Blue Plaid

Hero

In which Tyson discovers that Stella St.Clare is a superhero.

//

"Hurry the hell up, Stella!" I shouted from my perch on the couch. "At this rate, we're never going to actually leave."

"I would have been ready fifteen minutes ago if someone hadn't decided to spill orange juice all over me," she yelled from inside her bedroom.

I snickered to myself. It had been accident, but the sight of Stella glaring at me whilst covered in juice was really amusing. Turning my head, I looked thoughtfully at Cooper, who was seated on the couch beside me, tugging on the shoelaces of the tiniest pair of Converse I had ever seen.

"Same, bro," I nodded as I watched his tiny fingers, "I don't know how they make them that small either."

"What are you two talking about?"

I looked up to find Stella standing in the den, wearing a loose denim shirt over a black leather skirt and her favorite worn out black biker boots. At first I was confused as to why she had the biggest smirk ever on her face before remember that she had an extremely dirty mind and came in at the completely wrong part of the conversation.

I rolled my eyes and pointed at Cooper's shoes. "We're wondering how you possibly managed to find Converse that miniscule."

Shrugging, she beamed, apparently quite proud of herself. "I have connections."

That I knew. And sometimes it was hard to believe that the same girl who was speechless (a wondrous feat in itself) for ten minutes after meeting Donatella Versace last week also casually texted Cindy Crawford. Stella's world was one I wasn't sure I would ever comprehend.

"You good to go?" I asked as I lifted myself from the couch and reached down to pick up Cooper.

"Yep," Stella replied, turning on her heel to grab the pram from a nearby closet.

I settled Cooper in and buckled him up as Stella retrieved her purse and we were on our way. Keeping our promise to each other, we had decided to begin going on what I had called 'friend dates'. Basically, Stella and I wanted to get to the point where we could behave like normal human beings with each other.

So far, it had been going well. Minimal bickering had occurred and we'd only lost track of Cooper in the park once.

Today, we were going grocery shopping. The kitchen was running appallingly low on pretty much all the necessities and Stella was absolutely hopeless at buying...well, anything, so she'd decided she wanted to come with me in an attempt to learn.

A noble cause. I prayed it didn't end in disaster.

"So how exactly does this work?" Stella asked as we walked along the sidewalk, me slowly pushing Cooper's pram and Stella doing her best to occupy her hands because she never really knew what to do with them. "Do you have like a process for how you buy food?"

It was an interesting question. One I didn't exactly know how to answer. The truth was that it was all a feeling. Half the time, I had no idea what I wanted to make until I got to the shop. Once there, I just kind of knew what to buy. But that seemed too vague to explain, so I just shrugged and said, "Not really. I just go with the flow."

"Nice, Kingsley," she laughed, "Way to make everything more confusing."

I shrugged as we slowed down in front of the shop. "You'll see what I mean when we get inside."

She nodded and bent down to unstrap Cooper. Although we were probably allowed to push him around inside, the aisles were small and he liked walking better anyway. In fact, if Cooper had his way, he'd probably walk all the time.