Page 14 of Somewhere Between Falling

My stomach growled, rather loudly, as if on cue.The restaurant was packed, which was a good sign that the food was as delicious as Tobias promised. He led the way to an unoccupied table toward the back since it was a ‘seat yourself’ sort of place.

The waitress got our drink order fairly quickly considering how busy they were, and it didn’t take too much longer after that before our food was brought out in old-fashioned, paper-lined baskets. I scarfed down my cheeseburger embarrassingly fast since I accidentally skipped lunch. Tobias was right; it was delicious.

“How did you find this place?” I asked, in between bites.

“My grandparents used to bring me here every summer whenever we went camping. We’d stop here before heading back home. Sort of a little tradition, I guess.”

“I’ve never been camping before.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” I laughed as I tried to picture my dad camping. He barely mowed the lawn. “I guess my family isn’t very outdoorsy.”

“You should go sometime.”

“By myself?” I asked.

“Well, maybe not the first time,” he said with a laugh.

I put my napkin on my now empty plate and leaned back in my chair. I was almost uncomfortably full, but it was so good it was worth it.

“Full?” he asked with a smirk.

“I mean, I could go for some dessert,” I answered honestly.

“Funnily enough, me too. And I happen to know the perfect place,” he said, throwing some cash down for our bill.

The next stop on our mini adventure was another hole-in-the-wall place, but I was learning to trust Tobias’s judgment—especially when it came to food. There were more choices than I expected based on the size of the building. We began browsing the various flavors, and I was suddenly struck by a thought. “So how old are you anyway?”

“Twenty-four,” he answered with a small grin. “My birthday was last month.”

“What date?”

“The fifteenth. When’s yours?”

“I’ll be twenty on June eleventh,” I answered thoughtfully. “Why do nineteen and twenty-four seem like a huge difference, but twenty and twenty-five seem reasonable?”

“Reasonable how?” he asked, his grin growing as my face reddened.

Why did I say that out loud? “I wonder if they have spumoni?” I asked, clearly a vain attempt to try to change the subject.

He chuckled in response, before asking, “Spumoni? What’s that?”

“It’s kind of like Neapolitan but with chocolate, pistachio, and cherry instead. It’s my favorite, and you can never find it anywhere.”

“Hmm” was all he said. His brow creased, and he looked like he was plotting something as he started going up and down the aisles like a man on a mission. I trailed behind him, confused at his sudden urgency.

“Aha!” He smiled triumphantly, holding up three different pints of ice cream: chocolate, pistachio, and cherry. “We can make our own.”

I laughed at his excitement over his brilliant idea. “Why haven’t I ever thought of that before?”

“Well, I am working on my doctorate,” he deadpanned.

“I bow to the ice cream master.” I bowed my head with a dramatic flourish of my hand.

It was then that I realized he might be my favorite person, but I was definitely going to keep that thought to myself.

We paid for our ice cream and got back into the car since the only seats available at the ice cream place were bar stools. I think we both wanted a bit more privacy than that even though neither of us would say that out loud.

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