The Adventures of a Scrawny Musician and a Compulsive Liar

9. Cloud of Depression VS. Ice Cream

It didn’t get better.

The situation with Evan and Isobel, that is.

Even sitting here across from them at lunch right now was unbearable. We were all just sitting there in what has got to be the most awkward silence in the history of awkward silences. Isobel didn’t even glance up when Nathaniel shoved a whole Twinkie in his mouth and washed it down with a can of Coke. I guess that was the moment when I noticed that everything just wasn’t the same anymore. Evan’s half-reaches for her hand were starting to depress the hell out of me. Isobel wasn’t helping matters along with her blatant stares at the dirty blonde a few tables down from us. Just when it was starting to really drive me nuts, the bell sounded. Thank God.

Isobel walked on her own to her fifth period while I walked along with Evan and Nathaniel towards the E wing. Suddenly, inspiration struck me. “Hey, you guys busy tonight?”

Nathaniel nodded and reached up to run his hand through his hair, but realized the gel that he spiked his hair with every morning was on there. You’d think that after a year, he’d get used to it. “Helen’s cooking tonight. Again. As much as I love her baking skills, her general cooking skills could use a lot more work. I mean, Jesus Christ, how can her cinnamon cookies taste like heaven, but her eggs taste like shit?”

I shrug. Nathaniel was right. His step-mother’s cinnamon cookies were the best of the best. “How about you, Evan?”

A pathetic little drop of his shoulders that could only be a shrug shows his answer. “I’ve got nothing… again.”

“Great buddy, ‘cause I know just the thing that’ll cheer you up,” I announce, flashing my teeth in a wide smile as I throw my arm around his shoulders in a bro-hug.

“What?” With his glasses ever-so-presently perched on his nose, he looks up.

“Ice cream.”

Scoops was a privately-owned homemade ice cream shop. It was the very one that I brought Natalie too before our first date and the place where I met Emily—oh! Emily!

Immediately, I scan the counter for signs of a possibly-sniveling teenaged dark-haired girl. Surprisingly, she sees me first.

“Laurie!” she exclaims in glee. Without pause, she hops over the counter, completely ignoring the customer in front of her, and runs over to me to give me a bear hug around the waist. I never really noticed before how tiny she was. At most, she probably stood at five feet four inches. “Oh. Hi!” She waves towards Evan. Evan waves half-heartedly back, his head still in that depressing cloud of funk that hovered around him everywhere he went.

“Well, you’re cheery today,” I observe. Last time I saw her, she had an ungodly mixture of snot and tears smeared all over her face due to her grief of her then-recently broken relationship.

“Well, you just caught me on an off-day, is all. I’m usually extremely bubbly. Speaking of extremely bubbly, where’s your girlfriend?” Emily asks with a smirk.

I blush. “She’s not my girlfriend.” Yet. “Anyways, I was hoping that you’d be able to hook me and my friend, Evan, up with some of your best. As you can see, he’s a bit down-under-the-weather, and to be honest, it’s depressing the hell out of me.”

Evan looks towards me with an accusing glare.

“What? Just speaking the truth, bro.” I start walking towards the counter with Emily toting Evan along behind me, making sure he knew exactly how magical, delightful, wonderful, lip-smacking delicious their ice cream was. If I didn’t know how true that was, I would’ve slapped my hand over her mouth to stop the incessant stream of chatter spouting from her lips at an unbelivably fast rate.

The disgruntled customer from before was long gone, and Emily took her place behind the register to take our orders. “What would you guys like?”

“One mint-chip and one rocky road, please.” I ordered.

“Okay, would you like that in a cup or a cone?” Emily asked.

I eyed Evan out of the corner of my eye. His eyes were focused on the ground and his shoulders were drooped. And yes, that god-forsaken cloud of depression was still stalking him from behind. “Regular cone for me and a waffle cone for him. He looks like he needs it.” Emily took one look at Evan and she made an “o” with her lips in understanding. She nodded and told me the total as I handed her the money.

“Here you go, guys. Enjoy!” She handed us the two cones. I handed Evan his. He barely looked up as I practically grabbed his hand, made a fist with it, and placed the cone into the opening. If he dropped that thing, I swear, I’d make him eat it from the ground. Luckily, he maintained a firm enough grip on it that it didn’t splatter to its untimely death on the colorful tiles below us. That’d’ve been tragic. “Oh, and… Evan?”

Evan’s head snapped up, surprised. “Er, Yes?”

“Don’t frown so much. You look cuter when you smile.” She gave us another good-bye grin as we walked away from the line and back to the outside.

“Oho-ho! Somebody’s got the hots for you,” I teased once we got outside and took a lick of my ice cream. Oh God. So good…

“Shut up,” Evan retorted, a faint pink tinging his cheeks.

“Man… are you blushing?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh my god, you are!”

He flung his hand out as if to swipe my ice cream from me. Of course I nearly jumped back a foot. “Not cool, man. Not cool.”

“Whatever,” he said as he took a lick of his ice cream. “Jesus Christ.”

“I know! Good, yes?” I asked as I devoured my own.

“Mmf,” Evan replied with his face buried into his ice cream. His cloud of depression was already fading a bit.

“That’s a good boy.”