It was understandable that Clarence didn’t want any ice cream. When Clarence was a child he watched an old man lick ice cream off a dirty tile floor. Instead of fetching any napkins the old man knelt to the ground and licked the ice cream off the dirty tile floor. Clarence thought of this every time he saw ice cream.
But Cheryl was celebrating her birthday. Clarence loved Cheryl. Really he did. He got used to the way she made jokes that weren’t funny. And her love of the color pink. He lost sight of that strange old fear when Cheryl was near. So he took a leap of faith and ordered a cone of Mint Chocolate Chip.
Clarence licked the cone while Cheryl stared. It was sweet and his stomach was littered with butterfly wings. The cool, creaminess of the ice cream went straight to his brain and muddled his motor skills. And as he caught Cheryl’s eye (the eye that says I love you too, the eye that says you can sleep here tonight, the eye that closes others) the waffle cone slipped out of his fingers and smudged the once spotless tile floor.
