this section and started opening his milk. 

I widened my eyes. "What are you doing?"

"Drinking my milk."

"Crazy ass you haven't paid for it yet! Just because your close to that Mark guy doesn't mean you get to have everything in the store without paying first. You're still a customer!"

"Geez, relax a bit" he chuckles. "And it's because I'm close to Mark that I get to have anything I want in the store, as long as I pay for it. And I don't forget to."

"But what if his manager comes out of no where? We're gonna be in trouble."

"Loosen up a bit, Ruby. I've done this a bazillion times and never once got caught. Plus, this isn't a crime unless it's done in secret."

I huffed. "Fine." I sat beside him and opened my milk. 

There was silence between us, an oddly comfortable one. I rested my head against the fridge door and thought about everything and nothing all at once. 

"You know what I want to do?" says Ethan. 

I turned my gaze to him. "What?"

"I wanna learn how to play the piano one day. I wanna get a lazy grey cat and have a music career."

"A music career?" 

"Yeah, I sing. Sorta. Only Hazel has heard it before like once and that's about it. I don't use that voice too much so it's probably really rusty by now. But one day, I wanna be able to play the piano smoothly and perform a song with the love of my life" he smiles to himself. 

"I take back when I said boys don't have emotions. You watched too much love movies that you correlate your dreams and scenes from those movies into one" I laughed. 

"Don't tease me when yours isn't any different. So baddie and rebellious, something you'd never expect from a known dancer and star student." 

"I don't know, maybe it's because I'm so.. tied up and pressured to be this and do this until it makes me wanna break free the most free spirited way possible. I'm sorry if it weirded you out."

"Don't be sorry. It never did anyway. It just made me more intrigued. I don't blame you for feeling like that anyway. I, on the other hand just want to feel loved."

"Hm?"

"Yeah, I wanna date the dream girl and have a loving family and a cat. It sounds cringey but I don't know how else to put it. Sorry if it weirded you out."

We both laugh at my copied phrase. "It didn't. Just made me more intrigued." We laugh again. 

"I guess we can summarise that we're both not what we expected the other to be. And that's okay" I say. 

We spent the rest of our time at the back of Trader Joes, chatting away about the most trivial things yet we made them seem interesting and funny. We laughed until we couldn't breathe, and we frowned at the serious flashbacks we've experienced. 

All at the back of the grocery store.