Ice Cream Lover

by Jackie Lau

  “Drew! You didn’t tell me about that part. I don’t remember it.”

  He shakes his head. “I was too ashamed. It was one of the reasons I broke up with you, because I suspected you wanted kids...” He looks at me questioningly.

  I nod.

  “...And I couldn’t bear to give your kids a terrible father.” He looks pained as he says the words. “But even if she hadn’t reassured me about that, I wouldn’t believe it anymore. I know I’m not terrible with children, and I don’t need to be controlled by a book about embracing your inner ice cream sandwich.”

  “No, you don’t.” I pause for more ice cream. “If you were thinking about kids—”

  “I’m serious about you, Chloe. I want a future with you. I don’t know exactly what the future will hold, but I want it to be with you.”

  I climb onto his lap. I need to touch him. We kiss again, the lights of the city in the distance, the noise of traffic below...and the remains of an epic ice cream sundae on the table beside us.

  I swipe up some whipped cream on my finger and feed it to him. He puts a dollop of whipped cream on my collarbone and licks it off. I try to feed him a maraschino cherry, but he shakes his head. “I don’t like them, but I figured you did.”

  “You’re not going to change your mind about maraschino cherries, like you did with ice cream?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  That’s okay. We don’t have to like all of the same stuff.

  But I’m glad he can now appreciate ice cream, since I do own an ice cream parlor.

  “Which is your favorite?” I ask, gesturing to the bowl with my spoon.

  “The Vietnamese coffee.”

  “Good choice, but they’re all good choices, since I made them. I can’t wait for you to try the other flavors.”

  “We may have to wait until next week.” He puts down his spoon, hauls me into his arms, and carries me inside to the bedroom.

  I like where his mind is going.

  We strip each other naked, and I sigh with pleasure when the length of his naked body presses against mine. We kiss, more and more frantically with each passing second, and I undulate my hips, wanting so desperately to join with him.

  Finally, he rolls on a condom and enters me. It’s such an amazing feeling, to be together like this. It feels so right. We move in sync, and he presses kisses all over my breasts and my chest and my neck. Everywhere he can reach.

  We finish at the same time, finding our peaks of pleasure as one.

  Afterward, I lie on my stomach, my head turned toward Drew, who runs his hand up and down my back. I smile lazily at him.

  This is the life.

  I’m full of ice cream and blissed out on sex, and now I’m lying in bed naked with the person I love more than anything, while Havarti Sparkles keeps watch from the bedside table.

  “Have you had any terrifying dreams about unicorns lately?” I ask.

  “Not since last week.”

  “Baby steps.” I glance around his bedroom. It looks just like it did before, except...

  I bolt upright. “What’s hanging on the back of your door? Did you actually buy a unicorn onesie?”

  “Um, well...”

  “Ooh, can we get matching ones?”

  “No, we can’t get matching unicorn onesies. You can buy your own if you want, but it can’t be identical to mine. I have a mental block when it comes to wearing the same thing as the woman I’m dating. Seems a little lame.”

  “And yet you bought a unicorn suit.”

  “You said it would make you laugh, and that’s the best sound in the world. Well, it’s a tie between that and when you come.” He presses a kiss to my lips. “I have a small gift for you.” He reaches into his bedside table and pulls out something colorful.

  It’s an ice cream cone amigurumi.

  “It’s so cute!” I exclaim. “I love it.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “But I’m not going to sleep until you try on that unicorn onesie for me.”

  “Just so you know, I will only wear it once a month, no more than that. There are limits to what my dignity will withstand.”

  “For a whole day once a month?” I bounce on the bed. “Twenty-four hours?”

  He scowls at me as he gets up and pulls on his boxers, then puts on the unicorn onesie. When he starts to zip it up, I shake my head.

  “Leave it undone so I can see your chest,” I say.

  He pushes up the hood so the mane, ears, and unicorn horn are visible. As is his scowl. “Are we done?”

  I climb out of bed and wrap an arm around him, sliding my other hand up his bare chest.

  “No,” I whisper. “We’re just getting started.”

  That night, I fall asleep in Drew’s arms, with a unicorn onesie thrown over the chair next to the bed and my heart full of love and hope.

  This is where I belong.

  Epilogue

  Chloe

  It’s mid-September, and the busy season at Ginger Scoops is winding down. After Thanksgiving in October, we’ll only be open four days a week, Thursday through Sunday. I’m excited to have more time off, and we’ll close for a few weeks at some point so I can take a much-needed vacation.

  Today, however, the weather is still warm, and I’m glad. It’s Saturday, and before opening at noon, I have both my family and Drew’s family over to Ginger Scoops so they can meet each other. Aunt Anita is in town with her family for the weekend, and my father, my grandmother, my grandmother’s boyfriend, Lillian, and Lillian’s husband are also here. Lillian is very pregnant and will give birth any day now. Drew’s parents have come with Adrienne, Nathan, and Michelle.

  It’s going okay so far. Everyone has their own cup of ice cream, and a few people have elected to try my special flavor of the month: mooncake. My mother preferred mooncakes with red bean filling; my dad and I preferred lotus. The mooncake ice cream is red bean-flavored with small pieces of salted egg yolk. My grandmother is particularly fond of it, which no longer surprises me. Dad decided to forgo the mooncake ice cream in favor of ginger and passionfruit, but he tries a bite of mine.

  “Your mother would have loved this,” he says.

  Yes, she would have, but unfortunately, I’ve had to build a life without her.

  I glance at the photo on the wall and smile.

  Dad and I are in a much better place now. He’s no longer questioning all my life decisions, and I feel like I can talk to him, even if he doesn’t always understand.

