Ember Kate

Chapter:: Three

A week later, I realized this is how I would wake up every day of summer. Locklan, in his band tee and flashy pants, shaking me awake. Me, finally getting up and getting undressed while he covers his eyes. Then we sneak out, past my mother. He never asked why, I guess Locklan was smart enough to know that we should just sneak past my mom from now on. For more of an adventure, I left my window open for him to climb through. It’d almost be romantic except for the fact that Locklan was clearly not interested in me. He would always look away when I got dressed, and he never tried to make a move on me. I wasn’t so surprised, it’s not like I had a lot of boyfriends throughout my high school time, so I didn’t know boys so well.

“Where are we going today?” I ask him as we get into his car, immediately rolling the windows down. If he was taking the freeway somewhere, we’d get more air like this.

“Why do you always ask? I never tell you.” A secretive smile plays at his lips as he brushes his hair back, starting up the car and backing out of my short driveway. I try not to let him know that bugs me, never knowing where we are going.

“Is it out of town? We always seem to go outside of town.” Beatty was a small town, but we never seemed to stay in town. I couldn’t say that I minded, I didn’t have any friends really and everybody was leaving this year.

“Do you have a problem with going outside of town? I wasn’t aware.” He didn’t raise his voice, or look at me while he said it. But for some reason it made me back off, even though I wasn’t accusing, and I just settled on staring out the window at the fast moving trees. He keeps driving, eventually passing three exits before getting off at a ramp. I don’t turn my head and ask where we are going, and I don’t know why. He didn’t yell, it’s just the way he said it. As if I might have a problem with going out, and I couldn’t understand what I couldn’t shake.

“Here we are,” he pulls up to an ice cream parlor called Candies. He has a smile on his face, and his curly dark hair falls back onto his forehead again before he pushes it back. “Let’s go.” His voice is perfectly light and happy, making me seem like I’m being a grouch.

~

“So you got . . . cotton candy bubble gum? That’s the weirdest flavor.” I’m looking at Locklan as I say this, eyeballing his waffle cone stuffed with blue ice cream topped with different colored little gum balls. “Are you sure you didn’t just come up with that?” I continue, asking him before I take another like at my mint chocolate chip cone.

He laughs warmly, licking a big chunk that was about to fall off. He starts chewing, clearly getting a gum ball in his bite. I wouldn’t say I’m an ice cream expert, but I only knew of original flavors. “You’re just jealous because you stuck with an original and boring ice cream. Want to try some?” he points his cone towards me, away from himself. I look around for some reason before nodding. I lean in closer and he shoves the cone to my face, his arm jerks up and I feel a freezing sensation on my nose despite the heat coming in from the sun in the shop.

“You jerk! You did that on purpose.” I cover my nose with my hand while I grab a napkin, meanwhile Locklan can’t contain himself with laughter. He starts slapping his hand on the table, and the employees who were talking looked over at him. He started snorting while I tried glaring at him, and I couldn’t help but laugh as he kept snorting. I take one more lick of my ice cream before shoving it over his mouth and smear it around his cheeks, and that’s when I start laughing loudly. “I got you.” I grin at him, he looks up at a smirk.

“How cute, you think you’re going to win.” He moves his cone to my face and smears it all over before I have time to pull away. I’m not that surprised that he got me back, I’m more surprised that I didn’t get up and try to get away before he did.