Summer heat so thick you have to wade through it, pushing your way with jutting shoulders and bony knees, the backs of which pooled with enough salty sweat to leave an outline on blistering vinyl after you peeled yourself off the scorching shotgun seat and, creaking the door shut behind you with the careless brush of a rolling hip, decide to wait outside while your ride pays for gas in some middle-of-nowhere station, on the way to anywhere else.

He returns with two ice cream cones, towering high with their swirls of vanilla soft serve, spiraling to graceful and glorious points.
“Seemed like the thing to do.”
He says,
a half smile making its way across his face, glinting in his oh, so dark eyes. For a moment, brighter than even the sun burns.

And for that briefest of instants, all those rough edges and gruff corners are smooth.
Shining.

You melt like the ice cream in his hands, beneath a sweltering summer sun, sizzling skin against the faded paint of a car door, leaving an arm-print on the passenger side window.