Scraps - Keep the Change

 “Uh-uh! Nope!” I said loudly and waved my hands in front of me. “I am not going to see some sappy, tear jerking chick flick.”

Jackson nodded in agreement behind me. “No way, no how.”

“Oh, come on, guys!” Sara said with a flap of her hands. 

“Yeah. We’ve been at this for almost twenty minutes already,” Katie sighed and slumped against the rear bumper of my car. “And who are you to bash on chick flicks, Lil? You love them.”

I glared at my wife with narrowed eyes and stuck a hard finger in her chest. “Do not start that here, woman.” I threw both of my hands in the air and looked between Sara and Katie. “And don’t even act like you two didn’t say the same shit to our,” I pointed between myself and Jackson aggressively, “first choice.”

“Yeah,” Jackson barked out in a show of solidarity. We held up our hands and clapped a high five while we continued to stare down our stony faced spouses.

Katie sighed and rolled her eyes before running a hand through her long, bronze locks and twirling the bit at the end. My eyes followed this action instinctively, zeroing in on the way her fingers deftly spun around the silken lock in her grasp. When I looked back to my wife’s face after a moment of staring, I saw that she was smiling in a way that she hadn’t been before. A way that felt like she won somehow.

“Lil,” Katie uttered out in a lower pitch. “I think we can make a compromise.”

“Hm…” I hummed and watched as she covertly ran a finger from her hair to trace the hollow of her neck. My attention was caught again and I found myself licking my lips without even thinking about it. “What?”

Jackson sighed next to me, surely already sensing the eminence of defeat now that we were being divided. Sara, on the other hand, looked both amused and proud as she glanced between Katie and myself. It must have been like watching the snake charmer and the cobra.

“There’s a pretty good animated movie in right now,” Katie said in that soft, enticing voice of hers, that damned finger still tracing the column of her neck. “That’s something we can all agree on, don’t you think?”

“Um,” I uttered and looked up to Katie’s eyes, twinkling with mischief now. 

Alright. You can have this one now. But later… Oh, it’ll be a different story later…

I nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

“What!” Jackson hollered and turned to me like I had just thrown him under the bus. “I thought we were together on this one, man!”

Katie winked at me when I glanced back over at her and that’s all I needed to disagree with Jackson. “Sorry, man,” I told him with an apologetic shrug. “I’m down for a good cartoon though. Aren’t you?”

“I am,” Sara said and threw her husband a smug smile that had him groaning even louder. “And that’s three against one so you’re outvoted either way, Josh.”

“Well, now that we have everything settled,” Katie remarked and bounded forward to grasp onto one of my arms with both of hers before looking up at me with shining blue eyes. “Let’s get candy.”

I chuckled and kissed the top of her head before slipping my arm out of her grasp to sling over her shoulder. “Yeah, alright.” I motioned with my head for Jackson and Sara to follow me into the grocery store we had parked in front of to have our argument. “Come on guys.”

“Seriously, Lil,” Jackson muttered under his breath as he came to walk on my other side. “Where are you balls?”

Oh, he did not. My brain snapped aggressively as I faced Jackson without stopping my forward momentum into the cool, air conditioned building. He’s about to fucking find out where they are. That’s for damn sure.

I dropped my arm from Katie’s shoulder to grab her gigantic purse and wave it for Jackson to see. “You see this big bag, Jax? That’s where my balls are. They got too heavy for me to have them knocking around between my thighs, so I had her hold on to them for me.” I dropped Katie’s bag and stood up to my full height -- which was about a half foot shorter than my best friend -- before looking Jackson in the eye with a steely stare. “You know. ‘Cause she’s got that big ass purse. That’s actually big enough to hold them.”

Katie looked a bit mortified. Sara seemed even more amused. Jackson only looked pissy.

“Alright, I get it. You’re a badass,” Jackson threw his hands up with a sigh and muttered. “Sheesh.”

I laughed and shoved Jackson hard. “Oh, come on. Stop being such a baby. I’ll buy you some chocolate. Whatever you want.”

Jackson toed the ground and after a second a smile surfaced on his face as he came around. “Okay. Fine. But you’re getting me two boxes, not just one.”

“Fair,” I said and punched his arm before leading him and the girls down to the candy aisle.

I watched around as the three of them argued and agonized over the choices while I hung back. There wasn’t a lot of appeal in the whole movie candy thing for me. Honestly, I didn’t have much of a sweet tooth at all.  The theater charged an arm and a leg for a box of candy though, so I didn’t care in the slightest if they were sneaking in their own snacks; even if I wasn’t going to eat them. 

Especially ‘cause I’ll be spending more than an arm and a fucking leg on popcorn… I thought cynically when I finally rounded up the others and led them down the register, throwing boxes of candy as I went. About damn time, guys. Take forever, huh? Swear to God if I miss the coming attractions ‘cause of these yahoos… Without ever looking up, I pulled the wallet out of my back pocket and a ten from it in preparation. I was ready to get out of here.

“Lil?” the cashier said suddenly, pulling me out of the murder fantasies I was conjuring at the possibility of missing the previews. 

I stared at the girl in front of me, tall and blonde and oddly familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to the face. “Yes,” I said slowly. 

“Oh, you have a lot of nerve showing up like this,” she said in an angry mutter as she ran my purchases through the scanner with an aggressive jerk of her hand.

“Buying candy?” I asked in serious confusion. While I spoke, Katie buried her head into my side, a red flush coming across her face. “I don’t know what your problem is, lady. I’m buying it here so I can rip the theater off, not the other way around. You should be thanking me.”

“What?” she asked in disbelief.

“Yeah!” I remarked, feeling indignant now. “Acting like you know me or something. What the fuck?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” the cashier asked me with a slack jawed face. “You have to be, right? You’re fucking with me.”

“Hell no!” I said and laughed once, a sound that held no humor whatsoever. “In fact, I wanna see your manager.”

“You seriously forgot me,” the girl deadpanned, blinking more than she needed to surely. “Again?”

She stared at me in stunned surprise, as if I had just grown a second head, while the display on the register came up as eight seventeen. There was silence from every party involved as I held this woman’s gaze with an icy glare. Katie was the one to finally make a move, snatching the bill out of my hand and slapping it on the counter before pushing me forward and grabbing the bag full of sweets.

“Thank you, Tatum,” Katie muttered and continued to push me out of the door while I began to laugh uncontrollably.

“Wait. That was…” I stammered for a few moments as I allowed my wife to shove me.

“The girl that you dated,” Jackson finished for me with a point to Katie.

“Wait,” Sara said and looked at Jackson and then Katie curiously. “I thought you dated Tatum, Lil.”

“She did,” Katie grumbled quietly. “We both did.”

A burst of laughter ripped through me as Katie groaned in frustration and tried even harder to push me out of the grocery store. Quite unsuccessfully now, I might add. I turned around right before I was out the door to see a dumbstruck Tatum staring off in shock. 

“Hey Tatum!” she turned to me, still in a stupor, and I smiled back widely before dropping a wink. “Keep the change.”