Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,24

I threw up my hands. “Fine. Next time? I’ll make sure to get your permission first.” Then I brushed past him and went upstairs. Which… ugh. God. It made me feel like a petulant teenager storming away from my parents, but what the hell else could I do? I was on the verge of losing my temper, and if that happened, we’d probably get the cops called on us.

Plus it wasn’t like I could leave. Because we were in the middle of a pandemic. And I was stuck here. With Casey.

I sat on the edge of my bed and leaned my elbows on my knees as I rubbed my temples. What the hell was I supposed to do now? My paychecks were spiraling toward zero. Casey had full control of the money. I was completely dependent on him. I couldn’t even take precautions to make sure we were prepared for a pandemic because I was under his thumb.

And here I’d thought there was no way our stupid arrangement could get any worse.

Chapter 7

Casey

Alone in the silent kitchen, I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck as I surveyed the bags Tristan had partially unpacked. What the hell was he thinking? We didn’t have any place to put all this unless we started stacking it in the basement, but then we’d end up with mice. And for fuck’s sake, we were tight on money, and we were going to stay tight on money until he either got more hours or found a new job, neither of which was promising right now.

He hadn’t gotten hours or a job, but he had gotten a metric fuckload of groceries. I sighed. Well, the tax refund definitely wouldn’t be going toward my car after all. Not when we’d need to stretch every dollar until next payday.

“At least we won’t have to go grocery shopping again any time soon,” I grumbled.

Well, it was done, and it wouldn’t do anyone any good if anything that needed to stay cold sat out on the counter and melted or spoiled. The money was spent, the groceries were here, so with a muttered “fuck it,” I started putting things away.

As I did, the enormous haul started to seem like…less. At first I’d had visions of needing to stack things on the floor or leave them out on the counter. Maybe even take them down to the basement, which was cool and mostly empty.

But it wasn’t so bad. With a little bit of Tetris magic, everything fit neatly. The cabinets and fridge were definitely stocked now, but not crammed full of crap we’d never use. It was all stuff we did use, just a little more than we usually kept on hand.

I gazed into the cabinet of canned soups and vegetables, and an uncomfortable feeling prodded at me. Yeah, he’d spent a lot more than I’d anticipated, and yeah, he’d come home with a ton of stuff. But maybe that hadn’t been reckless after all. In fact, I was starting to think he’d done something really smart. I’d heard the rumblings about shutdowns and about things being hard to get. Just this morning I’d been reading about supermarkets running out of essentials and predicting long delays before they could even start to restock.

So…maybe it kind of made sense to make sure we were covered.

In some places, panic-buying had resulted in store shelves being stripped bare, which was causing all kinds of memes about people stocking up on decades’ worth of toilet paper, but it was also worrying the rest of us who weren’t sure when things would get restocked. Maine hadn’t seen a lot of that…yet. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen, though. So where was the line between going out to get what we needed, and joining the rush of panic buyers? Were we adding to the chaos if we decided to modestly stock up in case things went to shit? Or was it a smart precaution?

Our fridge and freezer were decent-sized, but not huge. The cabinets in the kitchen were stocked now. We did, however, have a full, finished basement that stayed cool year-round. There wasn’t a whole lot in it since we were two single guys who traveled pretty light from duty station to duty station. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to use some of that space to stock up on necessities just in case things went to shit. A few plastic containers would keep out any mice, and they wouldn’t mess with anything stored