A/N: Black Friday one-shot by request from SnowsGay19 on ao3.
Never having experienced Black Friday at a mall, twenty-year-old Olivia never understood the hype behind it or why people insisted on waiting in line at a store for hours when the same items could be purchased online and most sales lasted throughout the entire month of December. If there was something she or her mom wanted on Black Friday, they'd just go online from the comfort of home and add it to their cart, but that year Olivia had been invited to spend the holiday weekend with her girlfriend Alex at her parents' house in a Boston suburb and－for the Cabot women－Black Friday was practically a bloodsport.
They planned for Black Friday the way Olivia imagined famous generals throughout history planned battlefield tactics. There were maps of the mall spread throughout the table, a list of which stores had the best sales and what time they opened, but the crowning jewel for Olivia was the Monopoly game pieces that Alex's grandma used to show their flow of movement throughout the mall. The Cabot men said Olivia could watch football with them while their better halves shopped, but since Olivia wanted to spend as much time as she could with Alex, she decided to give Black Friday shopping a try; however, the more she witnessed their planning, the more she felt herself go from intrigued to terrified and there was no longer an opportunity to turn back.
Three generations of Cabot women were at that kitchen table and Olivia couldn't help noticing the smile on the face of her girlfriend－the youngest Cabot woman. Two years ago, the mall released an app with the locations of the stores, store hours, and average foot traffic by the hour. It would make Black Friday shopping exponentially more efficient, but that would mean ending a tradition for her grandmother that went back fifty years, so Alex decided to keep that bit of information to herself.
Most of the stores didn't open until 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving, but Alex's grandmother insisted on leaving at 7 although the mall was only a fifteen-minute drive away. They circled the parking lot for ten minutes, completely unable to find a spot, so Olivia suggested that they pull over and get out of the car while she continued to drive around and find a spot. Her suggestion earned points with the two oldest Cabot women and, most importantly, it earned a kiss from Alex.
"Babe, you're the best girlfriend in the entire world," Alex said right before getting out of the car. "Meet me at Bath and Body Works. They're having their buy 3, get 3 free sale."
Olivia figured Grandma Cabot's Mercedes cost about as much as three years of college tuition, so she proceeded with caution. She knew a woman who drove a car that expensive didn't need any Black Friday doorbusters, but Olivia couldn't help get a warm feeling when she thought about her girlfriend being part of a tradition for the Cabot women that started decades before she was even born.
Forty-five minutes had passed before Olivia was able to find a parking spot and she thought the worst was behind her until she entered Bath and Body Works and saw that her girlfriend was lost in a sea of shoppers. She checked her phone and noticed there was no signal inside the store. Of course there's not. Okay, just look for a tall, gorgeous blonde girl wearing your hoodie. But even that didn't narrow it down enough for Olivia. Damn the amount of hot blonde girls in this store.
"Alex!" she called out.
"Liv!" she heard her girlfriend respond. "Walk toward the 3-wick candles." There are literally 3-wick candles everywhere. "The ones by the big Christmas tree!"
After the journey she had been on, all Olivia wanted to do was hug Alex and maybe go treat the two of them to something from Starbucks, but Alex was on a mission and she knew there was no way she'd be able to pry her from that store.
"What candles are you gonna get?" Olivia asked her girlfriend. "Let's get the Christmas tree scent for your apartment."
"I like that one, too," Alex told her. "I'll pick out a few for us and then Grandma wants me to get twenty for her."
"Twenty?" Olivia asked in disbelief.
"She gave me her credit card and a shopping list," Alex said as she sniffed a peppermint scented candle. "She also said for me to pick out a few things for myself, which reminds me that I'm almost out of body wash. Liv, can you go get some for me?"
Olivia wrapped her arms around Alex from behind and held her close. "Sure, I can. What kind do you want?"
Alex slightly turned her head to give her girlfriend a kiss. "Just pick whatever you want me to smell like."
