He, he. I had fun writing this chapter.

JUNE 29

"Your parents are totally amazing," Willow told me, as we wandered through the mall, hand in hand.

I had to agree with her. We were moving into our rental house the last week of July, and my parents had offered to help us furnish it. So they'd sent us down to the mall, with a pre-loaded credit card and Mom's truck, to get started. We were looking for smaller pieces today. We'd order some of the larger items later in the month, and have them delivered directly to the house.

"Where should we start?" I asked. We were making our way toward the biggest home design store in the mall. I was hoping that it would have everything that we were looking for. I'd rather just get as much of it done in one store in one trip, if I could.

"Um, the bathroom. We need a shower curtain, towels, and accessories. The whole nine yards. We can't mount anything on the walls, right?"

"No, but the place did have some decent shelving, so it shouldn't be too big a deal. Although if we want to put any kind of pictures or anything, we'll have to be creative. But we'll make it work."

We walked into the home design store, Willow grabbing a cart. We made our way toward the bath section. I didn't usually go into places like this, but it was the best store to get what we needed.

"How do you feel about doing turquoise in the bathroom?" Willow questioned.

I shrugged. I really didn't care too much about what color themes we did. The walls of our rental house were white, so we could do whatever we wanted. And I was totally fine with Willow taking charge on that one. "Fine with me. As long as it's not too girly." I wasn't really worried about that, though. Willow wasn't really into the super girly stuff.

She smirked and teased, "You mean you don't want giant flowers everywhere? And lots of pink?"

"Uh, no."

"What about this one?" She pointed to a turquoise and grey, chevron-striped, shower curtain.

I made a face. "I'm not really a fan."

"Okay. This one?" The next one she pointed at was turquoise, with a dark brown stripe at the top and the bottom. Willow shook her head before I could even say anything. "Nope. You don't like it. I can tell."

She looked at a few more before she finally went, "Aha." She pulled out a shower curtain horizontal turquoise and white stripes. "This one's simple and very gender-neutral. What do you think?"

"I like it. Let's get the accessories next."

We found a nice set of turquoise-colored glass accessories to match, and turquoise bath towels. Super soft bath towels.

Willow sent me a small smirk. "You know what room we should shop for next?" she asked.

"What?"

"The bedroom, of course. Come on." And she led me to the very large bedroom section. There were several beds on display, some smaller than normal with bedspreads and sheets and stuff. Others were just the mattresses.

Willow plopped onto one of them, sighing as she laid back. "We need a mattress. Queen-sized. And, since we borrowed your mom's truck, we can totally get one today. We don't have to wait."

I arched an eyebrow at her. She was pretending to make a snow angel on the mattress. "I thought we were only getting the little stuff today? Where would we store a mattress for a month?"

"Your garage, duh. Your mom said there was enough space for a few of the big items in there. We could probably pick out a bed-frame, too, as long as we kept it in the box. It should fit."

"You talked to my mom about buying beds? When?"

Willow's smirk was back. "Yep. Just before we left today, while you were finishing up your shower. Now come lay down on this thing. Tell me what you think. I'm not sure I like the innerspring."

Shaking my head, I laid down beside her. "Yeah," I agreed. "This isn't doing it for me."

We tried several other mattresses, not really liking any of them. And then…

"Oh my gosh," Willow sighed. "I didn't really think there'd be a difference between memory foam and latex foam, but I love this latex stuff."

"Mmm-hmm," I agreed, settling on the bed. I closed my eyes in bliss. "This is super nice."

"Ah," a familiar voice said, "look at the lovebirds, getting all domestic. Isn't that cute?"

I opened my eyes to see my best friend and his girlfriend standing nearby. I lazily kicked at Adrian, and missed. "Shut up," I said.

Willow propped herself on her elbows. "Adrian, I don't really think that you have any room to talk. The only reason that I can think of for you to even be in a home design store is if you're getting a little domestic yourself. Am I right, Alexis?"

Alexis grinned, chuckling slightly. She nodded. "One-hundred percent. We're shopping for our own apartment. And Adrian is feeling very domestic today."

Adrian glared at her. "Traitor," he muttered.

She ignored his glare. "By the way," she said to me and my girlfriend, "there's a really good sale on a lot of the kitchen stuff. We got an awesome microwave for almost fifty percent off. And there's some super nice sets of pots and pans. Just so you know. Have fun! We'll see you guys later."

Then she practically dragged Adrian toward the living room stuff.

Willow grinned. "I love how she doesn't put up with any of his crap."

"She puts him in his place."

"Let's find a nice frame for this mattress, because this is totally the perfect mattress. And then we need to find a bedspread and sheets and stuff. I'm thinking...green. We should do green in the bedroom."

"Sounds good to me."