Page 4 of Beautifully Devoted

“Target.”

“Does it say that or are you guessing?”

“Target has everything.” Jagger tucks his phone away.

“You could confirm that before we drive over there and leave empty-handed.”

“We need fruits and veggies to juice so we have to go there already.”

“Not if we don’t have a juicer,” I point out, though I head in the direction of Target anyway, since they probably do have one.

At the store, Jagger grabs a cart and heads straight for the grocery section, completely bypassing the appliances, and starts grabbing a bunch of random stuff. Typical.

“Juicer first, remember. Otherwise, we might not need any of this shit.”

“We’ll get there.” He turns a green leafy thing over in his hands—looking for what I don’t know—and adds it to the pile with an indifferent shrug.

“Do you even know what you’re getting?”

“It says Kale.”

“And Kale is?”

“Green stuff.” He picks up a bunch of carrots and drops them in the cart.

“So green automatically means good?”

“Duh.”

“I feel like you’ll need to have a better understanding of why it’s good if you’re going to make videos telling people why they should eat it.”

“I’ve gotta see if I can eat it first, and if I can, then I’ll figure out what to say about it.”

I bite back the chuckle that’s desperate to come out. “I’m not sure that’s the most productive order of operations, Kitcat.”

“Trust my process, Camelot,” he says as he drifts toward the fruit, completely missing the eye roll I give him, though I’m sure he can feel it since he knows that’s what I do every time he uses that stupid nickname.

To be fair, it’s not the fact he’s given me a nickname that I object to. It’s the fact that he gave me a name with English origins when my name is Scottish. He says it doesn’t make a difference since my reasons for calling him Kitcat are just as flimsy as his reasons for calling me Camelot, but I disagree.

I can trace the evolution of his nickname while he blatantly ignores the meaning behind mine. And it’s not even original. I mean going from Cameron to Camelot is as basic as you can get. He’s stupid proud of coming up with it though, so all I ever do is roll my eyes when he uses it. And since he tends to only use it when his mind is preoccupied, I’m successfully distracting him from his demons.

“Is your process going to involve me having to try whatever you make?” I ask him.

“Obviously.”

“Then I’d really like to know beforehand if something is going to give me the shits.”

“Why would anything give you the shits?” Jagger adds strawberries and blueberries to his horde.

“Foods are weird. Asparagus makes your pee smell funny. Pickles help you recover after a workout. It’s not unreasonable to think something in that cart will give me the shits, and I’d like to know ahead of time so I can avoid it.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” He drops bananas in the cart.

“You know we share a bathroom, right? If you feed me something nasty, we’ll both suffer.”

That makes him pause. “Maybe I’ll do a quick search on things before they go in the juicer.”

I can’t hide my triumphant smirk. “I knew you’d see things my way.”

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