Paradise Lost

As far as small town ice cream parlors went, Dave's was alright. Dave's Old Fashioned Ice Creamery, the last place left on this planet that still offered bubble gum ice cream. I had to admit, Dave's would hold my inner-child's heart for the foreseeable future, if only because it offered my five-year-old fix. I could always remember that I was really home for the summer when my tongue went through the routine of skillfully avoiding the little gumballs while somehow managing to devour the sticky-sweet cream around it.

Bubble gum ice cream was the one thing that Summer Gemma and Ordinary Gemma could openly consent on. The reminder that Summer Gemma was once more the main player in this game called life made my head spin as I glanced around Dave's small, familiar sixties style parlor. Summer Gemma had been caught blowing bubbles at nine in the morning when she should have been acting her way through another infamous reenactment of a midnight escapade that never really happened with some "lucky" boy who never really got lucky. Summer Gemma had been caught resting peacefully on the grass beside the lake, basking in the sun instead of nursing an imaginary hangover that would have kept her out of the sun's rays for as long as humanly possible. Summer Gemma had been –

"…Caught red handed!" a strangely effeminate voice cut into my thoughts, making me literally jump in my seat.

Jackie was sitting where she always sat, right beside me, attempting to twirl a strand of dark brown hair around her finger, as was her habit, only now that her hair had been cropped short the action didn't quite play off as cute and graceful as it had in the past. The short hair must have been a new thing. Jackie was watching me as I shot her a startled glance yet it hadn't been her voice that interrupted my thoughts.

Seated across from me with impeccably perfect posture, right leg crossed primly over the left, chin resting daintily on the back of a perfectly bent wrist, Morgan eyed me with an all-knowing smirk. His gaze held a mischievous glint and I felt my own gaze turning guilty.

"Umm, what?" was all I managed to utter. I cringed inwardly even as the words escaped my lips. Summer Gemma would have had a witty reply for this exact moment, something that would make her look too important to be blamed for zoning out. Why was it taking me so long to get back into the swing of things this summer?

"Girl, you have been caught red handed!" Morgan repeated, "You are miles away. Where exactly is Gemma's pretty little head wandering when I'm trying to discuss matters of the utmost importance?"

I wish I had an answer for him. How was I supposed to explain that some mystery boy had snuck up on me this morning while I was blowing bubbles and left me contemplating the meaning of existence? Summer Gemma didn't care about boys; she used and abused them. She was the one that was there one second and gone the next, it wasn't supposed to happen the other way around. This wasn't supposed to happen! I didn't even know his name!

"Uh," Think, Gemma, think!, "Morgan, beautiful, beautiful, but overly dramatic, Morgan," I chided with a sarcastic smile, the façade already settling back into place, "if I tried to pour my heart and soul into every situation you consider 'of utmost importance' I wouldn't have any heart or soul left in my poor body." I let my tongue wander over my ice cream cone and waggled my eyebrows suggestively at him; the lewd gestures were a part of our own personal joke.

Morgan's smirk grew and he leaned forward as if preparing to conspire with Jackie and myself. "Gemma, nice try, but we all know you don't have a heart or a soul." He teased wickedly, flicking his wrist in that overly effeminate way that only he could ever manage to pull off gracefully, "Besides, you had 'boy' written all over your face while you were staring off into space. Oh, your eyes glazed over, by the way, very unattractive look on you."

I scoffed at him and tossed my untamable hair over my shoulder, pressing the hand that was unoccupied by an ice cream cone flat against the table to help push myself to my feet. Jackie snickered from her place at my side yet added no other input to the conversation. "Whatever you say, Morgan. Come on, let's get out of here."

"Awww, but I'm not done." Jackie whined beside me, looking up at me with the pout that I knew for a fact no boy here had ever managed to resist, not even Morgan. Luckily for me, I wasn't a boy.

I cast her a playful glance. "What, you're eighteen years old and you still haven't figured out how to walk and eat ice cream at the same time?" I cooed mischievously, "Should I go grab a cup for you just in case you lick that strawberry cream right off its cone?"

Morgan giggled and Jackie shot both of us playful glares, sticking her tongue out at me childishly. When she didn't respond I leaned over and linked my free arm through her own, dragging her out of the bright red booth by her elbow. There were no further complaints from either Jackie or Morgan and so the three of us ambled slowly down the narrow road that would lead us back to the Lake House.

