“We don’t have to…”
“Sure, we do. I promised you dessert and I’m a man of my word. But it’s pretty late so our options are ice cream or we go down to the servo and see if they have any donuts left.”
“Ice cream. Definitely ice cream.”
Walking down the street beside Claire was hard. I was hard. I wanted to reach down and take her hand in mine but started second guessing myself. Stepping into the ice cream parlour, the dude behind the counter heaved an annoyed sigh and set his phone down. He was obviously over it and wishing he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. We ordered our ice cream cones, strawberry for me and death by chocolate for Claire before arguing over who was paying. If Claire thought for a second that I was about to let her pay, she’d soon learn. It mightn’t be the old days where the guy was expected to open car doors and pick up the tab, but my mum taught me manners. Manners she’d kick my arse if she found out I forgot.
“Wanna walk over to the headland?” I suggested.
“Sure,” Claire agreed quickly before reaching down and taking my hand in hers. Guess that answers that question.
For a while we walked on silently, licking our ice cream cones and listening to the waves crashing on the rocks beneath us but when we got to the lookout, Claire dropped my hand and went over to the railing, leaning forward to look at the ground down below.
“Be careful,” I reminded her, slumping into the bench and stretching my legs out in front of me.
“I’m good.”
“How old are you?” I blurted out randomly.
As we’d been walking along, I realised there was so much I didn’t know about Claire, but I found I wanted to.
“Does it matter?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.
The breeze kicked up and lifted her dress, flashing me a glimpse of those creamy thighs I’d dreamt about having wrapped around my head.
“Shit!” Claire swore as she tried to hold her dress down and dropped her ice cream in the dirt. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Stop laughing! It’s not funny.” Claire pouted.
“It really kinda is,” I explained.
“You’re a shit head, you know that, right?”
“Yep. You met my family. You think I haven’t heard that before.”
“Fine.”
Folding her arms across her chest, Claire inadvertently propped her boobs up. I tried looking at her face, I really did but her tits...they were just there. I couldn’t not look. I’m a guy. It’s what guys do. Tits are there, we look.
“Back to my question, how old are you?”
“How old are you?” She threw back a little harshly. I mean, I remember Mum telling me you should never ask a woman her age, but surely that didn’t count until they were old, like thirty or something and I knew Claire wasn’t that old.
“I’m twenty-three,” I shrugged. It wasn’t like I had anything to be embarrassed about.
“Ugh!” Claire groaned with a shake of her head.
“What’s wrong with twenty-three?”
“Nothing.”
“Claire! Come on, tell me.”
“You’re so young.”
“Twenty-three isn’t that young.”
“Ah, yeah it is.”
“Well then, oh wise one. How old are you?”
