Page 50 of Iron Hearts

I got over my embarrassment and made sure my makeup hadn’t suffered too much in my compact mirror and things settled down pretty quickly.

Lunch was great, exceptionally filling, and the food wasso good! After, we took a walk up the street behind the restaurant, strolling up the sidewalk and talking. We found ourselves in an open, almost a pedestrian square type thing that held an old schoolhouse with a big boat anchor and chain around it and a multitude of shops, boutiques, and sweet shops.

“Did they really think that was going to stop a hurricane from blowing down the schoolhouse?” I asked, eyeing the boat anchor and chain wrapped around the building and the hand-painted plaque explaining the thought process behind it.

“I have no idea,” Striker said, laughing. “People are strange, I have to imagine some of ‘em did, but I can’t imagine all of ‘em did, you know?”

“I feel like this is like, pre-internet meme, like real life meme-ing,” I said. “Like how that government opened up a website to name their newest research vessel and how it ended up Boaty McBoatface because of it.”

He laughed and nodded and said, “I’m sure it made front page news in some old-timey newspaper, for sure.”

We kept strolling, stopped for ice cream, and kept on pushin’ as we enjoyed the cool confection, licking quickly before our cones could melt in a sticky mess. I didn’t think it was just me that Striker was paying extra close attention to me, specifically my mouth, as I licked at the scoop of ice cream on my cone.

I know I paid more attention than I probably should have to his tongue and wondered idly to myself, what it would feel like to have it between my legs. A thought I tried like hell to keep off of my face. I mean, we were just friends – right?

Ha!

We found ourselves at the old city gates, and paused after we passed through them to look across at the cemetery surrounded by its old, rickety, cast-iron fence and gate, and turned to look at the old historical Spanish fort to the right of it across the busy boulevard.

“Wanna go check it out?” he asked.

“The fort or the cemetery?” I asked, just to clarify.

“Unfortunately, the cemetery is closed, you can’t walk through. I was talking about the fort,” he said.

“Fuck yeah!” I said enthusiastically. “You used to be able to go in, can you still?” I asked. and we walked along looking for the crosswalks to cross the busy roadways to get there.

“Yeah, you can,” he answered.

“Awesome,” I said then circled back to our earlier conversation with a; “What about you?” We found the signal and pushed it.

“What about me?” he asked and I felt foolish – he wasn’t a mind reader, of course he wouldn’t follow my inner thoughts at all.

“Sorry,” I said. “I meant to ask, ‘what do you do for fun?’”

“Oh, shit – well, I just recently started something new,” he said.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“I started hanging out with this pretty and pretty cool chick, which has been more fun than I’ve had in a while.”

I laughed and said accusingly, “That was really corny.”

“Did you like it, though?” he asked with a grin.

“I think I did, yeah,” I relented and he laughed and said, “Good! Good…”

The light turned and we hustled across the boulevard, stepping up on the much better maintained sidewalk on the other side, turning left to make our way toward the fort.

“What else do you do other than hang out with me?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Long rides to nowhere, sometimes – just hit the road with no real destination in mind. Usually, when I do that, I find myself on the A1A all the way down to the light on Ponce Inlet. That’s where I was the day I stopped by to give you that post card.”

“Whydidyou stop by just to give me that card?” I asked.

“Truthfully,” he said, finishing the last bite of his cone and tossing the napkin in the trash on the side of the road. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

I stopped, too, and finished the last of my cone, too, and tossed the wrapper and napkins from it into the same trashcan.

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