Timid Love

1

Eddie's never actually had to buy his own groceries before.

That one fact becomes immediately apparent almost as soon as he's carrying his last box of things into his newly rented student apartment. He managed to push it back a good few days by surviving off cafeteria food on campus and take out purchased with his meager savings left over from the move.

It's not worth draining his savings just to put off going to the store for a few more days and he can't force himself to eat any more take out at this point even if he wanted to.

So, like it or not, it's time for Eddie to face the music.

Or at least that's what he tells himself as he forces himself to actually enter the grocery store and grab a shopping cart with a small sigh of defeat.

It could be worse.

He has to remind himself that it could be so much worse than the anxiety of a short shopping trip.

 He could still be living with his mother. Just the thought of that woman is enough to have him gritting his teeth and clenching his hands all that much tighter around his shopping cart handle. 

He isn't afraid of her like you'd expect.

With all the shit Sonia put him through growing up, you'd expect the poor boy to be terrified of his mother but he isn't and he hasn't been for a long time. Gone are the days of him cowering and taking all the shit she forced down his throat like the terrified little boy he was.

He's not that little boy anymore. 

Eddie's older now and he can see through all the lies and hateful rhetoric she force fed him even more than the pills. It makes him angry, furious even, to remember all the terrible things she did to him over the years but he refuses to let that cloud his mind any longer. 

He won't let that ruin his first official shopping trip for his first ever apartment. 

 So he heads off in the direction of the produce with the shopping list he wrote up this morning in hand and a newfound determination. 

It's not so bad. 

He's beginning to realize that a lot of the things his mother warned him he wouldn't be able to do on his own aren't nearly as bad as she made them seem. 

First it was enrolling himself in college and going through the dreaded financial aid process then it was the anxiety inducing process of finding and signing for an apartment on his move—which doesn't even account for the nerves of moving cross country alone when he hadn't taken more than a 2 hour bus ride by himself before. 

Compared to all that, grocery shopping seems almost peaceful. 

For possibly the first time since he left his house this morning, Eddie allows himself to relax and drop his guard a little. 

It's actually kinda nice. 

The simple task of walking through the produce isles and checking off each item makes it easy to get lost in the monotony of it. He's actually almost enjoying himself simply for the fact that he doesn't have the chance to over think things for once. 

He's crossing off a bag of leeks when he gets distracted. 

Normally, he wouldn't even notice from this distance but he's able to hear and sense things a lot better now that his suppressant dose is lowered. So it's really no wonder when his attention gets stolen by the sound of a small child laughing loudly as two little girls run passed him followed by a playfully growling wolf shifter who he can only assume is their father.