He’s carrying two ice-cream cones, one a simple soft-serve, the other a toppling rainbow tower of scoops and sauces and nuts and wafers. Without speaking, he leans down and hands me the vanilla. I wordlessly accept. I’m more mixed up than his ice cream, which is practically an ice-cream sundae (barely) balanced on a cone. My heart is the cherry on top, and he bites it.
I gaze up at him as he contemplates me, blocking the sun.
“I bumped into Sof,” he finally explains, swallowing. “She thrust these at me, pointed you out, then grabbed Meg, and they both booked it. Almost like they planned this. The ice cream was melting all over my hands, and I couldn’t find a garbage can, so…”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“It’s ice cream. I don’t forgive you.”
“Oh.”
Despite saying this, he sits down next to me. My skin runs hot and cold with confusion, sunshine and shade. He doesn’t forgive me; I’m not sure I’ve done anything that needs forgiving. But he knows without asking that the vanilla scoop in a waffle cone is mine. I nibble at it, stealing glances at him and wondering what we’ll say. How we’ll get our friendship back. I think that might be all I want, for now.
“Meg and Sof planned this?” I ask eventually.
Thomas shifts, guiltily. “I stayed at Sof’s the first couple of nights. Weird, right? I’m at Niall’s now, on the sofa. Oh—and I entered the cake competition.” He tugs his cardigan aside, showing me the rosette on his T-shirt. “First prize. Ban’s over.”
“Mein gott, Thomas—that’s amazing.” My voice sounds false, clangs too loudly. I’m annoyed and pleased and confused, all at once.
“Yeah, well. You know I worked in a bakery back in Toronto? Every Saturday since I was fourteen, and summers.” He holds up his hand, counting off barely visible burn scars on his fingers. How have we spent a whole summer talking and this never came up? “Brownie. Mille-feuille. Tray bake. I’m not bad. I had some money saved up from that job. My dad kept telling me it was for college. I don’t know what it was for—maybe to go traveling after high school. I’d like to see a shark. Or catering college. Move to Vienna and learn how to make strudel.”
“What are you going to do with it?” I ask nervously.
“Well, it turned out I saved less money than I thought—cardigans don’t come cheap. Not enough for a shark. Or Vienna. Once I sold my car, it about covered a one-way ticket to England. This mad thirty-eight-hour round trip via Zurich and Madrid, the soonest flight that I could afford after term ended. Left a note for my mom that I’d be living with you till she came over. She and my dad had pretty much decided I’d be staying with him in Canada. That’s why she calls so much. It’s Mr. Tuttle, ten-fold. I’m in trouble.”
Ice cream. Brain freeze. Whoa.
I had no idea where his story was going, I was just happy to have him babbling at me again, but this is huge—Hadron Collider huge. Thomas cashed in his cannoli money to see me. And why?
Before I can ask, he glances at me and says, “I probably should have told you that before.”
“Er, yes. Probably,” I squeak, and try to refill my lungs, which seem to have collapsed. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because it’s nuttier than this ice cream?” He shrugs. “The moment never seemed right to confess. You might have noticed, I’m not the best at telling you stuff. And because … I knew I was using your email as an excuse. The idea of leaving Toronto and choosing to live with my mom—I’d been thinking about it for a while. If I did it, without giving them the choice, they’d have to stop arguing about it. And I didn’t tell you about Manchester, and I didn’t tell you I was half here to annoy my dad—”
Thomas is bat-grabbing again, sending drips of sticky ice cream flying through the air, and the gesture topples me like a domino. Every emotion falling into another—love and fondness and familiarity and want, an aching want for us to be okay. Whether that’s friendship or something else.
“—or about any of it, because you seemed happy see me again, and I liked you.”
He glances at me, checking for my reaction. Which is mostly just trying to keep up. I have at least a hundred questions, but I nibble on my cone and swallow them.
“I don’t want you to think I was running away. I want you to think I was running towards. Making a grand gesture.”
“A gesture like telling me you spent all your money on a plane ticket for me, when really it was to get away from your dad?” I cock an eyebrow.
“It was still a little bit about you. I wanted to know if you’d chin me again.” He smiles, rubbing his jaw. Somehow, even when we’re out of sync with each other, we still have a rhythm. “It’s pretty funny that you actually did.”
I put my half-finished cone down next to me and wipe my fingers on the grass. And I say to my knees, “It’s pretty funny that you actually did run away again…”
“Yeah, well.” He sighs. That’s all I get—a sigh?