Jamie could hardly sit still at her table. Much as she understood (or tried to make herself understand) that this wasn’t technically a “date,” she’d taken a little more time than usual to fix herself up. She wore one of her nicer shirts, a bubblegum-pink top with a scoop neck and cap sleeves, over a crisp pair of khakis and white tennis shoes. While she wasn’t much of a jewelry or makeup person, she did sport a blue and purple butterfly charm on a thin silver necklace, and had applied just a touch of baby-pink lip gloss. For added measure, she’d put her favorite shampoo, soap, and perfume to good use, so she gave off a fragrant mix of oranges and spices.

No sooner did her watch mark five-thirty than she saw Chris step through the door. Even from a distance, even with his black FDNY cap and dark shades, she knew him when she saw him. She promptly stood and waved to him, and he nodded and tipped his cap before heading her way. It wasn’t until he reached her that he removed his shades and settled them atop the brim of his hat, and he greeted her warmly, “Hey, Jamie!”

“Hi, Chris! You made it just in time.” She moved to his side of the table, but before she could do anything else, he told her, “Quick question—do you prefer handshakes or hugs?”

This question took her somewhat aback, but she never hesitated to answer. “I’m more of a hugger than a handshaker.”

He smiled and opened his arms. “Then come here, you.”

She needed no further persuasion. From the way they hugged, you would have thought they were old friends reuniting after a decade. Jamie felt warm and fuzzy all over, and whatever kind of cologne Chris was using that day, she adored it. “It’s so good to see you,” she said when they let each other go.

“Good to see you,” he countered. “You look really nice.”

Her cheeks flushed, and she coyly tucked a bit of hair behind her ear. “Thank you. So do you. I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”

His handsome smile continued to linger; she would have sworn that smile could melt a full dish of ice cream by itself. “Then I shall do my best to make it worth the wait.” He made a grand gesture toward the main counter. “Shall we?”

“We shall.”

One of the best things about Friendly’s, if not the best, was their “Build Your Own Creation” option when it came to their ice cream. Both Chris and Jamie opted for the largest sundaes, each of which contained three different flavors of ice cream and three different toppings of their choice. Jamie chose mint chocolate chip, Forbidden Chocolate, and Hunka Chunka Peanut Butter Fudge, all smothered in marshmallow cream and hot fudge with a generous shower of fresh walnuts. Chris opted for regular chocolate along with peanut butter and vanilla, and all topped with plenty of M&M’s, gummy bears, and Kit Kat bars.

When the two were seated in a corner booth with their desserts, Jamie said, “Hello, sugar junkie, it’s a pleasure to pig out with you!”

“Are you sure you can eat all that?” Chris asked, pointing at her sundae with his plastic spoon.

She jabbed her spoon back at him. “As sure as you are that you can eat all that.”

He eyed her slyly. “Tell you what, sweetheart, I’ll make you a bet. First person to finish every last bite—and keep it down—wins a whole buck from the other person.”

“You’re on.”

“Ready, set—go!” At Chris’s signal, they dug their spoons deep into their frozen dairy mountains at the exact same time.

Between gooey mouthfuls, Jamie raved, “Mmmm…flavors worthy of the gods.”

“I’ll share a secret with you, honey,” Chris said between bites of vanilla and Kit Kat. “The trick is to pace yourself. To not gorge yourself all at once at the start.”

“And a very small, very early lunch also comes in handy,” she rejoined, “so your stomach is able to utilize its full capacity.”

He scowled. “Hey, now, that’s cheating!”

“Ah, don’t worry. I’ve heard it said that men have bigger stomachs than women—or a higher metabolism rate.”

He rolled his eyes, but he was serious when he said, “So, Jamie, tell me a little more about yourself.”

“Well, let’s see. For starters, I’m the world’s biggest Disney geek. I own every movie Disney and Pixar have put out thus far, and I can quote just about every one back to front.”

“Oh, can you?”

“Sure, I can.”

Holding one of his gummy bears between two fingers, Chris said nonchalantly, “Well, I suppose such a hobby beats those pre-hysterical times when humans used to sit around and stare at each other all day. Now that must have been very boring.”

Jamie smiled, understanding the cue. “As a kid,” she said, “I always wondered what it was really like under the sea. I also wished I could go to Agrabah, the city of mystery, of enchantment—”

“—and the finest merchandise this side of the river Jordan, on sale today! Come on down!”

She giggled at his rapid-fire speed and over-the-top accent. “To be a professional actor, hi-diddle-dee-dee, that’s the kind of life for me!”

“Oh, yeah, sure. What does an actor want with a conscience, anyway?”

She narrowed her eyes and jutted her lip. “You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”

He shook his head slowly. “You are a sad, strange little lady, and you have my pity.” With that, he tossed another gummy bear into the air and caught it neatly in his mouth.

“Hey, that was very good!”

“What? My skills concerning Disney or my skills concerning gummy bears?”

“Both. I wish I could catch candy in my mouth like that.”

“Ah, there’s nothing to it, really. It’s all a matter of timing, and just remember the difference between catching the food in your mouth and throwing the food into it. It’s more like baseball than basketball.” Chris paused, then leaned forward and added, “Also, try to remember to keep your lips over your teeth the whole time. You’d be surprised at what an M&M can do to your teeth.”

