Finding Sloane Winters Crazy

Sloane Erin Mallory Winters
Quite baffled

"Ice cream in July?"

He took a sidelong glance at me, raising his black brows, as if he's challenging me, "Problem with that?"

I shook my head, smiling as I pulled my jacket around myself, "No, no problem at all." I looked around Wendy's Ice Cream, noting how little there was, except for a a random guy, a mum and his little kid holding a rainbow junior waffle cone and a young couple-- who are sharing an ice cream, looking to be about fifteen years old.

Boyfriend and girlfriend.

"What exactly are... we?"

I mentally slapped myself, words slipping from my mouth before I could stop them.

"What do you mean?" Teak asked, stepping forward to order a plain vanilla ice cream for himself, and a Club Tropicana for me.

That made me the slightest bit fearful. He knew my favourite ice cream, he knew I liked it in a cup, double scoop. And I realised he knew a lot of things about me. Just how much did he know?

Does he know that I despise plastic dividers, and rap music?

Does he know that I like the feeling of his hands on my waist?

I took the ice cream from him, and began to nibble at it, hoping it could delay me from talking.
“Sloane,” he sighs, “Don’t avoid it.”

I shrug, shoving my hands in my pocket, hiding them from the Australian winter wind, “Are we friends, acquaintances, enemies, or...”

He’s got that crooked smirk on his face again, “Or what? Keep going, no one’s stopping you.”

Embarrassed, I jerk my head towards the fifteen year old couple giggling at something funny, and glare at him, “Don’t make me say it.”

“Don’t make me make you.” He murmured, taking a hold of my hand, dragging it from it’s warm space in my pocket and tugging me out of the shop.

“And how are you going to do that?” I ask, “Tickle me?”

“You wouldn’t know.”

I ponder this quietly, and shrug in defeat, “I never know, not with you.”

“Sometimes I don’t know what to do or feel about you either.”

My head snaps up, that’s a personal thing, one of very few he’s shared with me, and my mouth nearly drops, and so does my hand, from his car handle, “Seriously?”

He nods, an amused smile, and he’s closer now, my back pressed against his car, “We’re definitely not enemies, or acquaintances, since I know more about you than a normal person at your or my school does. I don’t know if we’re friends either.”

“We aren’t?”

“No, not unless you want there to be something more.” And now my heart’s racing, and he’s pressing his body against mine. His lips are by my ear, “But it’s up to you, Sloane. Do you want there to be something more?”

I feel like melting when his lips are on my now exposed neck, since he’s flicked down the collar of my jacket. “Well, I-I really don’t know—“

Oh really, I had become that pathetic? Stuttering?

But it didn’t really matter know, because then he came back up, and I could taste vanilla ice cream, salt and vinegar crisps and the faint taste of mint gum, and the soft pressure of his lips against my own now. And then he broke away from me, and said, “Do you want there to be something more?”

I didn’t know what to say, or do, but I remember nodding, and ordered him to take me to Kay’s house.