“Congrats,” I say. “I didn’t realize the ice cream had been doubting you so much.” I grab my camera from my backpack in the break room to capture the hilarious moment. After I took it out of the closet a couple of weeks ago, I started playing around with it again.
I snap a pic of Bodhi as he lets out an extended victory cry, during which a woman in a tank top cautiously opens the entrance door for her and her five-year-old.
“Welcome,” I tell them. “Don’t worry about this guy, he’s just excited.”
“Yeah!” Bodhi says. “Because I did something unprecedented!Do you know what the wordunprecedentedmeans, little buddy?”
The five-year-old buries his head in his mother’s legs.
“He doesn’t,” the woman says, clearly annoyed.
“Sorry,” I say. “Just ignore my coworker. What can I get you?”
She orders a cookies and cream kiddie cone, which Bodhi eagerly starts making. After I ring her up, I snap a couple of quick shots of Bodhi as he scoops.
“Yo, lemme see!” he says, reaching for my camera once our customers have left.
“Ehhh,” I say, looking down at the viewscreen. “They’re not great. I’m still shaking off the rust.”
“Man! You think all your stuff isn’t great,” Bodhi says. “Even when it is. You’re good at this, dude! And it’s important for me to see what my flexed triceps look like with some sick filters on ’em.”
I put my camera back into my backpack. “I’ll think about it.”
“Please do,” Bodhi says, wiping down the counter. “I’d love to put one of those pics in a going-away card for Lizzy.”
“I thought you and Lizzy are breaking up before she leaves for college.”
“We are.” Bodhi flips the towel over his shoulder. It slides off and lands on the floor. “But I still want her to be, like, thinking of me. Speaking of which: Haveyoubeen thinking of Maggie at all?”
This is the one downside of working shifts with Bodhi. The other Scoop ’n’ Sprinklers don’t ask me weighted questions about my personal life.
The answer to this one, of course, beingyes.
I’ve been thinking about Maggie all the freaking time.
“I mean,” I say to Bodhi now. “I’ve thought about her a little. I guess.”
“A little?” Bodhi says, poking my belly in a way that makes me giggle. “Alittle?”
“Yo, quit it!” I’m cracking up, even though I’m so annoyed.
“I can’t believe you haven’t reached out to her yet,” Bodhi says, scooping himself a kiddie cup of black raspberry. “This is insane.”
“Not really. She’s probably leaving for Delaware in, like, a week or something. Reconnecting now would just be cruel.”
“Okay,” Bodhi says, spooning a hunk of ice cream into his mouth. “Whatever you say.”
“I’m trying to evolve here,” I say.
“Ha!” Bodhi snorts out a little black raspberry onto my sleeve. “You think that’s what you’re doing?”
“Yeah.” I grab a napkin and wipe my shirt. “Totally. It is.”
“All right, Hookup Guy, letmehook you up with some advice. Totally free.” Bodhi crumples his empty kiddie cup and three-point-shoots it toward the trash can in the customer seating area. He misses by a lot. “You didn’t see that.”
“I did,” I say, laughing. “And I don’t need your advice.”
“So you think this is, like, a selfless act of love, right?” Bodhi vaults the counter. “But to me, it seems more like you’re avoiding the whole situation so you don’t have to deal with it. So you don’t have to acknowledge youremotionsand Maggie’s emotions and all of that.” He picks up the misshapen kiddie cup. “Just like you don’t want to show me the photos you took. Because then I might judge them, and you’d rather stay in your happy little bubble.” He emphatically dunks the kiddie cup, along with his spoon, into the trash. “Without the mess.”
