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The spoon dug into the vanilla ice cream, white against silver. Half melted even after a minute in the southern sun.

"Back street, in LA." he responded obediently as she put the spoonful of her mouth.

"and this one?" the next was chocolate, the cheap kind that always tasted the worst out of those three flavour tubs. She had to work the spoon at the side to break it up.

"Dogs barking at midnight." he responds, watching her hands as one holds the spoon, the other braces the bowl, then the too careful way she took that spoonful, that old fashioned way of some imagined idea of ladies where she covers her mouth and lowers her eyes to swallow. "... Don't really got one, for the last one."

She looks at it, the innocent bit of artificial pink strawberry. The little bit of grit to try and make it seem like it touched a real strawberry once. "Really?" it was a touch unbelievabling.

"Maybe," he mutters, leaning forward to drag the bowl his way and take the spoon out of her hand. Warm from her touch, cool from the ice cream as he works it into the dessert. "Guess I just have to wait for it to make the connection."

The sun behind her turned her skin irrdescent, her features softened, and the greenery of later summer a deeper hue. Cicadas and the creak of wind in branches, a postcard memory of something beautiful and fading.

And he takes a bite of the strawberry ice cream.