Page 10 of Everything After

“I… Whichever one you like is fine,” I say.

Bella stands there for a moment, watching me. “Fuck it,” Bella says, prompting me to look up. “We’ll get both. Bex is paying anyway.”

“Bella…” I say, trailing off. “I can’t let him…”

“The man owns two businesses, three motorcycles, and more plain white T-shirts than any man should ever be able to legally possess. He’ll survive,” she laughs.

“You’re wild,” I laugh, and she grins as we move on.

Shopping somehow becomes… easier. Bella stops, but she doesn’t ask me what I want. Instead, she just holds things up.

“Too itchy?” she asks, and I shake my head.

“Too tight?”

“A little…” I answer.

“Would you actually wear this?” she asks, holding a random yellow shirt up.

“Yeah…”

Into the cart it goes. Item after item, she just asks one question, decides, and then moves on. This feels manageable.

We stop at the wall of shampoo, and I freeze. There are dozens of bottles. Different scents. Different brands. Different colors. Bella picks two. “Vanilla or coconut,” she asks.

I stare at them, and my chest feels tight. “I…” I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know. He always bought shampoo. I never paid attention to what it smelled like. Bella watches me for a second before quietly placing the vanilla bottle in the cart. “I didn’t choose?”

“Nope, but you looked at the vanilla one first.”

“Oh…”

A few stores later, I find myself reaching toward a charcoal hoodie. It’s oversized and soft. It’s the kind of hoodie I would’ve stolen from Mason when I was seventeen. Before my fingers even touch it, I pull my hand back. Bella reaches over me and snatches it off the rack. “I was just looking,” I sigh.

“And now we are buying,” she says, tossing it into the cart before I can argue.

“I feel bad,” I say as we walk.

“Why?”

“Making Beckett spend all this money on me,” I explain.

“Honey, he’s probably more excited about buying you new books than clothes,” she snorts.

“Books?” I ask.

“Mhmm,” she muses, pointing to the new Kindle sitting in the cart. With it is a bright pink, glittery case. “You still read, right?”

“I… Anthony said it made me antisocial,” I explain. “I don’t know if I’ve read a book in… years.”

“You used to always have a book in your hands,” she says.

“Yeah…”

“You would sit in the shop while those idiots worked and ignored the rest of us,” she says, making me smile.

“I don’t need it,” I protest.

“I know.”