not in love! | THE SIDEMEN

xiii. now, here's wonderwall

"I HAD A FIFTEEN MINUTE ARGUMENT THE OTHER DAY about why we should be allowed to eat pasta for breakfast," Rose mused, tossing a packet of uncooked tagliatelle into her trolley as she strolled down the pasta and tinned food aisle alongside Lennon. The two girls found food shopping to be a rather painful and dreary experience, so often they would do it together on a Thursday afternoon to make the time pass marginally more entertainingly.

"I hope you won," Lennon chuckled, tossing in a number of pot noodles and microwaveable meals. Despite not actually being a college student, the brunette ate like one nevertheless - such was the diet of a broke twenty-one year old. "I ate leftover sweet sour and chicken from Mr. Chow's for breakfast today."

"Lennon-" Rose paused to laugh with incredulity, "that's just not good for you. Cold chicken? How are you not dead?"

"I feel like because I am so careless with life that the Grim Reaper thinks I don't even deserve the mercy of death."

"That is legit the most Generation Z thing I've ever heard," Rose sighed with amusement as they entered the next aisle, playfully bumping the sides of their trolleys together as they raced to be the first one in. As usual, Lennon won.

"You must be suffering this week," Lennon commented as her blonde friend reached for a new box of Tampax - the jumbo sized ones. "Did you just birth a child? Those ones are so big it's like having sex."

"I'll take it wherever I can get it from," Rose narrowed her eyes as she tossed in two boxes instead of one, then proceeded to reach for a box of painkillers that were situated along with the medicine directly opposite the feminine products. "Thank god we're both not getting any, I couldn't handle it if you were out hoeing the town up and I wasn't."

Lennon smiled tightly in agreement, pretending to find something very interesting about the multivitamin gummy bears she had just picked up, which were most definitely just for children but she was heavily considering purchasing a bottle nevertheless. Rose hadn't yet been told about her and Harry's escapades, nor had anyone else. The two had found they shared a similar trait in that they couldn't handle embarrassment at all, and if faced with an onslaught of teasing about their sexual lives they would mentally cripple underneath it.

"Oh my god," Rose deadpanned, loudly tossing in a box of antihistamines into the metal trolley as she reeled around to stare at her friend. Lennon jumped at her sudden mood shift, the guilt ever so clear on her expression. "You're having sex aren't you."

Lennon gulped under her hard stare, she knew that Rose wouldn't be annoyed per-say that she hadn't yet told her, but if she lied now then it would impact their friendship later on should the blonde find out anyway. Lennon always found it difficult keeping anything from her best friend, the guilt always overcoming her anyway as she knew Rose was the type of person to be affected by secret-keeping.

"Well... we haven't-... had sex technically," Lennon tried to play off, deciding she was going to need the multivitamins after this conversation as she made the decision to add them among her growing pile of non-perishable foods.

"Do you two mind moving?" A voice cut between them, coming from a middle-aged woman that practically screamed the name 'Karen' as she all but battled her way through the gap between the two girls, smashing her own trolly against theirs carelessly.

Once she had reached the bottom of the aisle away from the friends, the woman ironically positioned her trolley in such an awkward manner that no one would have been able to get past her. Making eye contact, Rose and Lennon dissolved into laughter and thus dissipated the rising tension between them.

"So, you're not having sex with Harry then?" Rose raised an eyebrow, leaning her elbow against the handle with a knowing gaze and a humorous glint in her eye. Everything about her confident posture screamed 'I told you so', and in a way she had been right in guessing something would happen between Lennon and Harry. Even if it hadn't have been the romantic storyline that she had conjured in her mind.