Chapter 18: I Feel Like Eating Ice Cream

A bright blue canopy on the corner of the square, with a small queue, the kind that shimmered like a summer sky. Underneath it, a stand.

An ice cream stand.

Roy stopped walking; he stared at it, thinking.

The thing is Roy has always had a sweet tooth, but he hadn’t thought of it; he hadn’t craved it.

“... Ice cream?”

But now that he saw it… now that the image had wormed its way into his brain… 

He needed it. He didn’t know why. 

He just felt it, a strange surge of childish urgency.  Maybe it was the heat that day, or the crowd, or just the fact that he hadn’t done something pointlessly self-indulgent in a while.

Whatever the reason, he made his way towards the stands.

Vanilla. Strawberry. Citrus. Something vaguely blue and probably artificial. He was reaching for his wallet when it happened.

Someone brushed past him. Light contact, shoulder to shoulder, but it spun him slightly, just enough to throw him off balance.

He turned with a half-apology already forming in his mouth.

But then he stopped. Just for a second, in the blur of moving bodies in the plaza, he saw something. Rather, he saw someone.

A smile. Wide and warm. A person walked past, and then it was gone, as if swallowed by the crowd.

Roy blinked.

“... What?”

He stepped forward, eyes darting between the people. Searching and scanning for whoever he saw smiling.

But there was no sign. No coat. No voice and no more presence.

From what Roy could make out, he was taller than Roy, around 6 ft tall and slightly broad-shouldered.

Now, just the noise of the crowd, the laughter and chatter, came back in. The soft clink of spoons in glass cups.

What the hell was that?

It hadn’t been a hallucination. He was sure of it. That smile, that expression. It tugged at something deep in his memory, something far back that he doesn’t remember. It was old and fragile.

But the more he reached for it, the more it slipped away and became distant, like a word on the tip of the tongue.

Eventually, he gave up. Not because he wanted to, but because there was nothing else to chase.

He turned back to the stand, heart still unsteady in his chest.

He ordered a cone, a mango-flavoured one. The vendor gave him a strong nod but didn’t comment on it.

He sat down on the nearest bench, not even caring that it was half covered in sun. The first bite of the ice cream was cold enough to make his teeth ache, causing him to make a sour face.

Still. It was good.

Simple. Pointless and sweet.

He let himself sit there for a while, surrounded by people he didn’t know, holding a flavour that would melt before he finished it.

And for once, he didn’t think of anything.

He was just a normal guy, alone with his ice cream.

And maybe, just maybe, that was okay.