A/N:  Thank you, my wonderful readers, for following this story and for sending in your votes and comments. I may not be able to reply to all your comments due to time constraint but I wish to let you know that each and every one of them is carefully noted and deeply appreciated.  I WISH YOU ALL PEACE AND HAPPINESS IN THE YEAR AHEAD ! ! !

Plan's POV

I told Mean to bring the grocery cart with him to wherever in the supermarket he wanted to go while I selected my stuff from the produce section. I told him that if I ended up having too much to carry in my arms I would look for him and drop my stuff into our shared grocery cart.

When I was satisfied with my choices of vegetables and fruits, I went to look for him and found him in the aisle where the finger snacks were. He was loading the cart with assorted chips and popcorn bags. I wanted to scold him for his unhealthy choices but I decided to hold my tongue.

We were still on an uneasy truce. There was no sense rocking the boat at this time.

I dropped my load of veggies and fruits into the cart and told him that he could find me in the seafood section if he were to look for me later.

I picked up a pack of jumbo shrimps. The price was ridiculously high. I held on to it but I went to the adjacent ice box which contained packs of medium size shrimps. They of course cost less than the jumbo sized shrimps.

I picked up one pack of the medium size shrimps and held up the pack of the jumbo sized one and placed the packs side by side, unable to decide whether I should splurge on the jumbo sized shrimps or stick to my budget and just get the medium sized shrimps.

I got startled when the pack of jumbo sized shrimps was snatched from my hand.

I looked around. Mean had dropped the pack into the cart.

"I haven't decided yet whether to buy that or not!" I protested.

"Well, I have decided that you are buying it," he said.

"But I want to stick to my budget!" I protested some more.

"Who said that you're paying for it?" he said and grabbed my wrist, "Let's go."

"No, Mean," I continued to protest, "I'm not letting you pay for it."

"Shush," he said, pushing the grocery cart toward the checkout counter.

I was taking out my wallet from my pocket when it came time to pay but he handed his card to the checkout clerk and told the clerk to place everything on his card.

"Let me know how much I owe you for my groceries," I told Mean as we made our way back to my car.

"Shut up and just help me to unload our groceries into the back of your car," he said.

"But I can't let you pay for all my groceries!" I protested one more time.

He turned to me, "P'Plan," ( this was the first time ever since we first met that he had addressed me as P'Plan instead of Plan, and for some reason I felt a kind of ticklish happiness in my chest. )

"P'Plan? Hello?"

"Huh?" I did not realize that I had spaced out right in front of him.

"I was saying that you would not allow me to pay you for the gas so I'm paying for our groceries instead. Does that sound fair to you?"

"I'm not sure," I replied, unlocking the trunk of my car.

"Well, I'm making up your mind for you," he said as he started placing the grocery bags inside the trunk of my car.

I wondered how I was going to get along well with Mean in the coming days.

He seemed to be the bossy type. Although I wasn't the bossy type, I didn't like being bossed around.

We managed to beat the rush hour traffic and got back to our building without too much delay.

When we started to sort out our groceries in our unit, I was horrified to see that all the stuff that Mean had bought consisted of quick fix meal boxes and canned stuff, and the rest were all assorted chips and popcorn bags.

He noticed my look of judgment even if I hadn't said a word.

"I don't know how to cook," he said sheepishly, as a way of explaining his choice of groceries.

"I will cook for more than one person," I said, "promise that you're gonna eat whatever I cook."

"I don't want to put you to any trouble," said Mean.

"It won't be any trouble," I assured him, "but I will ask you to help me cut up some of the ingredients."

"You don't have to ask me again," he said, walking towards me as I took out a chopping board from one of the kitchen drawers.

I handed him an onion and some cloves of garlic.

"Take care of these," I said, "I will take care of the others."

After some time, I was so busy preparing the other ingredients that I had forgotten what I had asked Mean to do earlier.

Suddenly I heard him sniffling loudly and saw him wiping his eyes and nose on his sleeves.

"What happened???" I cried, walking over to him and rubbing him gently up and down on his back. 

"Why are you crying??? You can talk to me. I'm a good listener" I said in a soothing voice.

"You want to know why I'm crying?" he asked between sniffles.

"Mmm," I nodded.

"Because you made me chop up these damned onions!!!" he cried, wiping his eyes and nose on his sleeves again.