Who: Joel & Keegan What: Grocery shopping Where: Grocery store When: Wednesday morning 2/17 Rating: food ---------------------------------------------- After getting off her shift at six in the morning, Keegan rode home on her bike as usual. She locked it up once she got home and went inside the house with her gear bag still slung across her shoulders from the ride, yawning the whole way. She made it just to the door of her room before Takraw had come bounding from Brand’s room where she had been, presumably, sleeping. Keegan blindly reached down to scratch the top of her head and behind her ears as she crossed into her room and pulled her bag off over her head. She pushed the door most of the way closed and started peeling her way out of her uniform as she made her way around the room pulling out running clothes.
It had been a long work day. It had been an extremely frustrating one as well. There had been three different calls that had had a suspicion of child neglect, including one with a five year old who had burnt their hands on the stove top. The stove had old spiral gas burners on it. Both of the kids’ hands palms were covered I third degree burns, to the point that it was obvious someone had forcibly held the child’s hands down onto the burners, possibly as some form of punishment. Those were the kinds of calls that made Keegan want to take her pick axe to the parent’s heads. They made her wonder how Regan ever stayed sane knowing what people did to their kids. They made her want to simply pick the child up and walk them out of the house to take them away from their so-called parents. But she couldn’t. She had to remain professional, cool, collected and calm. Keegan had compartmentalized that call along with the house fire they had rushed to in the middle of the night – they had managed to save four out of five members of the family, pulling them out alive. The fifth, a seven year old, who had crawled under a bed to chase after her cat, had suffocated before they found her. Keegan had found her by chance.
The smoke had been so thick it was impossible to see more than a few inches in front of her face. She had dropped to the floor and groped around under the beds and had found the girl there. With the way she had entered blocked, she had then climbed out the bedroom window onto the porch’s roof and handed the girl down to her coworker’s. While she climbed the rest of the way down, she had already been peeling her protective layers free. She spent twenty minutes, in front of the rest of the family, performing CPR while they were waiting for EMS to arrive but all her efforts and the efforts of the paramedics had been fruitless. The kid was gone.
These were the kinds of things that Keegan thought about on her bike ride home from work. The mental images of them floated through her mind as she tugged on her workout clothes and laced up her runners. By the time she finished tying off her second shoe, the dog was sitting in the hallway outside her door with her leash in her mouth, patiently waiting to join her on her run. That, at least, made her smile a little. “Yeah, c’mon,” She said as she pushed her door open and leaned over to scratch behind Takraw’s ear. She held her hand out for the leash and when the dog dropped it, she reached for her collar and hooked the leash onto it. “Okay, let’s go,” she said in a cheerful, but quiet, tone since it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet.
It was, however, almost eight thirty by the time the two returned. She crouched down after they stepped inside and unhooked the dog’s leash before hanging it up by the door and then she went to the kitchen to fill up the dogs’ bowl with water. Her next mission was to grab the old coffee can from the cabinet marked ‘Groceries’ to see how much she’d have from there to go shopping and how much she’d need to put on her card. She was surprised when she pulled it open to find a number of twenties in there when it was usually stuffed with wrinkled ones, fives and tens.
“I thought I’d make a dent in paying you back for once,” Joel’s voice made Keegan jump.
She nearly dropped the can and fumbled with it a couple of times before she had it under control again. “Shit,” she exhaled as her heart kept racing. She reached into the can and pulled out the cash to count the total. At least she could use just that for groceries this week. That was something. “You’re gonna need to throw a lot more in there to ‘make a dent,’” she murmured as she counted the bills.
“Gotta start somewhere,” Joel shrugged. “Are you going shopping now?”
Keegan finished counting and then put the lid on the can and put it back. She stacked the bills together and folded them in half. “Yeah,” she nodded. “I’m just gonna grab my jacket and wallet before I go. If you have something you want, write it on the list on the fridge in the next two minutes or no dice,” she said as she walked toward her room. She tugged an old hoodie over her head and tucked the cash into her wallet. Her phone and the wallet went into the front pocket of the hoodie and she grabbed her keys on her way back toward the kitchen.
“Can I come with you?” Joel asked. He had the grocery list in his hand already and had been reading it until Keegan approached.
Keegan fixed him with a dubious expression. “Why?” her brow furrowed. She wondered for a moment if he wanted to get in a few ‘this is your fault,’ punches to fill in whatever gaps Brand had missed back in January. Keegan wasn’t sure her brain could handle that after the work day she had.
Joel shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “Why not? It’ll get done faster. You’re probably tired, right? Faster we get done the earlier you can go to sleep?”