  Having finished my mooncake and ginger ice cream, I set down my cup and rest my head on Drew’s shoulder. He puts his arms around me, and even though I get to touch him every day—we live together now!—this never gets old. I love every touch, every word he whispers in my ear.

  “Cousin Chloe!” Keisha runs up to me with a drawing in her hand. Keisha, Sasha, and Michelle have been drawing in the corner together since they finished their ice cream. “I drew a picture for you.”

  It’s a man and a woman. The woman is wearing a dress, and I think that’s a veil? There are streamers with bells hanging overhead.

  “It’s you and Drew getting married,” she says.

  “It’s lovely,” I say. “When will our wedding be?”

  “Next spring!”

  “I don’t know if it’ll be that soon. But...one day.”

  “You should have a big wedding, like Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.”

  “Um. I doubt it will be quite that big, but I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Michelle rushes over to Drew. “This is for you. It’s a picture of you riding a unicorn and eating an ice cream cone!”

  “Thank you. It looks just like me.”

  She giggles.

  “I hear you’re talking about weddings,” Drew’s mom sits down across from me.

  “Well...”

  “I already made the guest list.”

  “Mom!” Drew says. “I haven’t even proposed.”

  “Maybe you should work on that. At least
this one won’t leave you at the altar.”

  I’m glad to have Drew’s family in my life. His mom seems to have gotten over her disappointment that I’m not a doctor or an engineer and didn’t finish university. She keeps telling her friends to come to Ginger Scoops.

  The ice cream shop is doing reasonably well, and I’m happy with how the first summer went. There were even a few Saturdays when the line-up went out the door. The problem with my job, however, is that I don’t have the weekends free to spend with Drew, but we spend every night together now that I’ve moved in with him.

  I look around my shop, with its pink walls and rocking unicorn and cute stuffed alpacas on the shelf.

  Most importantly, though, Ginger Scoops is currently full of family, of people who are important to me and Drew. Our fathers are talking about golf, Lillian and Deidre are talking about pregnancy, Grandma is explaining her recipe for lime Jell-O salad to Adrienne, Sasha is showing Anita the picture she drew of a T-Rex who can’t eat ice cream because his arms are too short.

  And the man I love presses a chaste kiss to my cheek and promises to do more—much more—after I finish work.

  * * *

  When I get home from Ginger Scoops at ten o’clock that night, Drew is sitting in the recliner, a bottle of bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout and a bar of chocolate beside him. There’s a half-finished elephant amigurumi in his lap.

  Yes, my boyfriend now crochets.

  It took him a little while to get good at it, and the first thing he made was basically a deformed worm, but he’s since crocheted me a pretty decent snail and an octopus. Now he’s working on a butterfly.

  “How was your day?” he asks, setting aside his crocheting.

  “Good.” I collapse onto his lap.

  “Are you too tired to take me up on my promise?”

  “Ha! No. But let’s just stay here for a few minutes first.” I wrap my arms around his neck. “I was talking to Anita about going to China one day. Flying into Hong Kong and visiting Guangzhou, then my family’s ancestral village. Maybe you and I could do that together?”

  “Of course.” He presses a kiss to my temple, and I burrow against him.

  I know that in China, I’ll feel like I don’t fit in. As I do in Chinatown, and when I walk into a room where everyone is white.

  That’s okay. I’m glad to be who I am, and I’ve found my place in the world. Ginger Scoops might be a cheery ice cream shop, but it provides me with the connection to my mom that I craved, and it makes me happy. I wouldn’t call those things “frivolous”.

  Ginger Scoops also led me to Drew.

  When I first met Drew Lum and he ordered a single black coffee rather than ice cream, I never imagined that one day, I’d be overwhelmed with love for him.

  How things have changed.

  I start unbuttoning his shirt as I kiss his lips, sighing in contentment when I get my hands on his bare chest. I’m so incredibly lucky to come home to him every day. He definitely doesn’t melt my inner ice cream sandwich, even if that’s what most of the world thinks.

  No, he’s the man who cherishes me for who I am, the man who makes me feel like I can accomplish anything. A man who will make a great husband and father one day.

  We’re going to have an amazing life together. I know it.

  “Take me to bed,” I whisper.

  And he does just that.

  Thank You!

  Thank you for reading Ice Cream Lover!

  Want to read Valerie’s story? Man vs. Durian will be out later in 2019!

  To learn about my new releases, sign up for my newsletter here. You will receive a free copy of the novella One Bed for Christmas, a standalone prequel to the Baldwin Village series.

  You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or join my Facebook reader group, Northern Heat, with fellow Canadian rom-com authors Jenny Holiday and Farah Heron.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my editor, Latoya C. Smith, for helping me make this book the best it could be, as well as Alana Delacroix, Chelsea Outlaw, and angel G for their assistance with the manuscript. The wonderful cover was created by Flirtation Designs.

  Thank you also to Toronto Romance Writers, plus my husband and father, for all your support.

  About the Author

  Jackie Lau decided she wanted to be a writer when she was in grade two, sometime between writing “The Heart That Got Lost” and “The Land of Shapes.” She later studied engineering and worked as a geophysicist before turning to writing romance novels. Jackie lives in Toronto with her husband, and despite living in Canada her whole life, she hates winter. When she’s not writing, she enjoys gelato, gourmet donuts, cooking, hiking, and reading on the balcony when it’s raining.

  Find out more at jackielaubooks.com.

  Also by Jackie Lau

  Kwan Sisters Series

  Grumpy Fake Boyfriend

  Mr. Hotshot CEO

  Chin-Williams Series

  Not Another Family Wedding

  He’s Not My Boyfriend

  Baldwin Village Series

  One Bed for Christmas (prequel novella)

  The Ultimate Pi Day Party

  Ice Cream Lover

  Man vs. Durian