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Dammit.
“Wait here,” I tell her, and head for the door. I tap on the glass, but the kid shakes his head, looking bored. I tap again.
With a reluctant sigh, he cracks the door an inch. “Sorry, dude. We’re closed. Like it says so, on the sign.” He gives me a long-suffering look, and I don’t blame him. I spent two summers slinging French fries at the movie theater concession stand. Food service is not for the faint of heart.
But I’m on a quest here, and it might be the most important one of my life.
“You see that goddess on the sidewalk?” I ask, nodding back to where Lola is waiting, a vision in spandex.
He nods. “Hot.”
Understatement of the year. “See, she wants ice cream,” I explain, “And since apparently, it’s now my personal mission in life to give the woman whatever she desires, we need to find a way to make that happen.”
Hopefully, the list will come to include several orgasms and breakfast in bed.
The kid looks more sympathetic now. “I don’t know,” he says, reluctant. “I’m supposed to go meet my friends …”
“Ten minutes,” I swear, pulling out my wallet and counting every last bill I have. “That’s all we need. And I can give you … two hundred and sixteen dollars for the trouble.”
His eyes bug out. “Done,” he says immediately, and grabs the cash from my outstretched hand. “Shit, for that, you can serve yourself whatever you want.”
“You’re a prince.”
I shake the boy’s hand, and wave Lola over. “We’re in,” I tell her, as the kid moves aside and settles on the porch nearby, pulling out his vape.
“What did you give the guy?” Lola asks, as I usher her inside. “Your soul?”
“Yup,” I agree, unable to keep the smile of pride off my face. “I have to do the dark lord’s bidding for the next hundred years, but it was worth it for the chocolate sprinkles.”
“It’s always worth it for the chocolate sprinkles,” Lola agrees, laughing.
She pauses behind the counter, and looks around. “Wait, we can get anything?” she asks, a note of excited disbelief in her voice.
“Anything,” I confirm, and hell, I could have emptied my entire savings account, and it would have been worth every dollar to see the sparkle of excitement on her face as she grabs a cone and begins scooping.
“I must have had dreams about this when I was a kid,” she confides, loading up on triple chocolate fudge and rocky road. “What about you?”
“I never had much of a sweet tooth,” I say, filling a cone with matcha green tea swirl and peach crumble, “But every year for my birthday, my parents would take me to Blockbuster Video, and let me pick ten VHS titles from the used discount bin. I went ham.”
“A movie buff, huh?” she asks, ladling on the hot fudge sauce and caramel, too.
I hide a grin. “You could say that.”
After those summer with TCM, my passion for moviemaking only grew. I went to film school, wrote a dozen bad screenplays, and then another dozen that weren’t so terrible, and finally hustled my way to my first break with a scrappy, low-budget indie film I directed, starring my buddy, Jackson. It blew up, and became the darling of the festival circuit. Soon enough, we both had Hollywood knocking on our (crappy split one bedroom apartment) door, and rolling out the red carpet. An overnight success that only took the better part of a decade to finally come true.
But all the lights and hype of LA seems like a galaxy away now, as Lola hops up to sit on the counter, her ridiculous boots knocking against the side. She takes a long, slow lick of her ice-cream, and makes a noise of satisfaction that makes my blood rush south.
All the way south.
“Delicious,” she sighs happily, and licks again; her red lipstick smearing a little as she devours her cone, tongue swirling over the sauce in a way that makes me think a thousand fevered X-rated thoughts.
The things I could do with that bottle of chocolate sauce…
“Enjoying yourself over there?” she asks with a knowing smirk.
Busted.
I look down and realize that my own cone is melting just about as fast as my cool, dripping all over my hand. I give a rueful laugh, and grab some napkins to wipe up. “I was distracted. Sorry.”
