you're aces for coming along -- (open)

[reed benjamin graham]

While Reed was used to doing a lot of things for himself. He was an independent man, after all, and had been for some time now, but there were some day to day chores that he just could not stand. One of those things happened to be food shopping. It wasn’t so much that he hated going to the grocery store or the markets to get the things he needed, it was rather that he didn’t always know what he needed. More often than not he ended up with a bunch of junk and found himself eating with the Graham’s every night, or sometimes Sophie and her family, and of course there were always the times when he went out and got something to eat by himself. But cooking for one was supposed to be easy! Why Reed found it to be such a chore, he wasn’t sure.

Naturally, he assumed his aversion to food shopping was based solely on his stupidity when it came to brands. Normally he would pick up whatever was cheapest or whatever looked good and go with that but more often than not he found himself disliking the things he was buying and sending a lot of stuff to the garbage. That, and of course, the task in and of itself that consisted of general cooking. Reed had never been properly schooled in how to prepare a meal. Apparently everyone thought he would marry a kitchen-savvy girl at a young age and didn’t bother. But of course Reed was defiant in what was expected of him and just so happened to reach twenty eight, unmarried and helpless.

Now maybe helpless was a bit of a stretch. When it came down to it, he could fend for himself, but there was a big amount of lazy he had to get over first. He was a mess, In general, and possibly shouldn’t be allowed to cook at all but sometimes one has to do what one shouldn’t be doing. That, of course, was how Reed found himself at the markets. He needed tomatoes and fresh fruit and everyone knew that the markets were the best place to get those kinds of things. They were cheaper and fresher than anything that could be bought at the grocery store and helped out Lampton Hill locals, as that was the point of the markets altogether.

Dressed in dingy denim and a white v-neck, it was pretty clear by the dust that had collected on the bottom of his jeans that he had worked today at the stables and had possibly done a bit more than teaching how to ride. Of course, Reed never minded helping out. It was always just really easy to tell when he’d been tending to the horses rather than teaching, as he always came out of it dirtier than he normally did, plus this was pretty much his uniform. Had he been home he would’ve showered and changed but since this was on his way he couldn’t possibly be bothered to take that kind of detour.

With his wicker basket (a gift he’d gotten when he’d purchased his house from his adoptive mother, it had once been filled with kitchen utensils and apples) hanging out of his hand at his side, Reed examined a spread of fruits and vegetables at a stand he frequented a lot. Hey, at least he wasn’t opting for fast food again. A healthy man has to eat healthy food sometimes, doesn’t he? Now all he had to do was remember the little tricks and tips to picking out the best of the bunch. Shit. He really needed a girlfriend or a personal assistant… or a trained monkey.

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