Dancing Around // peter parker

19

I pushed the cart only to stop it when Peter put a tub of ice cream in. I reached for it only for him to smack my hand away. "It's cookies and cream," he told me as if that made it alright.

"I hate cookies and cream," I said.

He squinted his eyes at me for a moment before he shook his head. "No, you don't."

"What do you mean 'no I don't'? I do. I hate it."

"When's the last time you had it?"

I thought back to when I was in middle school. The face of my father flashed in my head. "It's been a while," I told him.

"You just forgot how amazing it is."

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever." I pushed the cart a little more, only to stop once again when Peter added a packet of uncooked meat. I quickly put it back, only to meet Peter's eyes wondering what I was doing. "I only buy pre-cooked meat that I can microwave or toss in the oven. I don't know how to cook meat."

He grabbed the packet. "You can learn." He placed it back in the cart.

"No, I can't." I put it back in the bin it was in.

"You can learn anything that you put your mind to it." He grabbed the packet again, but I grabbed his wrist, stopping him from putting it back in my cart.

"I don't want to learn. I'm perfectly fine with pre-cooked meals and using the oven, like the scientist intended it to be," I told him, my hand still around his wrist.

"Marina, you can't keep eating pre-made stuff. It will kill you."

"Maybe that's the goal," I joked.

He rolled his eyes, before looking down at my mostly empty cart. There were only energy drinks, pre-cooked meals, a box of cereal, a gallon of oak milk, and Peter's ice cream. "Look at your cart. It looks kind of pathetic."

"I don't know how to cook," I told him.

"Use youtube."

"I tried. I get frustrated easily and then give up."

His brown eyes looked at me for a moment. "Then I'll teach you," he said, before getting out of my grip and putting the meat packet in my shopping cart. He got behind it, starting to push it towards an aisle.

I followed closely behind. "Fine, but you better make me into a master chief." I stood next to him as he started looking at different things on the shelf.

He kept trying to put something in my cart every couple of minutes and each time, I tried to convince him not to. It was such a struggle. "You need rice," he said as he tossed a bag of white rice into the cart.

"No one's going to eat it. I won't. My mom won't."

"I will."

"Oh, so you're shopping for yourself then? I knew it," I teased. He ignored me, stopping the shopping cart in front of pasta as I rested against the front part of the cart, watching him decide between the pasta like they were college and he was deciding his future. "Hey, Peter, what do you want to do when you grow up?" I asked.

"I don't know yet."

I stood up straight. "What? Really? But you're smart."

He tossed pasta into the cart, before looking at me. "So?"

"So, don't smart people all know what they want in life? Like some childhood dream that they chase after or something?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Not me. I'll probably do something related to science. What about you?"