11/28 by uliaj06

twenty-three

10:50

"You're going to love this," Tate says.

We're walking now after we finished driving to our mystery destination.

My heart leaped, almost excited for his little mystery. But I'm not getting my hopes up because, how much can I really love this?

"How much longer?" We've been walking for a few minutes now.

"Up until that corner." He responds.

As I tilt my neck, trying to peer at the corner to see where we're headed, my vision suddenly goes dark and I flinch. I feel a cold hand over my eyes, blocking me from seeing anything.

"It's me." He lets me know before I worry.

Good to know I'm not being fucking kidnapped.

"What are you doing?" I reach up and try to remove his hands, but he won't budge.

"Just keep walking forward." He walks behind me so he can keep covering my sight.

I can't help but smile as I cautiously continue walking.

"Are you doing to run me into a building?" I don't trust him.

"Never." He says from behind me.

"I swear, you better not lead me into the middle of the fucking road." I warn him.

"Shhh." He whispers near my ear.

"Tate." I'm fucking terrified now.

"I won't. I won't." I can hear his stupid grin.

"Fuck you."

"Stop." He tells me after a couple of steps.

I stop, waiting for his next call. I feel him turn me, so I'm assuming I'm facing towards the surprise.

"Ok, ready?"

"Yeah, now get your freezing hands off of me." I'm so anxious.

He takes his hands off my eyes, giving me my vision back. I adjusted to the light, then focus on what's in front of me.

"An ice cream shop?" I stare up at it. It's a light blue color on the outside with glass windows showing the inside.

"Mhm."

"It's closed, you idiot." It didn't have any lights opened, and the sign said it closed at ten. We missed it by fifty minutes.

"I know." He says knowingly.

He walks ahead of me and bends down in front of this plant. He straightens then turns to me. He flashes me a key.

Is that a key to this place...?

"Is this allowed? This isn't allowed." This is literally breaking and entering.

He ignores my question, takes the key, and puts it in the lock, opening the door.

"How did you even know where the key was?" He was opening the door for me to get in, but I refused to go inside.

"I slept with a worker." He brushes off.

"Tate!" You have got to be fucking kidding me.

"What? She gave me the permission to come in, and it's free ice cream." He nods his head towards the inside, gesturing for me to go in. "Even if it weren't, it wouldn't make a dent in my money."

"Wow. I knew you were cocky, but not this cocky." I enter the dark ice cream place.

He gives me a fake smile and turns on the lights. "Close the curtains, this place isn't supposed to be opened."

"Clearly." I walk over to the window and closed the curtains. "Why not just pay for it then?" I'm more than positive he has enough money to pay for two ice creams.

He pulls out his wallet and puts some money in the tip jar. "Because."

"Tate." Why the fuck are we here?

"I forgot when, but one night, I remembered you asking me what I've always wanted to do."

I'm trying to think of when I asked that. When did I say that?

The night we walked around the city.

"You told me-"

"I've always wanted to try every flavor of ice cream from an ice cream shop." I finish for him, remembering.

"Since trying every flavor of ice cream in the world would be impossible." He quotes what I said that night.

I look around the shop, an excuse to turn my back towards him so he wouldn't see the smile I'm fighting.

"Surprised you remember that," I comment.

"Yeah, well I've been trying to figure out how to make it happen for you ever since." He mutters.

I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing the effect his surprise did to me, even though I was extremely excited.

He was behind the counter unlocking the container of ice cream.

I hop to sit on the counter, sitting cris-crossed as I watch him take the container of plastic spoons out, takes two, and scoops a spoonful of ice cream onto them.

"Rocky Road." He hands me the spoon.

.

We spent the next hour sampling the 48 flavors of ice cream.

We didn't take much of each, only a spoonful. We used plastic spoons, using a different one for every flavor because using the same one just wouldn't be sanitary. I'm going to take them to the recycle afterward since I feel bad for using so much plastic.

Turns out, I actually love butter pecan and this black raspberry chocolate chip flavor. Dark chocolate surprisingly goes really well with raspberry. Mint chocolate chip wasn't as bad as I thought, I liked the dark chocolate.

I tried all sorts of ice cream flavors like cotton candy, pistachio, snickers, and Twix – too sweet for my liking – caramel, peanut butter – I hate peanut butter – mango, rainbow, cherry, and other "special" flavors.

I enjoyed every minute of it.

We talked more.

We talked about memories, the people we've met, and stories.

"Y'know, one time I got stuck in a meat freezer." I'm still sitting on the white counter, cappuccino ice cream in a cup since we tried all the flavors already and just wanted to eat ice cream now.

"How'd you end up in a freezer?" Tate's sitting on one of the chairs at a brown table, eating cookies and cream ice cream.

I managed to find out that cookies and cream is his favorite flavor. Also chocolate. He loves chocolate.

"Well me and Aelin were wasted, and we thought we were opening the door to our car, but we ended up opening this door that led to this meat freezer of a restaurant. We ended up getting locked in." I casually mentioned while eating my ice cream.

His eyes narrow in confusion. "How'd you get out?"

"We ended up calling Cay."

"Why not the police?"

"Because we were drunk, and we obviously didn't know how to think." I defend. "Cayden came to our rescue, but ended up getting locked in with us."

"How the fuck..."

"So, since Cay was sober, he logically called the police to get us out." I'm almost half way through my ice cream. "Me and Aelin got arrested soon after because we were acting like insane people so they held us in jail. Not prison though, thank god. Also for "underage drinking", but people do it all the time."

"So you've been to jail before." He remarks.

"Kind of. Yeah. But not jail jail, like prison."

That was one of the scariest nights of my life.

"Also, Aelin took one of their meat." I say confused when I suddenly remembered that night.

"Meat?"

"Yeah. From the freezer. Huh, we never got that meat back..." What the fuck? That's kinda rude of them.

"Wonder where it is now." He's leaning against his chair, in a relaxed position. Messy hair, legs spread, I didn't really realize how long his legs are. I still forget that he's tall.

"Have you ever went to jail?" I ask him curiously.