“Depends on whether you’re willing to cooperate or not.”
“Ok, fine, what does this day entail?” he asks, his fingers tracing lazy patterns onto my skin.
“I’m not going to tell you, just know that it’s a surprise, but there will be as many drink and food stops as we need to get through this,” I say with a smile.
I kiss his cheek and wiggle out of his grasp.
“You have half an hour to get ready,” I say. Mocha lets out a little bark to say,Yeah, Dad,and follows me out of the room.
We go downstairs, and I let Mocha out. I make sure that he has everything that he could possibly need before we leave.
Beckett doesn’t take very long getting ready. I hand him his, old man, plain ass black coffee, in a to-go cup, then grab the paper sack that I put our breakfast in.
“We are taking my car,” I say, pulling him towards the front door, with more enthusiasm than necessary.
“Ok, slow down,” he complains, tugging on my arm to slow me down. “You’re worse than Mocha on a leash,” He teases, making me realize that I could slow down.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just really excited. So let’s go,” I mumble, slowing down so that I’m walking next to him and not just dragging him along with me.
He opens the driver’s door for me, and I get into the car and start it while he gets into the passenger seat.
“Alright, just trust me. Everything that we are doing today is for your own good,” I say once we are on the road headed towards Denver.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asks, stopping mid-bite into his breakfast sandwich.
“You can’t be mad, just let me do this, ok?” I say, and he stares at me like he may be three seconds away from opening the door and jumping out, whether the car is moving or not.
“Sloane, what are you talking about right now? Just spit out, whatever it is you’re trying to say,” he says. I let out a huff. I don’t know why I can’t just keep my mouth shut.
“We’re going shopping…”
“Ok, we go shopping all the time. What’s the big deal?”
“We’re goingclothesshopping.”
“I still don’t understand what the big deal is.”
“For you.”
He goes quiet. Like he’s not sure if he heard me right. Or maybe he’s thinking about how all the clothes he has arefine.Even though I’m pretty sure there are some shirts in his closet that are from before I was born.
“Why?”
He doesn’t look super upset about the idea, like I thought that he might be—which is good—but I also didn’t expect him to yell and scream at me if he hated the idea.
“I want to get you some new clothes.”
I can’t exactly tell him that his outfits were awful; that would be a lie. I mean, he dresses in slacks and a white button-up almost every day for work. While I love that look, his socks have holes in them, his sweatpants are shitty material, and most of his t-shirts no longer have any designs on them. That and you can’t tell if they were always brown, or if they were just worn enough that that’s the color they’ve been bleached to.
“Ok.”
I keep to myself that I will be paying for all of this. I don’t want him to try anything stupid, like arguing with me about it.
The drive to Denver is a lot farther than I remember it being. But that could just be that I’m excited to be able to turn him into my personal Ken doll for the day.
When we get to the mall, I stand at the map, trying to figure out what the best course of action is going to be.
“Come this way,” I demand, lacing our fingers together and pulling him towards Buckle.
