Page 44 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

My jaw drops like I’ve never seen an ice cream shop before.

“Why are we—”

I am corralled inside, the hand on my shoulder pushing me forward. A cold blast of air hits me in the face and tastes like artificial winter. Outdated summer pop music bounces from the speakers, and the room smells sickly sweet, tickling the back of my throat with nostalgia.

My heart thumps to the beat.

This was where Ren and I would always go after a round of tennis after school.

I played on my school’s team—like all stereotypical private academy girls; I wasn’t breaking new ground there. Ren had already graduated, and he would sometimes come to watch me play. Tennis is not a thrilling spectator sport, no matter what the Olympics might try to tell you, so I always figured Ren showed up to my matches because of the abundance of girls in short-shorts. But I never complained too much. I always played better when he was there.

And some days, when the courts were open, just the two of us would play.

(He wasn’t much good at it.)

When he was finally tired of me showing him up, we’d walk down here and get ice cream and pretend to be two normal teenagers for a little while.

I don’t much want to be a teenager again. I don’t think I have it in me. Once you’ve had to choose between paying your electric bill and groceries, after-school clubs and cliques and yearbook superlatives drastically shrink in importance. Much like ice cream, I don’t have a taste for it anymore.

“Do you still get strawberry?”

“…What?”

“Strawberry. Two scoops. Hot fudge.”

He repeats my usual order back to me the way some people recite the gospel.

“Uhm. Sure.”

I don’t know.

The girl behind the counter is around the same age I was the last time I was here. I hadn’t even thought about this place in ages.

“Why are we—”

“If you burn off too many calories, you’ll get too skinny.”

My mouth twists.

That was always our excuse for coming here. Tired and freshly showered after being on the court, Ren would bring me here and tell me to eat, that I’d burn off all my curves if I kept it up. It was just a silly excuse, but it was our excuse.

I sit down with two pink scoops of ice cream and a drizzle of thick fudge, and I stare at it like an alien confronted with human food for the first time.

“…Eat,” he orders.

I eat, and Ren watches intently. It feels a little perverse, that heavy stare.

Memories flood back at the taste. Nostalgia has a gritty quality, even when the strawberry goes down smooth. I push the ice cream around in the bowl.

“You know…I think it tasted better after I’d just humiliated you at tennis.”

Ren doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t quite frown either. He just looks at me, ice creams melting slowly even under the blast of the AC. He nods, and then bows his head over the ice cream again.

“Next time, maybe,” he says.

Next time? Is that a joke, or is that an offer?

I wonder why we’re sitting here, pretending to be caricatures of our past. It would be easier to enjoy it if I knew I was supposed to.

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