I’m beginning to agree with her: maybe Idowant to have an affair on a cruise ship.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask Felix to go with me to the ice cream parlor. This is something the old, charming, confident Hope would do: ask a boy on a date.
But just then Felix’s sisters come up, chattering about which one of them is a better dancer, and he gets pulled into the conversation, asserting thatheis in fact the best dancer.
I feel self-conscious asking him out in front of an audience, so I wave goodbye and invite Lauren to ice cream instead.
I order vanilla soft serve in a cone with rainbow sprinkles—my go-to since childhood—but Lauren takes her time sampling dark chocolate huckleberry crunch, coconut key lime swirl, and crème fraiche with salted caramel.
“I’ll let you in on a secret,” says an Irish voice from behind us. We turn around to see a grinning man built like a bullfighter. He looks to be in his forties, and has dark, silver-flecked hair, playful arched eyebrows, and the twinkliest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.
“Please,” Lauren breathes, instantly going into ingenue mode at the sight of a handsome stranger.
“The pistachio Stracciatella is the best I’ve ever had,” he says.
“Oh, amazing,” she coos. “I’ll have a cup of that,” she tells the clerk.
“Best get two scoops,” says the man.
“So we can share?” she asks innocently.
He laughs from deep in his barrel chest. “I’m afraid I’ll be needing my own.”
We take our ice cream and sit down at a table by the open windows to catch a breeze.
“That man is giving me Tom Selleck and I’m obsessed,” Lauren whispers.
“He is kind of hot,” I agree.
“I’m going to invite him over here,” she says.
“I had no doubt.”
As soon as he accepts his ice cream from the clerk, she waves him down.
“You were right,” she calls out. “This is transcendent.”
He grins. “I aim to please.”
“Come join us,”
He ambles over, openly delighted by the invitation. I notice he’s not wearing a wedding ring.
“Colin,” he says.
“Lauren. And this is Hope.
“I like your accent, Lauren,” he says.
“Oh, no, I speak like a yokel,” she says with a laugh, even though she’s well aware that her drawl is part of her charm. “You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take the damn Lone Star twang out of the girl.”
“Texas, you say,” he says. “Whereabouts?”
“Outside of Waco. But Hope and I live in New York now. What about you? Is that an Irish brogue I detect?”
“’Tis that. I’m from a little town near Cork you wouldn’t have heard of.”
“And what do you do in a little town near Cork?” she asks.
