Strawberry Milk - Jeonglix

13

The sun was high in the sky over Felix. He was sitting on the hard concrete ground of the skatepark and the air around him was humid, a lot hotter than it had been over the past few days. He hoped that the two milk cartons clutched in his hands wouldn't get too warm. His eyes kept shifting from the cartons to the street that Jeongin would walk down if he turned up. Felix hoped he would. He lowered the chocolate milk carton into his lap as he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. It was getting too hot for comfort.

When Felix looked up again, the sun was so bright it stung his eyes but it was worth it when he saw Jeongin's approaching figure. He was pushing open the skatepark gate and Felix jumped up, running over to him with a smile on his face.

"Hey," Felix panted, "I got you this. I don't know if it's going to be a bit warm though, sorry." He held out the carton to Jeongin who chuckled at him.

"Warm milk is nice," Jeongin shrugged, taking the straw off the side of the carton and pushing it through the foil. "Thank you," he added before taking a sip, "oh, yeah, it's pretty warm. How long have you been sitting there?"

"Uh...nearly two hours?" Felix admitted.

"Two hours!?" Jeongin gawked, "just sitting there?"

"Well I skated a bit but it was too hot so yeah, I just sat there."

Jeongin burst into a fit of laughter and Felix stared at him, not expecting such a reaction, but finding himself chuckling along too. "What's so funny?" He asked.

"Nothing, nothing it's just...why did you sit in the sun when there's loads of shade under the trees?" Jeongin asked, pointing to a row of trees that were behind the skatepark's fence, shading a large patch of grass.

"I'm so stupid," Felix realised, hearing Jeongin laugh behind him when he turned to look. Despite wasting two torturous hours in the sweltering heat, it seemed worth it to entertain Jeongin. He wanted nothing more than to see him smiling and laughing. "Do you want to go and sit under there with me?" He asked, turning back to find Jeongin's eyes half-closed with laugher. He looked so different from the usual, closed-off Jeongin. He looked cheerful for once.

"Of course."

Felix ran back to where he'd been sitting and picked up his skateboard. When they started to walk out of the skatepark, Jeongin slipped his hand into Felix's free one and he knew it was going to be a great day from that point onwards.

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The weather was cooler by the time Felix and Jeongin moved out from under the trees that had been shading them. The park across the road was busy, full of kids making the most of the hot weather. Due to so many people being around, a lot of the kids had filtered into the skatepark and despite not having skateboards, they were enjoying running up the ramps and jumping over the rails. Jeongin turned to Felix and asked, "is it hard to ride a skateboard?"

"Well, I've been doing it for five years now so it's pretty easy for me but it was hard when I first started out," Felix answered, looking down at his knees that his denim shorts cut off just above of, "but as you can tell from the grazes all over my body, learning new tricks is still hard."

Jeongin nodded, seemingly content with the answer as they made their way onto the road, going to buy more flavoured milk until an idea popped into Felix's head. "Do you want to try riding it?"

Jeongin looked at the skateboard under Felix's arm with hesitancy. "I don't know...will it hurt?"

"If you fall, maybe, but I'll make sure you don't," Felix promised, holding up his pinky-finger to show he meant it. Jeongin nodded, wrapping his finger around Felix's and shaking it before Felix put his board down on the road. It luckily wasn't a busy road and only lead to a nearby car park so there wasn't a threat of many cars passing by. Felix turned to Jeongin and saw his face was etched with concern.