All characters belong to SM. I had a little fun playing with Emmett for this one, so I hope you like it.
Grocery Shopping is a Breeze
Rosie had gone hunting with Alice and I was stuck at home with nothing to do. I tried playing some video games with Jasper and Edward, but I was soon tired of that. It sucked that Jasper could always win. I didn't mind when Edward won as much because I knew it was just because of the mind reading that he does.
I left the guys in the living room and went into the kitchen. I knew Bella was in here and hoped that I could have some fun with her.
I found her looking inside the fridge, so I crept up quietly behind her. Before she had the chance to hear or see my approach, I was directly behind her.
I leaned over ever so slightly and yelled, "Boo!"
Bella screamed and dropped the carton of eggs that she had in her hand. I grinned when she turned around to face me with her hand over her chest. She was still breathing heavily from being frightened, but trying her best to muster a glare to shoot at me. I heard Edward curse quietly from the living room, and he soon came into the kitchen with us to see what was going on.
"What the hell, Emmett?" Edward said angrily as he walked over to hold Bella to him.
"I was just having some fun," I replied with a shrug of my shoulders.
Jasper chose that time to join the rest of us in the kitchen and smirked before bringing a calm feeling over all of us.
"Emmett, I was planning on using those eggs," Bella said exasperatedly with her hands on her hips.
Edward walked over to the sink to grab some paper towels to help clean up the mess.
"Sorry," I said holding my hands up in surrender. "I was just having a little fun with you."
"Since you're so bored, why don't you go to the grocery store for me?" Bella asked although I could tell that it was really more of an expectation.
"Grocery shopping?" I asked wrinkling my nose. Some of the smells of food in the grocery stores were horrible.
"You owe her," Edward said flexing a muscle in his jaw.
I could tell that I wasn't going to win this one. "Sure, I'll go," I finally said. "Do you have a list or something?"
Bella quickly scribbled down a list of items that she needed for what I found out were going to be some brownies. I guess we don't really keep much in the way of baking goods in the house seeing how long the list was. I think Esme usually only buys stuff like meat, fruit, and vegetables from the store for a human facade.
"Are you sure about sending Emmett to the store?" Jasper asked with his eyebrow raised.
"Hey, are you questioning my skills?" I asked him. "Grocery shopping is going to be a breeze."
I arrived at the grocery store in town with the shopping list provided by Bella. I knew that I had to get this right because if I didn't, Jasper and Edward would be harassing me for decades to come. When I walked through the automatic sliding doors, I saw some shopping carts to my left. I grabbed one to help with the human facade and pushed it inside a second set of doors.
I looked around and could feel the pressure mounting. The only time I have ever been here was when I was with Esme and I helped her load the grocery bags in the vehicle. I wondered how I was going to figure out where everything was located.
I glanced at the list again. I needed to find pecans, flour, baking powder, cocoa, vanilla, and eggs. I walked to the far side of the store, which appeared to be all fruits and vegetables. I looked at some bananas and grimaced at the smell. I still wonder how people can eat this crap. I noticed as I pushed my cart around to the back of the store that each aisle had a sign above it with what was on the shelves down that particular aisle.
I walked past numerous aisles trying to find the one that had a sign saying "pecans." I went all the way to the other side of the store without seeing a sign with the word "pecans" on it. I wondered where else it could be, so I walked around toward the front of the store.
There were lots of displays near the front, but I didn't see anything that looked like pecans. I decided that maybe I should just skip that ingredient and look for the next one.
Next on the list was flour. I remembered from the signs I saw that there wasn't a sign labeled "flour" either. I frowned reading off the rest of the items on the list. I haven't seen signs for any of these items in the store.
Maybe they don't put everything on the signs above the aisles. I remembered seeing one labeled "canned vegetables." That might not be cans with every vegetable in it. It might actually be cans with only one type of vegetable in it. They could just have lots of different cans for each kind of vegetable.
Considering this possibility, I walked back along the end of each of the aisles until I found one that had a sign labeled "baking goods." This sounded like it had potential to be the right aisle for me to find at least some of my items on the grocery list so I turned down it. As I walked down the aisle, I looked left, right, up, and down at each of the items on the shelves. I found a little can that was labeled "baking powder" and picked it up. I put it in the shopping cart and grinned knowing that I must be right on track now. There was no way that Jasper and Edward were going to make fun of me today.
I quickly found some cocoa that I also placed in the cart. I was starting to think how easy grocery shopping is when I found the vanilla. The only problem was that the store had several different brands of vanilla. They also came in different sizes. I wondered if one brand was better than another. It would also be helpful if Bella had told me how much vanilla she needed because some of these packages were really small.
I decided that I probably shouldn't worry too much about this decision so I just put the largest package of vanilla of each brand in the shopping cart. I figured that I couldn't go wrong if Bella had five bottles of vanilla to use.
A few more steps down the aisle led me to the pecans. This time not only were there different brands and package sizes of pecans, I was also having to chose between whole pecans, pecan halves, and crushed pecans. Bella didn't put anything on her list about what shape the pecans had to be in.
