"We should probably get some Eggos since El's coming too, right?"
"Yeah," he nods and they head to the frozen food aisle.
"It'll be her first time here. Will's never been to New York either, right? Have your mom?"
"No, don't think so. Hopper used to live here though."
"Oh, yeah. It'll be fun! Though I don't know how we're gonna make room for everyone."
"Yeah that'll be interesting."
"Maybe we can go across the hall and crash at Liz and Annie's place? They have a pull-out sofa."
"Memories…"
"Shut up. Do we have everything?"
"Let's see," he looks at the list in his hand "Milk, eggs, bacon, laundry detergent, and Eggos, yeah let's just head to the canned foods and see, I think they had an offer on."
So far she's loving college life and New York. Classes are… challenging, in a good way. She feels like she's really learning. It's hard work, tougher than high school but she likes hard work. And everything else that comes with it. She's made some new friends in class and on campus. She likes the feeling of doing something, she's out of Hawkins, she feels like she's doing something with her life. Not like she's got it all figured out yet. But at least she won't become her mother with the nuclear family at the end of the cul-de-sac.
She glances at Jonathan at her side as they make their way over to the canned foods. She loves that he's there, by her side here in New York. She applied to everywhere, it felt like. Harvard, Brown, Yale, Georgetown, Northwestern, UCLA, IU (on her parent's insistence). But when she heard back from Columbia all other options fell away. It was one of the best schools in the world. It was New York. And it was them. Jonathan had gotten a scholarship to NYU. She thinks Joyce was the only person who could match her levels of pride and happiness the day they got the news.
They had discussed living in different dorms for maybe 30 seconds before deciding it was stupid. It almost felt like they had been living together already with the sheer amount of time she'd spend at the Byers, day and night, first sneaking out of her room and then more openly during senior year when her mother eventually become more chill with the situation (Joyce had been cool with it for a long time). So they had found a small one bedroom apartment that was affordable and in a reasonable distance between their respective colleges.
Just a few months in and they had start to pick up routines, this was one of them. They usually went grocery shopping together, though it was mostly in Jonathan's control. He kept track of special offers and came armed with an array of different tricks to keep the cost down. He had experience with it. She sometimes felt bad about how clueless she'd been about that sort of thing in the past, not giving much thought to those small differences between her family and his. She had her mother who did all the shopping for them, who bought the more expensive brand of cereal 'cause that was the one her little brother preferred. While Jonathan had helped his mother with the responsibility since he was a kid, and they bought the cheapest brand of cereal because that was the way it was.
He'd just shrugged it off when she'd broached the subject. Though it also related to the fact that he did most of the cooking since he had of course also done that for years. When they moved in she could boil water and not burn down the apartment but that was pretty much it. He had agreed to teach her some after she voiced her concerns that he was always the one in the kitchen. So now her repertoire had broadened somewhat.
"Score," Jonathan comments and quickly throws cans of both tomato soup and ravioli which are on sale into their cart.
"Nice," she agrees. "Oh, I almost forgot, I need tampons," she remembers as they walk away from the cans.
"Alright," he answers and turns to that aisle. He grabs a box of her brand and throws in the cart before they head to the register.
"If mom's letting Mike tag along we're definitely crashing at Liz and Annie's," she makes her mind up.
"Agreed."