Best Served Cold

“What do you mean?”

“You have sauce on your forehead and ice cream in your hair.”

Simultaneously, I wiped at my forehead and reached for my hair. Sure enough, my fingers connected with sticky sauce on my forehead that turned out to be chocolate—how long had that been there?—but I couldn’t find the ice cream.

“Here.” Chase stepped forward and reached for a lock of my hair like he had every right to run his fingers through my hair. “Wait, you probably can’t see that, huh?” Without releasing my hair, he nudged me into the restrooms and into the ladies’ room.

Standing in front of the mirror, I saw it instantly. Pink and red made up the ice cream that colored the dark-blonde part of my balayage hair. I wrinkled my nose at the stickiness that was already setting in.

“How,” Chase started, still holding my hair, “the hell did you get ice cream at the back of your head?”

“Um.” I met his eyes in the mirror and blushed. “I was in the zone. I don’t really know, if I’m honest.”

“What are you making?”

I swiped my hair down the side of my head, pulling my hair from his grip. “New menu.”

“You’re redoing it? Huh.”

“Why so surprised?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t that a lot of work?”

“Yes. Not that you’d know.”

He drew in a deep breath.

I covered my face with my hands. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” He stepped back. “It’s okay. It’s fair.”

“No!” I spun and dropped my hands. “No, Chase, it’s not fair. You regret what you did. You didn’t mean it. Me beating you over the head with it isn’t fair. I’m sorry.”

He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck and smiled cautiously at me. “I feel like I deserve it.”

“Just because you feel like you deserve it doesn’t mean you do,” I said softly, finding his gaze with mine. “And it doesn’t mean I think you do, either.”

“You don’t think I deserve it?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m undecided, but I think I should not do it until I’ve come to my final choice.” I smiled and grabbed a paper towel to wet and get the ice cream out of my hair. It worked, leaving a bit of blue paper behind.

Chase leaned forward and plucked it out of my hair. “There. Now you look like a regular human again. Except, you know, the sauce.”

Crap. The sauce. How had I forgotten about that?

I reached for another towel, but Chase already had one in his hand. Reaching around me, he wet it, then wiped it across my forehead, only just avoiding squeezing water into my eyes.

I brought my shoulders up and squeaked as the ice-cold water trickled down my nose. I shivered, and Chase laughed, squeezing the paper towel so more than just one droplet ran down my skin.

I screamed and stepped away as the water trickled down onto my collarbone and onto my chest. My toe throbbed at the pressure, so I ended up hopping into the wall. Chase’s laughter echoed off the tiled walls, and he leaned against the sink, putting his weight on it, as he laughed from his belly up.

I knew that because it was deep and low, yet it had all the amusement of a thousand laughing toddlers.

Fuck his laugh.

Fuck him and his laugh and his smile.

“Oh my God!” I wiped at my cheeks. “What the hell was that for?”

He shrugged, still laughing, still bent at the waist. “It was funny,” he breathed. “You looked so cute with your nose wrinkled up.”

I snatched the wet paper towel from the side of the sink and threw it at his face. “Asshole!”

He tugged it away and filled his hand with water before throwing it my way in the lamest way possible. It barely even touched me.

I grabbed a huge handful of paper towels from the dispenser and turned on the tap. A dark blue clump of stuff flew at me, and I ducked in time to avoid the flying, wet missile.

Half of my towels managed to get wet before I scrunched them into a ball and launched them at Chase. He avoided them with a deft step to the right, but the second hit him in the cheek.

It was so wet it splattered across his face and onto the wall behind him. I clapped my hand over my mouth and burst out in laughter, instinctively reaching for more paper towels.

He stared at me, then, with a smile, disappeared into a cubicle. By the time he emerged with a big handful of tissue paper, I had two handfuls of paper towels that were sopping wet and ready to use as missiles.

I balled them into one and tore off small pieces, only to ball them in my fingers. One after one I launched them at him. After a few, they ended up as sloppy bits of paper flying through the air.