There was a growing sense of dread that had led up to the final Geography class of the week. Liz still said ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ to Vic, but that was pretty much the limit of their interactions and they still hadn’t discussed their group project for English. So sitting through Mrs. Laramie’s Geography class, Vic kept staring at the back of Liz’s head, who sat on the other side of the classroom a few rows ahead. A couple of times she must have sensed his incessant staring because she would turn her head and he would quickly shift his attention to where he would have been expected to be looking – the part of Mrs. Laramie’s legs that appeared above her boot and below her skirt.

The class though ended perfectly normally with no one needing to talk to Mrs. Laramie afterwards for once, which let Vic breathe a sigh of relief. As he followed Liz out the door she kept pace alongside him and said, “We should probably work on that English project.”

“I think so,” Vic tried to sound casual and nodded.

“How about we meet at Coffee Grinds tomorrow around one?”

“Sounds good to me” Not having any plans always aided in being totally agreeable.

“Alright, I’ll let Evelyn know.”

It wasn’t exactly a deep conversation, but Owen was once again right – she did get over it eventually. And thinking about Owen being right only brought up thoughts of Owen’s own experience, his teeth clamping down on Liz’s pale bum, and there was an image he both wanted to shake out of his head, and also kind of see in person.

After school, they all headed back down to the ice cream shop. It was another cloudy day on the island, though there were no promises of rain over the weekend and the trees surrounding their walk down to Aphrodite’s Landing were not dripping with moisture.

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This time they decided to stick around the ice cream shop for a while, finding a table in the back big enough for the five of them. Vic noted that there was yet another person working behind the counter there that day, serving ice cream scoops in between flirting with the customers. Unfortunately for Vic, two of those customers happened to be Kit and Laine, who both gave Vic exaggerated winks as they spotted him, making Vic wish that he could melt like ice cream under the table. Fortunately for him though, they found the cashier to be far more interesting, so they spent their time chatting him up, leaning so far on the counter that their goods were basically lying on top of it for his display.

“If you want people to ignore you, you should probably do a better job of ignoring them,” Owen said with a sly smirk, and Vic made sure not to even glance in the direction of Kit and Laine again.

That was not the only unpleasant surprise to walk through the doors of the ice cream shop that day. They had just settled in with their ice creams when the little door chime sounded and in walked Sabor, straight to their table.

“Hey Sabor, still icing your junk?” Vic asked

“Hey Vic, still haven’t’ figured out what to use yours for?” Vic, turning red, was about to say something probably not all that clever, but was saved by Sabor interrupting, “When you think of something to say, carrier pigeon that to me, will you?”

Then Sabor looked directly at Marcia and asked, “Are you ready to work on this thing or not?”

Marcia looked up at him, wooden ice cream spoon still in her mouth. “Oh yeah, must’ve slipped my mind. Or else my mind just purged the thought before it made me sick.”

Sabor rolled his eyes. “Slipped or not, I don’t think Ms. Tsoi is going to accept two submissions from us, so are we doing this or what?”

“I guess,” Marcia said, dripping poison with her words and picking up her cup of unfinished ice cream. “If I don’t see you,” she said to the table, “Goodnight, guys.”

They all bid their quick farewells and Sabor and Marcia headed out of the shop. Meanwhile, Vic could hear Agnes grinding her teeth.

“You’re thinking of tossing your ice cream at the back of his head, aren’t you?” Vic asked.

“He’s just lucky this is my favourite flavour,” Agnes said and let Sabor leave in peace.