“My first car was a Ford van that used to belong to my mother. It actually was quite nice. I could fit all my friends in it… if I wanted to. Which I didn’t.” She paused. “Because I didn’t have many friends.”
Her face went sad then as she remembered her mother, and I instantly regretted bringing up vehicles if it put that kind of look on her face.
Her mother, father, and sister had recently died. It was a sore subject that I tried not to remind her of if I could manage it.
“Hey, do you want ice cream? I all of a sudden want some ice cream,” I said out of the blue, hoping that it would take that awful look off her face.
Hastings grinned then, but just as quickly the smile fell away as if it never was.
“Fuck yeah.” She paused. “That was an actual fuck, not a Tourette’s fuck in case you were wondering.”
I wasn’t, but I loved that she clarified it for me.
Five minutes later we were pulling into the Sonic, and a familiar lifted green truck caught my eye as I pulled in across the parking lot from it.
After ordering our Blasts—hers with M&M’s and mine with Butterfinger—we stared at the truck.
“Do you think that’s the truck that I saw at my place?” I asked her.
She looked over and studied the truck right along with me.
“Yep,” she said. “Same dark-ass tinted windows. I can’t see in at all.”
“Maybe when the chick delivers his food, he’ll accidentally roll down the window and I’ll see his face,” I muttered.
We were so focused on the truck that we didn’t see the woman come up at our window until she’d rapped on it.
We both screamed like the girls we were and turned to find her grinning at us, ice cream in hand.
She was also on roller skates.
“Hey!” I said as I grinned repentantly at her. “We were stalking.”
Her eyes went to the truck at the end of the lot and then back to me.
“Mr. Grilled Chicken Sandwich, Hold the Bun?” She smiled. “He doesn’t even have the mayo or anything on it. He eats grilled chicken, tomato, and lettuce only.”
My eyes went wide. “That’s so not fun.”
She shrugged. “The man has a banging body, so obviously whatever he’s doing is working for him.”
We all looked back toward the green truck, and I groaned when I saw it backing out of the parking lot.
“Damn,” I said. “Maybe next time you can take a photo of him?”
She was already shaking her head.
“No way,” she immediately disagreed. “The guy is scary. Like, looking in his eyes, I see Jesus and feel like I need to confess my sins kind of scary. He scared me so much that I started to go back to church when he first started coming.”
“When does he show up?” Hastings asked as I passed her the ice cream that she’d ordered.
“Usually every single day around this time. Sometimes a bit earlier. Always orders the same thing. Sometimes he has his elderly grandmother with him, and on those days he’s not as scary,” she admitted. “One time I skated right into his truck when he looked at me. His grandmother laughed so hard that he actually smiled at me when I apologized for the fifth time.”
This guy sounded great.
Plus, from what his grandmother had talked to me about as I’d moved in last week, I knew that he was a good guy.
He was a police officer with KPD.
If I was talking to my brother, I might just ask him about him. Though, I’d never caught his name.
Grans—I was informed that that was her name, and I wasn’t to call her by anything else—hadn’t ever mentioned his name. It was always ‘my grandson’ when she referred to him. I’d have to make an attempt to learn his name this week.
Maybe then I could ask Hastings, who could ask Sammy.
“I’ll have to make it a habit to come,” Hastings said. “Ice cream every day works for me anyway.”
We laughed and the Sonic chick left, leaving us to finish our ice cream and talk.
“He sounds so mysterious,” Hastings said. “He’s putting a book character in my head as we speak.”
I grinned at my friend and sister-in-law.
“I’m glad that I could be of service,” I admitted. “You ready to go home?”
She looked at my ice cream.
“I am if you are,” she admitted. “We don’t have to rush home, though.”
I shrugged and took another bite of my ice cream, finishing it up before I started to drive out of the lot.
She wasn’t even half-finished by the time we left.
“You’re eating that quite slow,” I said as I drove her home.
“I like it melted,” she admitted. “It tastes better for some reason.”
I gagged. “I can’t stand melted ice cream. In fact, if it’s melted even a little bit, it reminds me of semen.”