Outside || Luke Hemmings

Chapter 3

‘Hello, I’d like two ice cream cones please, one with cinnamon and chocolate and one with?’ the guy, his name was Luke, looked at me.
After I was done crying he decided he wanted to cheer me up a little, so we went to the only store that was still open, except for the bars and clubs, and got some ice cream. ‘ehm…chocolate and strawberry please’ I answered, not really knowing any other of the flavours except for the vanilla one.
My eyes were burning from crying so much but at least now I had the feeling I was done crying for today.
The man handed us our ice cream, Luke paid for them and then we walked back outside. We sat down on the first bench we could find.
I looked at Luke’s ice cream. Who the hell orders cinnamon ice cream? I didn’t even know that existed. But then again, I had been locked inside my house for 19 years, so I didn’t even know you could get ice cream this way.
‘What is it?’ Luke asked when he caught me staring at his ice cream.
I looked at him. ‘Nothing, I’ve just never heard of cinnamon ice cream before.’ I answered.
Luke smiled. I’m sure he was sort of happy with himself that he distracted me with that. ‘they don’t sell it everywhere. In fact I think they only sell it here. I had never heard of it either’ I smiled and attempted to lick the ice cream of the cone, just like Luke did. It didn’t look that hard.
I struggled for a few minutes before Luke looked up at me and started laughing. ‘it’s on your face’ he said.
I grinned. ‘I know, it’s not my fault. To be honest, I think I’m doing pretty good since this is the first time I’m eating ice cream this way’
‘You’ve never had an ice cream cone before? What planet did you live on?’ He asked.
‘Well, I’m not sure, maybe I did live on Jupiter for a while.’ Luke smiled. ‘okay, well let me tell you a secret’ he said. ‘The best, and pretty much only good way, to eat this, is to lick the ice cream off of the sides, all around it. Not just on one side because you’ll push your ice cream off of the cone.’
I nodded and did what he explained. ‘But honestly, how come you’ve never gotten an ice cream cone before?’ he asked after a few minutes of silence.
‘I don’t know, my parents just never brought one home’ I answered. Luke looked up at me at the mentioning of my parents, trying to figure out how I was dealing with it. Before he started talking again.
‘So, how old were you again?’ he asked. ‘I’m 19,’ I answered while twisting around my ice cream cone. ‘What about you?’ ‘I’m 18, but I’m turning 19 in 10 months’
‘Oh really? So soon? Well happy birthday in advance’ ‘Thank you, I know it’ll surprise you, but you’re the first one to tell me happy birthday this time’ ‘Am I?’ ‘Yes you are’ I smiled.
‘Where did you come from?’ I asked him.
‘I’m from Australia. I’m currently making a road trip.’ He answered, clearly very excited about this subject. I looked at him for a moment, trying to remember if my parents ever taught me that word, but I had never heard of it before.
‘What’s a road trip?’ ‘a road trip is, like a vacation. Only you travel somewhere else every day. That way you’ll get to see more of the place you’re in and you definitely learn a lot about yourself’ Luke answered, after giving me another one of his surprised looks.
‘that sounds really good. What have you seen so far?’  
‘not much really. I only started today. So I’ve got a crazy couple weeks ahead of me’
‘Do you have a lot of places to go to?’
Luke laughed ‘I do, but if you want to know all of those places, you’re going to have to follow me back to my car. I can show you exactly where I’m going on the map I have. I just can’t name them all right now.’
I looked at him. He was completely focused on his ice cream when he said that. He sounded…nervous? Like I caught him doing something he wasn’t allowed to do. ‘Luke?’ I asked suspiciously. ‘Are you lying to me?’
Luke looked at me surprised, again. It seemed like the only way he could look at me was with a surprised expression on his face. He took a minute to think of his answer and then replied with; ‘Okay, I might not have planned this whole thing completely, but I do have quite some places I want to visit. The thing is, if I only do those I’ll be done within 2 weeks. So I think I’m just going to randomly stop somewhere and see what I can do there.’
I grinned.  ‘that’s not what you’re supposed to do when doing a road trip is it?’
‘Well, you can make your road trip however you want to. I could’ve planned the whole thing, but if I saw something that wasn’t in my schedule, I’d have to get something else off of the list and I don’t want to do that. I want to be able to just stop when I want to and go where I want to without thinking if I’ll make it on time to my next stop. And besides that, I have been kind off busy until the day I took off.’ He explained.