The Ice Cream Scooper of the Gods

So, after the fiasco with my car, I decided I needed ice cream.  I grabbed Stephanie and hauled her over to Cold Stone, where I met... gasp... him. 

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  He was amazing.  He was incredible.  With a hint of stubble on his cheeks and beautiful eyes, he was the ice cream scooper of the angels.

I searched my brain, pleading with my mind to come up with something deep, something that would spark his interest the way his face... scratchy like the hooky side of velcro... and shadowed as though 5:00 had chosen him to be their "time to get off work now" poster boy... and his eyes... oh his eyes... and his perfectly straight nose... and his slightly-rounded-enough-to-be-soft-but-still-squarish-enough-to-be-manly facial structure... had sparked mine.

I opened my mouth, and out came the most profound thing my highly-distracted brain could think of.  "Do you have anything cherry-cordial?... ish?"

And then I saw he was an artist!  Of ice cream!  Oh heaven!  They had no cherry cordial, but he advised me on my choices, putting together a mix of sweet cream, cherry pie filling and brownies!  Then he mixed it, watching his hands work with intensity burning in his eyes... okay, maybe not burning.  He was actually looking at me since I was babbling exceptionally gracefully about why I needed ice cream in my life, and he looked mildly amused more than anything.

I paid for my ice cream and tipped him.

Then Stephanie and I sat down to eat our ice cream, and I stared longingly at Mr. Scooper.  I confided in Stephanie the lusty words of a photographer.  "My camera wants him... it wants him badly."

Which, as everyone knows, is photographer code for, "Holy fire extinguisher, Batman, he's smokin'!"

And that was dork code for, "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"

And that was fangirl code for, "Not that anyone cares.  I think I'll go bleed on another piece of poetry."

And that was emo code for, "OMG HES SOOOOOO HOTT!!!!1!!!!111!!!!"

And that was Barbie-wannabe code for, "This is why I'm hot.  This is why I'm hot.  This is why-This is why-This is why I'm hot.  This is why I'm flyyyyyy.  You ain't cause you not.  This is why-This is why-This is why I'm hot.  Oops.  I mean you."

And that was narcissist code for, "Why, I do say.  That fellow is quite smashingly handsome."

And that was pinky-up-the-butt snooty code for, "Hey... he said he gets off in 2 hours.  And he rode his bike.  I wonder if he'd notice if I waited behind the dumpster out there, then drove slowly behind him with my headlights off to find out where he lives."

And that's seriously-freaky-creeper code for, "I just wish I could stare at his eyes for another hour at least."

Which was, ultimately, what I was trying to say.

So, after a bit of conversation, most of which I spent trying to get a glimpse behind the ice cream counter, Stephanie finally said, "Alright, if you don't give him your number, I'm going to." 

Now, I don't just give out my number.  I'm not that gutsy!  I'll try to get guys to ask for my number, which I will then give out happily, but I've only ever left my number for a guy once, and that was with a 90% money-back guarantee that he wasn't even going to realize I wrote it on the Macaroni Grill table cloth... er, table paper.  Whatever they call their doodle-cloth.

So, I hemmed and hawed, trying to figure out how to do it.  I didn't have any real paper, so I wrote my number on the back of a TM Publishing business card, and waited for an opening in the sudden swarm of customers that needed ice cream.  Stephanie poked around what was left of her dessert while I waited, watching the crowd slowly clear.

Then it came... an opening.

And, of course, my stomach would turn itself inside out, flip around a few times, and then clamp onto my esophagus, terrified I was actually going to do it.

Well, eat that, suddenly-freaking-out stomach.  I did it.

I walked up to him and said, "Hey, I never did get your name," (because I was too busy staring at your face to look for your name tag).  He held up his name tag.  It said "Jordan."

"My name is Braiden."

"Braiden?"

"Yeah, I'm not Jordan.  That's someone else."

Leave it to Cold Stone ice cream scoopers to switch identities.

I smiled sweetly.  "Hi, Braiden.  I'm Savannah.  It was nice to meet you."  I handed him the card, then, as if he couldn't tell, "And that's my phone number."

And then I turned around a high-tailed it out of there.

And that was my brilliant, life altering pick-up line.  "I'm Savannah and that's my phone number."

I may need more ice cream soon.