We weren't in a rush; we were young, we were free, we had all the time in the world.

"So tell me," Morgan's effeminate tone drifted through the air in place of a breeze, "who's this boy who's so much more important to the Glamorous Gemma than her own bestest friend?"

I glanced at Jackie, our arms still linked at the elbow, and took a bite out of the sugar cone of my nearly devoured bubble gum ice cream. "No one's more important than Jackie." I answered in a bored tone, intentionally trying to distract him by playing the 'who's my real best friend' card.

"No stalling." Morgan's voice was firm and all business, a tone that I had always found amusing on him in the past.

I sighed, taking another large bite out of my ice cream cone, prolonging the inevitable. But was it really inevitable? Did I really have to tell them about this boy? I mean, really, who was he? He was just some random guy who we never really associate with. Sure we would occasionally pass a casual glance over him; he vacationed in the same small area we all did so we had of course seen glimpses of him in the past and would logically see at least a few more in the future before the summer was over. Yet that's all he was, a distant figure on the horizon who we hardly even acknowledged. Morgan and Jackie didn't know him and chances were they never would. Hell, I didn't even know him. I listened to him talk for five seconds and that was it. End of story.

So what exactly was I worried about? I honestly had nothing to tell my only friends at the Lake House, and therefore nothing to hide from them.

I exhaled with relief as I came to this conclusion and shook my head at how silly I was being; neither Summer Gemma nor Ordinary Gemma ever reacted like this to such brief chance encounters.

"Not stalling," I corrected, devouring the remaining cone in one bite, "Just stating facts. I'm sorry, Morgan, but sometimes my mind is inclined to wander. You can't blame me, it is summer, after all."

"Our last summer here." Jackie's characteristically loud and energetic voice was soft as she murmured it and the reality of life itself seemed to settle upon our previously merry little threesome.

No one spoke another word the rest of the walk back to the lake. I decided that silence and reality must come hand in hand. Maybe the silence helped you to recognize reality in an otherwise unreal world.

My gaze was fixed on the horizon as we finally reached our destination, traveling over the scattered clumps of tall water reeds growing along the banks of the lake that I had come to know so well. Had I been watching my feet, as I usually do when faced with reality in such a brutal way, I wouldn't have seen the figure standing by the grassy banks, turned in such a way that his profile was recognizable even from this distance. Yet I hadn't been watching my feet, I had been watching the horizon, and so I did see him. And an impulse overtook me before I had the sense to suppress it; I shattered the silence that had settled upon us.

I had to know.

"Who's that?" I tried to keep my voice casual and my vague nod in the boy's direction was as indifferent as I could manage.

Both Jackie and Morgan responded to my inquiry as if being woken from a deep trance. "Who?" Jackie asked, shaking her head of short hair gently.

"That kid, the random guy over there." I gestured vaguely to the boy standing by himself on the edge of the lake once more, still keeping my tone carefree, "I've never seen him before."

Jackie could only shake her head gently once more, just as clueless as I, but Morgan squinted in recognition, a look I knew all too well; Morgan knew who he was.

"Oh, him." his tone was so suggestive, "That's pretty boy Jake. Such a looker up close, keeps mostly to the Anderson kids though, not too into our little nightly shindig scene. Though I'm sure he and his group have their own little shindigs, if you know what I mean." Morgan wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and smirked into the distance at the boy's profile.

My eyebrows furrowed almost instantly. "Do you know him?" I asked, feigning casual indifference even as my unspoken inquiry was made perfectly clear; how well do you know him?

Morgan let out an exasperated sigh. "Only by name and face. We've talked a couple of times, and I swear I was so close to persuading him at least once or twice, but alas," he let out an overly dramatic sigh, "all the best ones are straight! I was close, though, I swear that boy could be persuaded if given enough alcohol."

We continued on our way, Jackie sharing a playfully lewd scenario with Morgan; those two had the most active imaginations of anyone I had ever met in my entire life. Beyond the nearly psychotic fantasies my two friends were placing the poor unaware boy in, no further attention was brought to him. No one even suspected that my interest in him might be legitimate. Yet that didn't matter. Nothing seemed to matter aside from the fact that I had another name to store in the recesses of my mind.

Jake. The mystery boy who could find philosophy in a bubble was Jake.