I don’t care how pissed she is or how much it’s going to hurt when she kicks me in the balls. I just want to hear her say “fucking Shepherd Oliver” again, but this time, let’s try it as a verb.
The temperature immediately drops at least ten degrees when I step inside the back of the Dip and Twist, since the ladies keep the thermostat low at all times just to ensure nothing melts from the time they make the ordered treat until the time it gets to the window and into a customer’s hand. I shove both my hands into the wide front pocket of my hoodie over my stomach to keep them warm as I walk past a metal shelf filled with napkins, stacks of paper cups, and tons of Styrofoam bowls in various sizes. A shelf I was in charge of stocking as soon as I walked inside the door for my shift back in the day.
When I get to the end of the metal shelving and turn the corner, my feet come to a stuttering stop again. But this time, it’s with the added bonus of a rise in my blood pressure, a drop of my mouth wide open with my tongue hanging out, a sweaty palms reappearance that I’m currently squeezing together in the pocket of my hoodie, and a goddamn hard-on that a gallon of ice cream definitely won’t be able to make magically disappear.
I hear the crack of a bat followed by the cheer of a crowd, and the fact that I’m listening to one of my favorite sounds in the world while looking at one of my old favorite sights has me yanking one hand out of my hoodie pocket to grip tightly to the wooden counter next to me that’s used for cutting up fruit for toppings before my knees give out.
Even though it’s been a lot of years since I got chubbies watching Wren Bennett lean over into a huge deep freezer, my dick definitely remembers how equally hot and adorable it is to watch short little Wren have to rest her stomach on the open lip of the freezer while bending the whole upper half of her body inside the thing. The very tip of one tennis-shoe-covered toe is scrambling for a hold on the floor, while the other one kicks back out behind her as she stretches and reaches for the three-gallon tub of ice cream that must have been pushed to the far back of the freezer.
I’m on a sensory overload unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, my eyes and ears being filled with so much goodness that any second now my head is going to explode. Both of them. I was clearly wrong with my initial assumption.
Wren didn’t find out I’m here, and thank you, Lord, for the blessings you are currently bestowing upon me.
“The Hawks give up another run to Tampa as center fielder, Kilo Lucas, tries to make a run-saving catch with a long fly ball but just can’t get there in time, making the score now eight to two, Tampa.”
I don’t bother looking away from the sight before me to glance at the small, flat-screen television hanging on the wall when the next play results in an easy out at first and the game goes to a commercial break at the end of the inning. It brings me enough joy just hearing baseball currently playing in the back of the Dip and Twist for a woman who swore she never watched the game on TV, not even mad about the fact that I’m not in Tampa right now playing in that game a hell of a lot better than my shitty replacement.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, everyone knew Kilo wasn’t going to make that catch. He couldn’t catch the south side of a barn if someone threw it at him. You seriously replaced Shepherd Oliver with a piece of trash like Lucas. You went from having an MVP center fielder who didn’t even finish last season, and he still ended it with a .305 batting average, forty-seven homeruns, 115 RBI, and a nineteen defensive runs saved rating, for a piece of trash who can’t catch a fucking ball!”
I don’t bother looking over at the game on TV, because doing more than one thing at a time right now is too much for my brain to handle while Wren not only loses her shit on my behalf, but rapidly spouts off my facts that even I sometimes have to look up when someone asks me for them. And also, because of that God. Damn. Perfect ass on full display while she loses her shit about me, deep in the belly of the deep freezer.
Holy mother of God is it hotter in here all of a sudden?