I put my hands on my head and tugged at my short hair in frustration. Surely it won't matter if I just get one of each type. I quickly grabbed the largest bags of each brand of all three types of pecans. Hopefully, Bella will have what she needs with this.
I had just finished grabbing all of the pecans when I saw the flour. I pushed the shopping cart over to the flour quickly thanking my lucky stars that I was almost finished. My mouth dropped open when I saw the flour.
All of the packages seemed to be the same size, for which I was thankful. The only problem was which type of flour to get. They had bread flour, all purpose flour, self-rising flour, as well as bleached and unbleached flour.
I decided against the bread flour because I knew Bella was making brownies and not bread. I didn't really think that bleach was good for humans, so I decided that bleached flour probably should stay on the shelf. Honestly, I don't know why they would put bleach in food for humans. People are weird sometimes. That left me with choosing between all purpose flour and self-rising flour. They only had two different brands of each, so I just picked up both brands of each type of flour and placed it in the cart.
Then I noticed that my hands had some kind of white, powdery stuff on them. I brushed them off on my jeans and it left white streaks on them. I looked at the flour I just picked up and noticed that one of the bags had a small tear in the bottom of it. I picked the torn bag up out of the cart and I guess I might have grabbed it wrong because the bag ripped wide open and flour spilled all over the contents in my shopping cart, the floor, and covered everything below my waist in a layer of white.
"Oh no," I groaned looking around at the mess.
I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if I was supposed to clean up stuff like this myself like Esme would order me to do at home.
"Clean up on aisle 9," a voice on the intercom said.
Within minutes, a young boy was traveling down the aisle with cart that carried all sorts of cleaning supplies. I had frozen in my spot when I realized that they must have seen me do this in the store in order for them to have such a fast reaction time to it. The boy pushed my cart away from the area and walked back to his cart. He gathered a broom and dustpan off his cart and swept up all of the flour. Then, he mopped up the residue that remained and placed a "wet floor" sign over the area.
"Thanks," I finally said as the boy pushed his cart away.
I carefully picked up another bag of flour to replace the one that ripped open and put it in the shopping cart with everything else that was now covered in flour. I looked over my list again and saw that I only had eggs left on it.
Despite the flour mess, I was feeling pretty good about this shopping trip. I knew that there wasn't a sign for eggs either, but Bella was taking them out of the fridge, so they must be kept somewhere cold in the store. I knew I didn't see them in the fruit and vegetable area, so I headed to the back of the store where the meats were.
I glanced along the meat area and found various types of meat but no eggs. I decided to keep heading along the back of the store for the second time since I was on the lookout for eggs. I hoped that I wouldn't miss them this time.
I noticed that people were staring at me as I pushed my cart through the grocery store on my search for eggs. It made me feel a little self-conscious because I wasn't sure what they were staring at. I wasn't standing in the sun so it's not like my skin was sparkling. I tried to ignore them as much as I could and thought about how proud my Rosie will be of me when she finds out that I went grocery shopping all by myself.
On that happy note, I saw cartons of eggs in front of me. I hurried over and picked up a carton. Then I saw that each carton was labeled with a different size on it. Bella didn't say anything about what size eggs she needed. I wasn't sure whether to get medium, large, or jumbo for her. Then I saw that some of the eggs were brown eggs and some were white eggs. A few even claimed to be farm-raised and hormone free. I don't know what any of this means. I was ready to be out of the store, so I picked up a carton of each one of them and put it in the shopping cart with the rest of my purchases.
I headed to the checkout line as quickly as I could and still look human. It wasn't too busy this time of day, so I pushed the shopping cart right up to the little conveyor belt. I placed all of my items on it as quickly as I could and waited for the cashier to ring it up. I was happy that she didn't stare at me like the other shoppers had. In fact, this girl didn't even look up at me the whole time.
The cashier gave me the total and I swiped my credit card. The groceries were just finishing being bagged up by another young boy when I was handed my receipt. I took it and put in my pocket and quickly pushed the shopping cart out of the door. I knew that I couldn't pick up thirty grocery bags in front of humans because that might look odd, so I kept the cart for now.
I loaded my Jeep with the groceries and put the shopping cart away before getting back on the road home.
I carried the thirty grocery bags into the kitchen with a big smile on my face. I was proud of the job well done. Bella looked up from her conversation with Edward and her jaw dropped.
"Emmett, why do you have so many bags?" she asked.
"Well, I couldn't decide which item you needed from your list," I explained.
Bella started pulling stuff out of the bags. "I can understand you getting the different types of pecans because I know I didn't specify crushed for you, but why did you pick up different brands, too?" Bella questioned.
"I thought there might be a difference between brands, and I wanted to make sure you had what you needed," I told her with a shrug.
Edward and Jasper chose that time to make their appearance. They saw the amount of groceries on the counter and roared with laughter.
"Did... you... see... the... eggs?" Jasper asked Edward in between bursts of laughter.
I frowned. "Hey, Bella didn't tell me what size eggs she needed," I told them. "I just did the best I could for my little sister."
Bella came over to me with a smile on her face and gave me a hug.
"Just ignore them," she said. "At least I have enough ingredients to make plenty of brownies."
That's why I love my little sister.
