Page 36 of What I'm Looking For

I pick at the wrapper on my cone. “Well, you know, like you said. I’m no exotic beauty. Maybe you’re drawn to my vanilla kind of looks.” I lick my ice cream and swallow it quickly. I’m not fishing for a compliment. He’s obviously attracted to me, but he also pretty much said that my face and body are… run-of-the-mill.

His cone dances below my nose, teasing my gaze up until his gold-flecked blue eyes hold mine. “That may be. But there’s a range of vanillas. Like there’s Dairy Joy vanilla on a perfect spring day eaten in the sunshine after a ride through the woods. And there’s boring old Star Market vanilla with freezer burn. If you’re vanilla, Kate, you’re the Dairy Joy kind.”

A chill dances through me, and it’s not from the ice cream. I nudge his knee playfully to release some of the energy. “Pretty good metaphor there, Shakespeare.”

He laughs and I clear my throat. “Anyway, you hardly even know me.”

“But what I do know intrigues me. You’re pretty impressive. In fact, your work intimidates the hell out of me. When it’s not pissing me off,” he adds.

I take the opportunity to opt out of the looks discussion. “Come on. My job is not that big of a deal. It’s just paying attention to details. Digging deep for information other people might ignore. Then making connections between things. Looking at patterns. That kind of stuff.” My work isn’t anywhere near as interesting as his. “Oh, and lots of math.”

“Yeah, well, math was never my strong suit.” He takes a big bite of his ice cream, decimating it.

“Ugh! How can you bite the ice cream? That makes my teeth hurt!” I shudder and lick mine, catching a drip. “Anyway, wanting to be onstage mystifies me, so we’re even.”

His grin is wicked. “It’s a good thing opposites attract then, huh?”

I carefully peel the wrapper off my cone. My entire face must be a ridiculous shade of pink. “Do they now?”

He leans in, eyes on my mouth. “I think so.”

I hold my cone away from him in such a way that my body shifts closer to his. Not on purpose or anything. “You can’t have any of my chocolate.”

He scoots closer. “I just want this bit, right… here.” His lips brush the side of my mouth, then he licks just below my bottom lip. “Mmm. That’s good chocolate.”

“Ice cream kisses.” My tongue may be cold, but the rest of me is heating up fast.

“I’ve never had an ice cream kiss before.”

“Me either.”

Together we each lick our ice cream and then lean in to kiss, but I can’t keep it together and I snort in laughter instead.

He sits back, laughing, and grabs napkins from the dispenser.

I’m still giggling as I accept a napkin and wipe the ice cream off my chin. “Yeah, that was kind of gross.”

“Kind of,” he agrees. “Maybe the ice cream kisses don’t have to be so literal.”

We finish our ice cream, grinning goofily at each other. This is even more fun than sleepovers with my best friend in high school when we’d bake cookies and howl with laughter at Roseanne Roseannadanna and Mr. Bill onSaturday Night Live.

Will just makes me giddy. I want to kiss him again and do all the other things with him that I’ve been fantasizing about. Standing with him in Thoreau’s cabin earlier, I’d had to make a quick exit or I would have embarrassed myself by jumping his bones then and there.

However, my impatient libido needs to be sidelined, at least for the time being. “So. Tell me about your Shakespeare theater. It’s your company, right? You own it?”

“I know you’re teasing me, but yeah, sort of. It’s a nonprofit, and I’m on the board.” He sits up taller, balling up his ice cream trash and then shooting a basket at the trashcan. “And he scores!” I clap dutifully.

He bows and then shifts to straddle the bench, his gaze on the woods. “Well, it’s three years old. This summer we’re going to be performing at an outdoor amphitheater on the Charles River. Uh… what else? It’s called Shakespeare Boston.”

“Very original,” I tease.

“I wanted to call it the Boston Globe, but that was taken.”

“You were going to name it after the newspaper?”

“No—I mean, that’s kind of the joke.”

I wipe my mouth one last time and get up to throw away my napkin. “I don’t get it.”

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