"You're back! You're back! You're back!" Charlie started, running toward Hamish with extended arms.

"I wanted a roommate, Charlie, not a puppy," Hamish squeezed out of the ensuing hug.

Charlie gleamed. "You're going to like me for this! You're going to like me very much! You're going to rub my belly and scratch behind my ears and feed me steak!"

Hamish shrunk off toward the kitchen and Charlie followed at his heels.

"I met her," Charlie whispered.

Hamish hesitated for a minute then grabbed a soda out of the fridge. He leaned back against the counter and looked up at his overly-enthusiastic friend. "You met whom?" he asked.

"I met your soulmate!" Charlie cheered. "She came in through the window and tried to steal her book but I stopped her!"

Hamish's eyes grew wide. "She was here? When?"

A crease appeared in Charlie's brow and he stopped to think. "Well," he said. "Before I ate that brownie but after I ate the pancakes."

Hamish smiled. "Specific."

"I don't really remember," Charlie conceded. "But, and you're going to like this, we're meeting her for lunch tomorrow."

"We?" Hamish inquired. "Why WE? Why is there a WE?"

Charlie smirked. "Because your soulmate has a teensy weensy little crush on me."

"Impossible," Hamish threw out the suggestion. "I would never like anyone who could conceivable deem you an acceptable human being. It's out of the question."

"We'll see," Charlie frowned.


"Hurry up, Lilly pad," Adenline urged her sister on.

Lilly rummaged through the closet for her umbrella then pulled on some tall, plastic rainboots. "I don't understand why we're rushing to go get ice cream in weather that's practically below freezing while it's raining outside. Remind me again why I agreed to do this?"

"Because you loooove me," Adeline sing-songed. Her long hair fell down her back in a long braid as she buttoned up her thick brown coat. "And you love peanut butter ice cream."

"More than I love you," Lilly said. "Certainly, more than I love you," she mumbled again to herself.

Adeline pushed a fluffy red cap over her sister's white-blonde hair. "Okay, now where are your keys?" She asked.

"My keys?!" Lilly said incredulously. "We're not riding my Vespa through this weather! The ice cream shop is nearly twenty miles off. Why can't we take your car?"

Adenline looked off guiltily. "Because I hurt it," she whispered.

"What was that?" Lilly stared Adeline down like an adult condescending to a child.

"I hurt it, okay!" Adeline shouted. "I got into a little tiny fender bender and it's currently not working."

"How is it not working? How did I not know this?!"

"It's okay," Adeline insisted. "It just needs a leg amputation."

"What does that even mean?" Lilly's impatience grew. She did not want to entertain the idea of riding her tiny moped to work everyday.

"It means that it needs a new tire and I might've bent an axel," Adeline confessed. "But that doesn't matter right now. We're going to get ice cream and that's that."

The pair climbed onto one tiny, green scooter and puttered off into the ominous rainstorm.


"You're sure she's coming," Hamish asked nervously.

"Not really," Charlie said. Hamish looked up in disbelief. "You see," Charlie continued. "She said, 'let's meet at the ice cream place.' And I said, 'oh the ice cream place!' And she said, 'Yeah, the one with the peanut butter milkshakes.' And I said 'Yes, the one with the ice cream!' And she said, 'Yeah, you know it?' And I said, 'Yeah, I know it.' And then she confessed her undying love for me and my man genitalia."

Hamish frowned. "Now that's just not true."

"No, no it is!" Charlie asserted.

"Really, she confessed her love for your "man genitalia?""

Charlie looked down into his chocolate milkshakes. "Well no," he said sadly. "Maybe not that, but the rest is true."

"And you're not sure now," Hamish guessed, "because you didn't ever stop to think that there may be more than one ice cream place in the whole city that serves peanut butter milkshakes."

Charlie shook his head. "I really did not."