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“You know they sell white button ups like that across the street at Walmart?”
A new shirt? Was I really stuck trying to pass off a new shirt as ‘cleaned’?
“Or you can wait until Saturday.”
“Thanks!” I called, already heading out the door.
Walmart was a bit of a walk, and it happened to be over ninety degrees in our Mississippi humidity, so I was sweating my rear off before I stepped through the air conditioned sliding doors. If I was smart, I would've taken my car, but frantic insanity had me running on foot while I talked to Mom.
Taking a few steps in, I had to pause and orient myself, because let’s be honest, I had no idea where the men’s section was. I mean, I’d gotten my fair share of clothes there, not too proud to sport Walmart brand while I was trying to save for tuition, but I’d never had a real boyfriend and I didn’t have a brother, sooo…
Right, the men's section.
I went to the women’s section first, positive that the men’s clothes couldn’t be too far.
And I was right. In the process of giving myself a pat on the back, I strolled through each section, looking for button up shirts. There was a tiny area, only maybe three feet wide, that was full of shirts. In that section, was a singular white button up in several sizes.
Oh shit! What size was he?
I frantically opened the stained shirt, finding only a ‘Proper Cloth’ tag on the neck. Further down, I saw another tag on the seam down the side and saw an odd set of numbers there. Holding it out, I assessed it against what my dad’s shirts looked like, and it seemed darn close. Large? Ok, I could manage that. Crossing fingers that I was right
The shirts in front of me were also singularly marked small through XXXL. I grabbed the one marked L and hightailed it toward the register. Then I remembered that I needed some more bread, so I turned myself right back around and got the groceries I needed since I was at Walmart, anyway and I didn’t want to come back anytime soon.
By the time I got home, I gave myself a little bit of breathing room, happy that I’d gotten the chore done. My roommate Clea was there, going through a thick textbook when I walked into our apartment.
“Girl, I was wondering when you’d get back. It’s your night to cook,” she said without looking up.
I grinned.
“Don’t worry, I got this. I stopped by the grocery store and picked everything up.”
“What’re you making me?” she asked, finally tapping her highlighter against the page as she looked up at me.
“Your chef de cuisine shall make you a well loved special,” I told her, enlisting my horrifyingly bad French accent. “Fromage on top of perfectly toothsome noo-dawls.”
Clea giggled at me, then sighed.
“Mac and cheese again?”
“Sounds better when you say it with an accent,” I tried.
Yeah, I was bored of the same old stuff as she was, but it didn’t matter. Neither of us had the money for good food, nor did we have the kitchen to cook anything worthwhile.
“Extra milky?” she asked.
My roommate liked her mac with extra milk until it was practically mac and cheese soup.
To each their own, but…yuck.
“I’ll milk your bowl, but I’m not ruining the whole pan of it!” I told her, like I always did.
She just waved her hand in dismissal before going back to her homework.
Shoot, I needed to work on my homework, too. Right after I took a shower to get rid of all that sweat.
I pulled the white shirt out of the bag and removed all the little pins and tissue, then I laid it over a chair to try and get out the little fold lines all over the thing. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice. And even if he did, he got a freaking brand new shirt out of it.
“Do I want to know?” Clea asked while I ran my fingers over the rough cotton.
