[Teen and New Adult Romance]
"Life as a trailer trash kid is nothing short of shitty, especially when the love of my life pretends that I don't exist."
River wants two things: to get out of Gladstone and to be with the boy from her childhood. With h...
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The mall was a lot more fun than I'd expected. Knowing that Kaleb was giving me the freedom to get whatever I wanted excited me, but I was still a girl who lived on a tight budget, and most of the clothes at the mall were way overpriced. Budgeting was part of who I was. I didn't know how to splurge.
Kaleb had to force me to go into the expensive stores to buy name-brand clothes. One set of jeans that I liked was over a hundred dollars, which had freaked me out, but Kaleb made me try them on, along with a bunch of overpriced shirts. He even urged me to get some skirts, shorts, halter tops, shoes, and sandals. My body wasn't much to look at, but the expensive clothes highlighted my best curvy attributes.
Kaleb offered to take me to Victoria's Secret, but when we got there, I only wanted to browse the fragrance section. When he couldn't get me to look at their array of overpriced lingerie, he found a female associate and told her I needed new bra and panty sets. It had been embarrassing, but it was much less shameful when the woman started helping me. I walked out of there with several new pairs of underwear and a handful of bras.
After that, he took me to eat at the Olive Garden. It was my first time there, which was a big deal. I left knowing that bread sticks anywhere else were just gross.
After we ate, Kaleb took me to the grocery store, and I was legit in heaven. He bought me anything I looked at and any snack I hadn't tasted. By the time we left the grocery store, the cart was overflowing with goodness.
I tried to remember the last time my mother had taken me to the grocery store and could only seem to pull up one time in middle school, which was pure negligence on my mom's part.
"When I have kids, I'm gonna make sure they eat three meals a day," I said as Kaleb drove us to my apartment.
"When I have kids, I'm gonna let them be friends with anyone," Kaleb said.
"Me too," I said, thinking about the day, far in the future, when I had kids. "I'm going to make their food too, and I don't mean throwing something in the microwave. I want to learn how to cook good home cooked meals."
"You can start practicing. You got ingredients to make hamburgers and spaghetti." Kaleb glanced over at me with a big grin on his face. The way he looked at me made those familiar flutters come alive. "I can get you a crock pot someday. I've had some bomb ass roasts from a crock pot, and it's super easy."
"You don't have to do any more for me. You've already done way more than enough," I started laughing, thinking about a crock pot. Now that he mentioned it, I wanted one.
"I'll stop when I want to. You deserve to have a good life. This stuff is just the basics." Kaleb turned down my new driveway. "And I'm still going to get you that game system. We didn't have time today, but you can bet on it."
I smiled in excitement. "That'll be fun."
Once we had all the bags of clothes and groceries unloaded from his truck, I started putting everything away. A sense of empowerment took me over as I stuffed cereal boxes into the cabinet. I had my own food now, and my cupboards were nearly full. I'd never felt so good in my life.