“Thanks for the warning,” said Jamie in the same conspiratorial tone. In her normal tone, she asked, “Say, would it be cheating if I had a few of your gummy bears?”

“Not if you allow me a bite of that nutty marshmallow glop of yours.”

So Jamie plucked five bears, each a different color, from Chris’s sundae, and he took a heaping spoonful from the top of her sundae in exchange. “Now we are even,” he declared with a sticky white blot on his upper lip. “Boy, that’s rich stuff. You sure like marshmallows, don’t you?”

“Heck, yeah! Plain, toasted, on s’mores, off s’mores, in cocoa, outside cocoa, even on pizza.”

He almost choked. “On pizza?”

“Graham cracker pizza,” she reassured him, “with melted Nutella and grated white chocolate. Nat introduced me to the recipe. It’s a masterpiece.”

“I see. Sounds like your buddy is quite the chef.”

“Trust me, you haven’t lived until you’ve had a sample of her cooking. She makes the world’s best spaghetti sauce from scratch, and she can cook the most fabulous eggs in her sleep.”

“What can you make?”

“Well, I can make a decent salad, and I can put just the right amount of butter and jam on toast.” She laughed with him before adding, “Naw, I’m pretty fair-to-middling in the kitchen myself. At least I haven’t made anything inedible, not yet.”

Chris took his time to lick his spoon clean before asking, “What else about you is worth mentioning?”

“I also love musicals. I’ve grown up in a family of Broadway nuts, so it’s come to grow on me, too.”

“What’s your favorite musical?”

“Oh, boy, wa-a-a-ay too many to settle for just one!” Jamie started ticking off titles on her fingers. “My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls, Hello Dolly, Forty-second Street, Fiddler on the Roof, Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, Music Man, West Side Story, anything by Rodgers and Hammerstein—and I harbor an especially soft spot for Grease.”

“Grease, huh?” Chris quirked an eyebrow.

“I used to have a hopeless crush on John Travolta, though whenever I listened to the soundtrack, especially to ‘You’re the One That I Want,’ it was hard to imagine that was his actual voice. He sings like a girl.”

“What’s wrong with singing like a girl?” Holding his spoon as he would a microphone, Chris sang (with a higher pitch than usual), “I got chills, they’re multiplyin’, and I’m losin’ control! ‘Cause the power you’re supplyin’, it’s electrifyin’!”

“Great voice,” said Jamie, trying not to sound overexcited. “You sound like you really get off on music yourself.”

“Honey, music is my life. Everything else is just gravy.”

“I believe it. I can’t imagine what I’d do without music, either. I hardly make it through a single day without listening to at least three or four songs.”

“What kind of music do you listen to?”

“I don’t know. Anything that sounds good to my ears, I guess. How about you?”

“You name the song, you name the singer; chances are I’ve heard them at least once.” Chris almost let slip that he was in a band, and to his relief (and slight disappointment), Jamie said nothing about *NSYNC at all.

“I’m not much of a singer,” Jamie said as she swirled her spoon around her bowl, “but I like to sing now and then for the pure fun of it. Just make sure you have some earplugs handy if you’re around me.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re not that terrible.”

“You’d be surprised. One time, when Nat overheard me singing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine,’ she told me, ‘I can’t imagine what Mr. Lennon would think of that awful desecration of his sacred song!’”

Feeling a tug of pity, Chris gently assured the girl, “She was probably only pulling your leg.”

“Maybe.” Jamie lowered her gaze. “But I know I’d never win any singing contests. I’d hate to think what Simon Cowell would have to say about me.”

For a more pleasant topic, Chris asked, “If you could do anything you wanted in the world, what would you do?”

That brought a smile to her face, which made him feel better, too. “Write books,” she said at once. “I’ve been a bookworm since birth, my highest marks in school were in English, and I’ve always dreamed of walking into a library or bookstore and finding something on a shelf with my name on it.”

“What kind of books would you write?”

“I’d like to try my hand at a bit of everything—romance, fantasy, mystery, historical fiction, maybe even a bit of horror.”

He gaped at her. “A sweet, harmless, innocent little thing like you writing horror stuff? I find that impossible to believe!”

Now it was her turn to quirk an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? Nat claims that I make her afraid to turn out the lights at night.”

“Well, then, we shall see just how reliable your buddy’s word is, one of these days.”

When at last they got to the last bites of their ice cream, both managed to swallow that final bite, though it took a substantial effort to do so. “Whew!” Jamie sighed as she leaned back and let her hands flop on either side of her. “Oh, boy, that was almost too much, even for me!”

“Oh, man,” Chris groaned as he cradled his head with one hand and fondled his stomach with the other, “nobody had better mention the word ‘food’ to me again. Ever.”

“Well, buster, it looks like we’ve come to a draw. What do you propose we do with that dollar?”

“How about we split the prize? You give me fifty cents and I give you fifty cents.” 

“Deal,” she said, fishing two quarters from her pocket and sliding them across the table in his direction. In exchange, he gave her a quarter, two dimes, and a nickel. She smirked at the greater quantity. “Trying to make yourself appear more generous, eh?”

“Hey, I’m only a gentleman.”

“Oh, well,” she said as she pocketed the change. “It’s a sweet deal all the same.”

He smiled. “Oh, yeah. A very sweet deal, indeed.”