The tiny Asian woman who stood behind the ice cream counter glanced warily over at the cash register. Was she shitting me? Did we look like thieves? I shook my head in disgust at the small-mindedness of people. They want everyone to be equal, so long as they look the same and the women wear push-up underwire bras and try to look like magazine covers.
Sawyer didn't let her suspicion ruin the moment. He grinned at the woman. “Pam, right? I used to come here every day when I was only this tall.” He held his hand one foot above the counter top.
She squinted, then her eyes widened in relaxed recognition. “I know you! How you been? Who is this?” She looked over at me.
“This is my friend, Aubrey.” He fumbled in the pockets of his jeans and pulled out some folded bills. “What's your favorite flavor? You should let Pam guess. She's really good.”
Pam waved a hand at him. “No, I don't do that anymore. People, they don't like.”
“Pam's a psychic,” he said, eyes wide and serious.
She got a mischievous grin that made her look a decade younger. “Chocolate chip mint,” she said.
“Sure. Give me a double scoop of that.” She wasn't that far off, but it was one of the more popular flavors, after chocolate and vanilla. My real favorite was strawberry, but mint sounded nice.
She scooped the green ball onto a cone and topped it with a pink ball of strawberry, to my surprise.
“This one is memory,” she said, and she made Sawyer a cone of chocolate and coconut.
He insisted on paying, even though I got my wallet out of my purse and tried to physically push him away from the cash register. The guy was like a chunk of granite, impossible to move or intimidate.
We walked out and back down to the boardwalk, where I felt like a walking advertisement for ice cream. People stared at us and our cones like we had something special they could never have. They probably assumed we were on a date, just two store-robbers taking the day off from our crime spree.
I was pretty quiet along the walk, partially distracted by the psychic ice cream encounter. The more I thought about it, the more obvious the answer became. She must have been watching my face as she moved her hands over the different tubs of ice cream. She read my expression, like Sawyer had done with the sketch book, stopping on the frog drawing that made my eyes light up.
Was I so readable, so transparent? I didn't like that one bit.
Sawyer pointed to a bench, and we took a seat facing the ocean. The sun was maybe an hour from setting, and the clouds were tinged with orange already. Seabirds squawked at each other over the sound of waves washing over the rocks. The water looked inviting, but I knew it would be cold. Some blue-lipped kids in their bathing suits were nearby, daring each other to go in further.
“Dares,” Sawyer said, apropos of nothing.
I replied, “A shitty way to trick people into doing things.”
“You see everything as a battle of wills, don't you?”
I'd finished my cone and was twisting and folding the paper wrapper between my fingers. “If it's not other people, it's yourself, isn't it? You have to fight the urge to hit the snooze button, and that's how the day starts off. Then it's one battle after another until you drag yourself into bed, even though you just got your second wind and you want to stay up late reading while the rest of the world is quiet, and you can hear yourself think.”
He leaned back, stretching his arms out along the back of the bench, then folding the left one in so it wasn't behind me.
“I think of the alarm clock going off as an opportunity,” he said. “Don't hit that snooze button. Make every minute count.” He pumped the air with a closed fist. “Rah, rah, rah.”
Blinking into the bright ocean view, I said, “Speaking of time ...”
He jumped up and offered me his hand. “That's right. I've been avoiding it, but we should go look into the abyss. The abyss being the piece of garbage I'm trying to fool people into thinking is art.”
I stood without taking his hand, and we walked back to the bike.
The helmet seemed even smaller this time, triggering the claustrophobia again as I pulled it down over my ears. This time, I fastened the strap without pinching my chin fat.
The temperature had cooled, and as I got on the back and wrapped my arms around Sawyer's lean, muscled torso, I was grateful for the body heat.
We looped back the way we'd come, over the overpass and back toward the bar, passing it on our way. A few minutes later, he pulled into the driveway of a house that wasn't more than a dozen blocks from where I lived with Bell.
This old house wasn't the same as the one where the guys having the party had invited us to join them the week before, but it could have been that house's sister.
The porch was crooked and looked like it was trying to run away from the main house, which was old and sad, easily the least desirable house on the street. Its mismatched upper windows made the house look like it had a black eye.
I followed Sawyer up the porch stairs, careful to step on the right side—not the left—as he warned. A skinny red-haired guy was napping on a sofa on the porch, covered in a bleached-out patchwork blanket.
Sawyer pushed open the unlocked front door, saying, “Nothing inside to steal, so no need to lock up.”
I nodded in agreement as I tried to come up with an excuse not to step inside. My uncle knew I was with Sawyer, and he'd basically vouched for him, but should I be there? I wasn't afraid for my safety, but I still didn't want to go in. I liked Sawyer a lot more before that moment of seeing where he lived, back when he was just a cute guy trying to rescue me.
“It's not as bad inside,” he said, waving to invite me in.
Chapter Five
I rushed into Sawyer's house, feeling guilty for my thoughts. Who was I to judge? I'd lived in places so much worse, but now I had a decent apartment without bugs and I was getting picky?
I wandered in and tried not to breathe deeply.
The main floor was full of mismatched furniture and strewn with dirty dishes and takeout containers, but enough windows were open that it didn't smell as bad as it looked. The mess in the front room could have been cleaned up in about an hour, and the kitchen was quite tidy, probably because whoever lived there didn't cook.
The most interesting thing about the place was the pool table that sat where a dining table would normally go. The long wall beside the pool table was pocked with holes, apparently from darts. A number of the darts were stuck in the wall, centered around the round rosettes on the old-fashioned wallpaper.
Sawyer pulled a brown dustcover off the pool table. “Rent's cheap,” he said. “They're planning to tear the house down before the end of the year, so we can do whatever we like. My roommate painted his room black.” He looked down at his feet and kicked at something on the carpet. The chunk of whatever-it-was didn't budge. “I shouldn't have brought you here.”