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“And you’re sure it’s not poisoned?” Hunter inquired again, turning the chocolate ice cream cone up to the sun. Against the heated atmosphere, it dripped slightly onto the cone and trickled down onto the pink wrapping paper around the end. He squinted up at it, scratching at his cheek and furrowing his brows.
Hunter had almost ordered a strawberry-banana smoothie, but Luz insisted tormentingly that she should order for him.
So instead, she picked out two scoops of a fudgy chocolate ice cream cone. It was even decorated excessively with more chocolate shavings on top. Before his ice cream melted pathetically, the shavings made the treat look considerably more delectable. Now, they were strewn about and halfway down the scoops, moved by the dripping off the bottom. Hunter only thought that made it look more suspicious.
Luz let out an exasperated sigh. “Titan, Hunter, you literally saw the lady at the counter scoop it out and make it for you.”
Just outside the shop, they sat at a circular glass table under the biggest hot pink umbrella Hunter had ever seen. The fluorescence of the color kind of burned his eyes if he looked at it too long, now that he thought about it.
Although clean and completely see-through, the table underneath them wobbled uneasily and made it feel like it would collapse at any given moment. The sun leaked through the semi-opaque fabric of the umbrella and casted a luminous pink glow over the table. Even that glow filtered in through the glass on the table and made pretty patterns on the concrete below.
“The whole container could be poisoned,” Hunter shot back, bringing the cone back down to inspect it further. It dripped more steadily now and got on his fingers. He took one hand momentarily off to shake the melted chocolate off.
Luz only looked amused, glancing at him up and down. “If you keep squinting at it like it owes you money, it’s going to melt into soup before you know it,” she observed, already chewing her way through her first scoop. Her icecream used to be cotton candy, adorned with oreos mixed in and Sour Patch Kids on top. She ordered a whopping three scoops. Hunter would never forget the look on her face when she received it. “Look, I’m eating mine. It’s fine.”
Hunter suppressed a long, forlorn sigh and finally plucked a chocolate shaving off the top of the desert and gingerly placed it onto his tongue. He pulled it into his mouth and tried not to make a content hum. It was unbelievably sweet, and despite the hot summer weather, it cooled him off and made Hunter feel a lot less apprehensive. Okay, perhaps it wasn’t poisoned and Luz was right, but Hunter wasn’t exactly about to allow her to win so easily. Hastily, he swallowed and his mouth watered for more.
“It’s awful.” Hunter deadpanned, eyes on his ice cream. He immediately went in to lick the drips off his cone. Luz gave a startled laugh.
“Just terrible, huh?” Luz asked, her tone dripping with sarcasm—almost as much as their ice creams. Her brown eyes watched him eat his first scoop of desert in two barbaric bites.
Hunter turned to her now, lips slathered in icey delight. “Horrible.” His magenta eyes were wide with enjoyment and he licked the ice cream off his lips. Suddenly, his eyes squinted fully shut and he pressed two fingers to his temple. It started off as a buzz, but now it was overwhelming. He grimaced in pain and started gritting his teeth. His head throbbed. Luz lied! He was right all along, it was simply too good to be true. The lady poisoned him! “It’s hurting my head! It’s poison!” Hunter cried, his eyes flying open to grip at Luz’s bicep. “AVENGE ME!” He shrieked, shaking her around and causing a scoop of her ice cream to fling off and splat noisily on the ground.
She didn’t seem to care though and only started to cackle tauntingly, shaking him off. “It’s just a brain freeze,” she told him, placing a hand on his back while suppressing the urge to erupt into giggles again.
He grit his teeth and glared at her, the pain already beginning to slowly ebb away.
Luz removed her hand from his back and licked at her ice cream again. “You ate it too fast, as soon as you stop it starts giving you a headache. It goes away real quick if you grind your teeth together and press your tongue to the roof of your mouth. And shut your eyes really tight.”
“Seems like a bit much,” Hunter blinked at his cone, unsure if he wanted to go on.
“You don’t have to eat anymore if you don’t want to,” she paused in her eating to look at him. “Have you never had a brain freeze before?” Luz asked, dumbfounded.
Hunter shook his head and began to lick the rest of his ice cream, taking a moment to warm it up in his mouth before swallowing. “Not exactly. I wasn’t really allowed around sugar. Hadta’ stay in shape, y’know?” He stuck his tongue into the cone. He had licked it to the point where he couldn’t reach the cream with his tongue anymore. He was about to carry the half-empty cone into the trash before Luz stopped him.
“You can eat the cone.” She stated, taking a bite out of hers and chewing it. She could literally see his brows furrow and the gears in his head turn in feeble attempts to make sense of the treat.
“You’re sure?” Hunter asked, praying for confirmation. If it was as good as every other part of the ice cream, he wouldn’t wait for another signal to eat.
“Positive.” Luz affirms, her voice muffled by the amount of food in her mouth.
Hunter bites into his cone with a crunch, chewing noisily. It wasn’t as sweet as the ice cream itself, but it went wonderfully well with how sugary it was. It blended excellently in his mouth; he chewed a little quicker in desperation to get more. He also allowed himself mumbles of content now, sipping his soup-like ice cream from the bottom of the cone. He could hear Luz eat beside him, echoing his noises.
He just sat there and enjoyed it before a change in texture caught him by surprise. He chewed a little more, the taste becoming more and more apparent as he ate. He almost swallowed before Luz’s hands slammed on the table, startling him out of swallowing. She lay bent over the glass picnic table in laughter, tears forming in her eyes.
“Whaf?? Whafs wronf??” Hunter glanced around with a start, staring across the street and around the shop for any suspicious activity or sketchy citizens.
“You can’t eat the paper!” Luz cackles, raising a feeble finger to point at his cone. He looked down, and sure enough, there was a chunk bitten out of the pink paper when he got a bit carried away. Hunter picked the paper from his mouth and glowered at her. He removed the rest of the unchewed paper from his cone and crumbled it up, flicking it behind him and into the trash can.
Luz continued to giggle, popping the rest of her cone into her mouth and pushing her chair backwards to stand up. Hunter echoed her movements, pushing his considerably bigger piece of cone into his mouth and crunching loudly.
He watched Luz move out from under the umbrella and stretch in the sunlight, not unlike a cat. (Or Ghost when she found a nice spot to sunbathe at home.)
“Hey, you know we can come back here anytime you want, right?”
Wordlessly, Hunter stepped into the sunlight and squinted up at the clouds, watching them crawl across the sky. His gaze moved to the shop and the customers and people within. They were all in good spirits, their faces bright. Even the blonde lady behind the counter glanced at him. They held eye contact for a moment before she waved at him. Then, he grinned a gap-toothed grin and turned to Luz.
“I think I’d like that.”