Until Jinx - Happily Ever Alpha World

“I don’t care, make a mental note of it.” Then, holding the bag of straw up, she wrinkled her nose. “I think this is a waste of money. If you have the custom tissue paper and pink bubble wrap, having normal straw is cheaper and makes the other things stand out.”

Lifting the flap on one of the other boxes, I pointed at the tissue paper. It was metallic rose gold, with my logo—a watercolor painting of a lump of clay on a wheel, with hands that had pink nails pressing on it—sporadically printed across it.

“I think you’re right. The pink bubble wrap was cheap and easy to get, and having the items wrapped up with it and the tissue paper, then being secured by the tape… I think natural colored straw would be better.”

“The pink stuff is boujee.”

I had no idea what that was, but it also didn’t sound wrong.

“I’ve got plain shipping boxes and large labels to put on one side of them, so that’s about it all set up.”

“Do you need a hand packing up orders?” she asked excitedly. For some reason, this was something she looked forward to and was awesome at doing for me.

“Seven.”

Squealing, she clapped her hands together and got to work, laying everything out so that it was close to hand while we were doing it. The whole thing took us roughly two hours to do because there was no rushing packing pottery so that it didn’t break during transit, but we had a blast and laughed the whole time.

After that, we took it out to my SUV, collapsed the seats in the back to make extra space, then did the same in hers, and loaded up both our vehicles to head to the post office.

Small things like that would have triggered me before, and I’d had to get my parents to do the post office runs in Utah, but Maddie had been next to me for all of them since I’d been here. Slowly but surely, the anxiety was lessening, and I was starting to function like a normal human being.

Maybe in a couple of weeks, I’d even be able to do the run on my own?

The thought alone made butterflies flap their wings in my stomach, but I was also kind of excited about them for once in a very long time.

Glaring at the cart, Maddie sneered at the mushrooms I’d just put into it. “Remind me why we’re friends again?”

“Because you couldn’t get rid of me.” I’d promised to make her spaghetti for dinner tonight, but I couldn’t eat it unless it had mushrooms in it.

Our current argument was an old one, but I’d learned just to keep them in big chunks and not to dice them after she’d found one once while she had a mouthful of pasta. One panicked run to the bathroom later and hours of crying and brushing her teeth, and it was a lesson learned.

Following behind me, she started throwing stuff into the front of the cart.

“Can we go to the tampon aisle, please?” she asked sweetly.

I was so focused on what I was reading on the back of a packet of crackers that her tone didn’t register as being strange in any way. I also couldn’t remember how many I had at home, so I figured it wasn’t a bad suggestion to get some while I was out. Dropping the crackers in, I followed behind her, until we stopped when we got to the hell week shelves.

“Why do you think they do so many different types?” I asked her as I searched through them. “Plastic applicator, original applicator, scented, no applicator—which, FYI, makes me want to bleach my hands just thinking about it.”

“A bit like original recipe and extra crispy. What you like, you like, so stick with it because it’ll never let you down. Hey, did you check out the types of pads you can get now?”

I hadn’t, and that was because once a girl was old enough to use tampons, she rarely went back. But I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity now, so I looked over them.

Seeing something that stood out, I squatted down to get a better look. “The wings make it look like a bad version of the Bat-Signal. What’s with the perforation marks on it?”

Leaning over my shoulder, she moved the package closer to our faces so she could see what I meant. “I don’t know. It says ultra-absorbent layer, but I don’t get why it’s perforated.”

Losing interest, she disappeared, leaving me still trying to figure it out. Finally, I came to a decision. “I think that’s just the outline of the special layer they’re marketing.”

Unfortunately, my interest in it had given her ample opportunity to start adding things to the cart—in my section of it. Condoms. Not just a couple of boxes, multiple packages of the things, and the largest ones she could find from every brand.