It was a simple enough task and one that Olivia was willing to complete. She'd browse through the different body washes and pick out the ones she liked best, but her girlfriend's suggestion of picking out the ones she wanted her to smell like made her thoughts shift to Alex lathering the body wash while she was in the shower and the task that had once seemed simple was now becoming difficult for Olivia. Who needs a loofah when I can lather these on her myself. But should I get her the gel body wash or the creamy one?
"Liv," she heard her girlfriend say, pulling her out of her fantasy world of lathering various scented body washes on Alex. "Which ones did you pick?" There were only two body washes in Olivia's hands, a far cry from the twelve that Alex had expected. "I should have known you'd get lost in shower thoughts. This is almost as bad as the time we went to Victoria's Secret because I had to go underwear shopping and I told you to help me pick some out. You were blushing the entire time."
"Because I was imagining the possibilities," Olivia said in her own defense. "I'm obviously bad at shopping, so why don't I take your bags and get in line while you finish shopping."
It was about a thirty minute wait from the end of the line to the registers, which gave Alex plenty of time to finish her shopping. Her experience at Bath and Body Works was all the Black Friday shopping Olivia could handle, so she was grateful when she found an empty bench to sit on. She told Alex to leave all the shopping bags with her and she'd watch them so Alex wouldn't have to carry any heavy bags while she shopped. It was a clever way to get out of shopping and the suggestion earned yet another kiss from Alex along with an 'I love you.'
With nothing else to do, Olivia took out her phone and took a wide-angle selfie with some of the bags. She sent it to the group chat along with a message that said, "The cost of being a good girlfriend."
"You too?" Elliot responded a couple of minutes later. "Kathy has me holding her Bath and Body Works bags while she's at H&M."
Olivia couldn't help laughing when she read her best friend's response and she was grateful that she'd have him to talk to while waiting for Alex. "You know those stereotypes about middle-aged guys moping on the bench while their wives shop? I am now one with those men. I feel their pain," Olivia responded via text.
A few seconds later, Olivia received a notification that her friend Munch had responded in the group chat. "Black Friday is nothing more than a symbol of excessive consumerism in America."
Classic Munch. Olivia was about to respond when a message from her girlfriend appeared in the group chat. "Is that how you really feel, Olivia? By the way, you're saying all of this in the wrong group chat."
Olivia looked at the name of the group chat and noticed it wasn't the one she and her three best friends Elliot, Munch, and Fin had been using for the past five years and jokingly named "We Dem Boyz." Crap. I should have made sure this was the one without Alex.
"It was nice knowing you Liv," Fin responded.
"This is almost as bad as when she decorated those pink glitter binders for her sorority and sent us the picture instead of her sorority sisters," Elliot reminded them.
"We still call her Sparkles," Fin added.
Not wanting to get herself into any more trouble, Olivia decided to put her phone away and wait patiently for Alex. She did some people watching for five minutes before she saw her beautiful girlfriend walking toward her with a shopping bag and two Starbucks drinks.
"Hi Sparkles," Alex said as she sat down next to her and handed her a drink.
"I'm only accepting that nickname because you brought me a drink," Olivia responded. "And because I love you."
"I love you, too," Alex said, her head resting on Olivia's shoulder.
"I'm sorry about what I said in the group chat."
"It's okay. I know this isn't your thing," Alex smiled. "That's why you get extra girlfriend points for being here."
Olivia tasted the hot chocolate on Alex's lips when she kissed her. "And what can I cash those points in for?"
"Something I bought you for being a good girlfriend." Alex pulled out a New York Giants beanie from her shopping bag and placed it securely on Olivia. "I knew this would look cute on you."
Alex grabbed her phone from her purse so she could take a selfie with Olivia. In the picture, she was kissing Olivia's cheek and she knew she had to post it when she saw how cute Olivia's smile was. "I'm captioning this with, 'My adorable girlfriend survived her first Black Friday.'"
Olivia knew under normal circumstances, her girlfriend would be out there shopping with her mom and her grandma, but that night she was content to sit on the bench and drink hot chocolate while being cuddled in Olivia's arms.