Keegan narrowed her eyes a moment. She knew he had to be up to something, she just didn’t know what it could be. With a sigh, she shook her head. “Fine,” She mumbled. She went to the dry erase board on the fridge that was next to the notepad that she usually kept a running grocery list on and wrote a note to let Brand know she had taken Takraw along on her run and that she and Joel had gone to the store.
After locking the front door behind them, she tossed her keys to Joel. “If you’re coming along, you’re driving,” she said. She would have been fine driving herself but she might as well use him if he was going with her. The ride was a quiet one and Keegan felt tense at the idea of Joel trying to think of something to say to her or to ask her. She could tell there was something he wanted to say or ask or whatever, but he seemed to be unable to conjure words so she just kept seeing his mouth open out of the corner of her eye and soon after it would close again. She actually thought it was kind of funny that a person who made their living off of assembling words together, couldn’t do so on the fly in conversation with their roommate.
She waited until they were at the store and he was walking next to her with his hands in his pockets while she pushed the cart along. Joel sent his eyes everywhere but at Keegan. She couldn’t take it anymore. “Why don’t you save us the tense silence and just say whatever it is you want to say?” She asked.
Joel blinked and looked over at her. “I don’t…” he shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
Keegan rolled her eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re being a jackass or you’re just that incapable of expressing your own feelings that you can’t communicate with the outside world unless it is through fiction.” She sighed.
Joel frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Keegan sighed again. “You asked to come grocery shopping. You hate grocery shopping. You buttered me up before this request with money for groceries because you know you’ll eat your way through all of my fresh fruits and vegetables and other health foods. Then you spent the entire car ride here opening your mouth like you were going to speak and then closing it again – from the corner of my eye you looked like ones of those animatronic singing bass fish that annoying people hung on their walls.” She spelled it out. “So…why don’t you just say whatever it is and let it out?” She arched her eyebrows at him.
Joel was quiet. He frowned as he continued to walk next to her, stopping whenever she stopped to grab something.
Keegan let out a frustrated sigh when he didn’t speak again. “See. You’re doing it again.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Joel argued.
“Exactly,” Keegan shoved his arm. “That’s the problem.”
“Considering that most of the things I do annoy you, I should think you would be please,” Joel muttered.
Keegan threw her head back and let out an exasperated groan toward the ceiling. “Why are men so freaking dumb?” she asked the heavens.
“Women are no picnic themselves,” Joel retorted.
Keegan shook her head. “Joel…please stop avoiding shit and just come out with it already. I just got off of a twenty-four hour shift and it was a really rough one. I’m too exhausted to do mental gymnastics with you,” she was almost pleading with him. Almost.
Joel frowned as they rounded the corner to the dairy section and Keegan stopped the cart by the eggs so she could start looking through cartons to find two that didn’t have any cracked or broken eggs in them. “How did you know?”
“Know what?” Keegan asked without looking up from her inspection work.
“That Brand had feelings for me?” Joel asked. Okay, that made Keegan stop inspecting eggs. She looked over at Joel with a momentarily blank expression on her face. “Did he tell you?”
Keegan felt the panic creep in. Brand had more or less verbally laid her out on New Year’s day for telling Joel that Brand had feelings for him without talking to Brand about it. She had had good intentions. It had been painful, watching the way Joel kept trying to play Brand’s wingman for dudes after Brand had openly confessed his bisexuality. Joel’s obliviousness had been so bad, Brand had actually snapped at him. She felt like she had to say something. She had not meant to cause either of them harm. Okay, she maybe had wanted to smack Joel for being so oblivious but she wanted to slap him for a lot of reasons on a regular basis usually.
“No,” She shook her head. “He didn’t tell me. And I shouldn’t have told you without talking to him about it,” She said as she grabbed two of the cartons of eggs and put them into the top part of the cart. She was careful to watch Joel as they moved down the wall of refrigerated foods towards the yogurt/cottage cheese/sour cream section. Keegan glanced at the list and then stepped from the cart to go and grab a couple of quart sized containers of Greek yogurt to put in the cart.
"So how did you know?" Joel asked. "I get how you knew before he said so about sexuality stuff, because...well you're you-"
Keegan grimaced at Joel and cut him off, "What's that supposed to mean?"
Joel shook his head and waved a hand defensively. "I don't mean...I just mean that...because the whole birds of a feather thing, right? So you knew because you are. I just mean I get that-,"
"Oh for fucksake," Keegan leaned her head back and groaned again. "You're such a jackass," she sighed. Part of it was tinged with the tone she used when her siblings exasperated her. Part of it was just disbelief that Joel could be so dense about this. "How did you not know?"
