Page 16 of No Angels

“Mike, what person in their right mind has ice cream for lunch in the middle of November?” It used to be one of our Sunday rituals. Rain or shine. Sleet or snow. Kind of like things thataren’t supposed to prevent the mail delivery. But it was just for kicks because we were kids and had a lot of energy and were never cold. My adult internal barometer isn’t exactly compatible with ice cream in late fall.

“Us persons.”

His loaded answer takes me back to a day I’ll never forget and I swallow. “Sure.”

The Dairy Freeze hasn’t changed in the twenty years since I left and I bet the plastic menu with the red retro type nailed to the side of the building has been there since my mom was a kid.

The only difference is who waited on us. Mabel Sinclair was like a grouchy cafeteria lunch lady. Her granddaughter, Jenny Sinclair runs it now. Her eyes widened when we walked up to the take-out window.

“Oh my gosh. You’re Bianca Cassidy,” she’d breathlessly said.

“Yep, that’s me,” I’d replied.

She fumbled the order a little bit, and Mike whispered. “Another starstruck fan.”

We ordered the same thing we used to order when we were sixteen. Vanilla for him and chocolate with sprinkles for me.

“So, a taste of yours for a taste of mine?”

When he leans in, I want to meet him halfway. I thrust my ice cream cone in front of me instead and offer it to him. “Sure.”

I watch his tongue lap up a rivulet of chocolate, and a bright blue sprinkle gets caught in his mustache.

I want to climb onto the table, crawl forward and lick it off.

Even though his vanilla cone is dripping onto my mittens and over his hands, I can’t look away.

When he licks his lips, I copy him, and catch a drop of the vanilla bean infused soft serve sliding down the side of his cone.

I can’t believe the Dairy Freeze is still open year-round, and even though this isn’t technically a date, it feels like one. Trading tastes of our waffle cones at one of the weathered gray picnic tables is just like it used to be.

We’re so much more now than we were when we did this as smitten teenagers who refused to admit the way we felt. I watch him and it doesn’t matter how much we were then or how we came back to this déjà vu moment that’s like a hook in my chest.

I feel the same way I did that day – when I finally realized Mike Callihan hung the sun and moon. Breathless anticipation. Smoldering eyes underneath those sooty lashes that make me blush. The tingle that starts in my toes and settles just behind my lips.

“You’re looking at me like you want to kiss me, Cassidy,” he says as he grins.

“That’s how you’re looking at me too,” I tell him and give into temptation. I lean in and brush the sprinkle from his mustache with my tongue.

When I go to sit back down, he clasps my upper arms. “Not yet,” he murmurs. “Turnabout is fair play.”

And then his lips feather over my cheeks and kiss the corners of my mouth. That’s all he does. I want to feel the full press of his lips on mine, but he’s not going to oblige me today.

“You had a speck of ice cream too,” he explains.

I raise a skeptical brow. “On my cheeks? I don’t think I believe you, Callihan.”

He shrugs. “Since you don’t have your compact handy, you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

That evening when Farrah picks up the twins, she pulls me aside. “My friend Mari told me she saw you and Callihan kissing at the Dairy Freeze this afternoon.”

“We weren’t kissing. Not exactly. When we were kids, we used to go there every Sunday and trade bites of each other’s cones.”

She gives me a mischievous smile. “Sounds like a ritual to me.”

“Just a moment of nostalgia. Nothing more.”

“If you say so. At least tell me how you ended up at the Dairy Freeze.”

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