"I knew that part," Joel defended. "I just didn't say so because I didn't think he was comfortable with it or with telling anyone, so" he shrugged. "I waited for him to actually tell me," he slipped his hands back into his pockets and Keegan almost felt bad for her sarcasm so far after she saw the strained look on his face. He looked almost like a wounded puppy. No, that wasn't right. Brand looked like a wound puppy. Joel just looked like the kind of like a hound dog at the moment. His eyes were dark and if he had dog ears they would be the floppy kind that were too long for his body and so he tripped on them all the time when he tried to run. "I just...wanted to know how you knew he had feelings for me, specifically."
Keegan sighed. Again. She grabbed a couple of items form the list and marked them off then tucked her pen behind her ear and started pushing the cart again. "I knew because I have eyes," She answered. "And they were open." Unlike Joel's, apparently.
Joel frowned. "I'm not blind," He muttered.
"About this, you were," Keegan shrugged. "Is that seriously all that's bothering you about the whole situation?"
"No," Joel answered as they walked through the store.
Keegan waited, counting slowly to ten in her head, then said. "And?"
"What?"
"Jesus, do you talk to your agent and publicist like this?" Keegan asked. Joel shrugged. "How Clare and Brooke don't strangle you all the time, I will never know."
"I'm just trying to figure things out," Joel muttered.
Keegan felt bad again, this time because Joel looked positively forlorn. She wasn't used to him suddenly letting his guard down and drifting away from sarcasm for spare moments. "It's pretty simple, really. Either you have feelings for him too and you accept that and see where it leads," she said. "Or, alternatively you don't have feelings for him, in which case...you freaking rip the band-aid off and tell him already because right now all you're doing is stringing him along and that's almost as cruel as the wingman shit," Keegan frowned.
Joel's shoulder dropped a bit and he was silent. Joel being silent was kind of unnerving considering he was usually spouting off ridiculous shit or snark pretty much constantly. Keegan just wanted the two of them to figure their shit out so she could stop being stuck in the middle.
"Do you have feelings for him?" She asked, exasperated and unable to mask it because she so tired and waned to finish this list so they could go home. She looked at Joel. Was he blushing?? She blinked and Joel shrugged. "Really? That's it? A shrug?"
Joel sighed. "Why can't anyone accept that this is a new and huge idea for me? It's not just easy going and natural as it is for the two of you and your sister and her girlfriend and whoever else," He blurted in frustration as he scratched the back of his head.
Keegan tried a different tactic. "What happened when you went home over the holidays?" She asked.
Joel looked away and started fidgeting more. "Nothing," He replied hastily. "Why? What did he tell you?"
Keegan rolled her eyes. "You guys are seriously the worst about putting me in the middle and then not wanting me there." She frowned. "He didn't tell me anything, just that 'something' happened and whatever it was complicated things, so. What was it?"
Joel was definitely blushing now. "Forget it," He sighed and looked ahead as they walked.
"No, c'mon," Keegan gave his shoulder a whack with a back of her hand. "What happened? Did he kiss you?"
Joel's cheeks flushed even more as he thought about what had happened when they were home in NY for Christmas.
"He did, didn't he??" Keegan asked.
"No, he didn't," Joel replied right away with a shake of his head and wave of his hands as he pulled them from his pockets. "I mean, we did, but he didn't, I mean-,"
"You kissed him back, didn't you?" Keegan asked, her eyebrows hiking up. Clare had certainly compared them ot Regan and Remy a lot. She had assumed a kiss of some kind happened, at the very least. Looking at the way Joel was turning into a tomato in front of her, the pieces started to click into place in her brain. She inhaled a gasp and Joel averted his eyes. "You asshole, what did you do??" She gasped in a whisper-shout, shoving his arm.
"Nothing, I didn't," Joel cleared his throat. "It was nothing. I mean it wasn't...shit," He sighed. "It's complicated."
Keegan reached out and shoved Joel's shoulder again. "Did you hook up with him? Seriously? After what I said? Not knowing how you felt? What's wrong with you? How could you use your best friend like that?!" She shoved his arm again. "God you're so dense!"
"I didn't do it on purpose!" Joel protested.
Keegan threw her hands up and her head back in frustration. "Shut up," She waved her hand. "I don't want to hear anymore. Too much has already been said. I don't want to be in the middle. Brand doesn't want me in the middle. The two of you...you in particular, need to figure your shit out and settle this shit. You're hurting your best friend and you're apparently being a big selfish ass about it!" She glared at him and then looked at the list. She tore off the bottom of it and gave it to him. "Go get these. I'll finish this part," She motioned to the list. "I want to get done and go home and sleep." Her head was pounding.
Joel frowned at the list and Keegan almost felt bad sending him away. She was going on almost thirty hours with little more than one or two half naps here and there. She wanted to get done, go home, pt everything away, get a shower and collapse in bed. Her roommates could figure their shit out without her butting in. She shouldn't have had this conversation with Joel at all. And now she didn't know if she should tell Brand about the conversation to boot. Keegan was exhausted.