Chapter 24 Soft Serve & Sharp Edges
Soft Serve & Sharp Edges
~MABELINE~
Imoan.
Not a subtle, delicate, lady-like moan. The kind that should be reserved for private moments behind closed doors where no one can judge you.
A full-bodied, eyes-rolling-back, borderline inappropriate moan that escapes my lips the second the matcha strawberry ube soft serve touches my tongue, and I am not even a little bit sorry about it.
"I do not know how soft serve can taste so damn good in the middle of winter," I murmur around the bite, licking my lips with the reverence of a woman who has just discovered religion at the bottom of a waffle cone, "but this is blissful."
The cold January air nips at my cheeks, turning them pink in a way that probably matches the strawberry swirl melting against my tongue.
The campus streets are dusted with a thin layer of frost that crunches beneath our shoes, lampposts casting warm circles of amber light against the early evening grey, and the temperature has no business being as low as it is.
But this ice cream? This ice cream does not care about the weather.
This ice cream transcends seasons. This ice cream is a spiritual experience disguised as a frozen dessert, and I will defend that statement to my grave.
I am on cloud nine right now.
Everything about this afternoon has been stitched together with the kind of effortless perfection that only happens when the universe decides to stop being a vindictive witch for five seconds and actually let you enjoy your life.
The new restaurant on 6th that Etienne suggested, barely a ten-minute walk from campus, had opened its doors just last week, and he somehow knew about it before anyone else because Etienne Laurent has a sixth sense for hidden gems that borders on supernatural.
The place was small and intimate, tucked between a vintage bookstore and a nail salon, with exposed brick walls and fairy lights strung along the ceiling like a Pinterest board brought to life.
Thankfully it was not packed, which meant we did not have to shout over the chaos of a crowded dining room or compete for the waitstaff's attention.
We had time. Real, unhurried, luxurious time to sample the appetizers and debate over the main courses and steal bites from each other's plates with the shamelessness of two people who have stopped pretending they are not comfortable around one another.
Etienne ordered the seared salmon with a citrus glaze and a side of roasted vegetables that smelled so incredible I nearly abandoned my own butternut squash risotto to steal his entire plate.
He let me try a forkful without me even asking, holding it across the table with the kind of quiet attentiveness that makes my chest do funny acrobatic stunts.
His scent was warm the whole time. That cedar and fresh pine and ink on parchment fragrance that wraps around me like a weighted blanket every time we are close enough for me to catch it.
Calm. Grounding. The olfactory equivalent of a hand on the small of your back guiding you through a crowded room.
It mixed with the aroma of the food and the faint vanilla candle on our table until the entire experience became this sensory cocoon I never wanted to leave.
People noticed us.
They always do when you are sitting across from an Alpha who looks like Etienne.
He has the kind of face that people do double takes at, the sharp jaw and dark curls and those deep brown eyes that hold more depth than most novels I have read.
A couple at a nearby booth kept sneaking glances, whispering behind their menus, and at one point I caught a girl at the bar squinting at him like she was running facial recognition software in her brain.
"Is that Bastian Morel?" she muttered to her friend, loud enough for my Omega hearing to pick up across the restaurant.
I nearly choked on my risotto.
Bastian. They thought Etienne was Bastian.
And I suppose I understand the confusion if you are looking at them from twenty feet away through dim lighting after a couple of cocktails, because the Morel bone structure is a genetic masterpiece that apparently runs in the family.
But to me, the differences are glaring. Etienne's features are softer, his expressions more guarded, his energy quieter and more deliberate.
Bastian is a bonfire. Etienne is a hearth.
Anyone paying attention for longer than three seconds would see that, but people rarely pay attention for longer than three seconds.
Etienne did not seem to mind.
He did not stiffen or withdraw or let the whispers sour his mood the way I expected them to.
He just reached across the table, repositioned the candle so the flickering light caught the amber tones in his irises, and asked me if I wanted to try the chocolate lava cake for dessert or if I was saving room for a surprise.
The surprise turned out to be this dessert shop.
We did a bit of window shopping after dinner, strolling along the storefronts with their displays lit up against the darkening sky, pointing at things neither of us could afford and making up elaborate backstories for the mannequins in the boutique windows.
Etienne has a dry humor that sneaks up on you, the kind that is delivered so deadpan you almost miss the joke entirely until it hits you three seconds later and you are doubled over laughing on the sidewalk while he watches with that barely-there smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Then we passed this place.
A tiny storefront with a chalkboard sign advertising artisan soft serve in flavors that sounded like they were invented by someone who got high and raided an international grocery store.
Matcha strawberry ube. Black sesame honey lavender.
Thai tea coconut mango. The line was short, the interior was pastel pink and mint green, and the smell drifting through the propped-open door was sweet enough to stop us both mid-stride.
"Pit stop?" Etienne asked, glancing at me with an eyebrow raised.
I was already through the door before he finished the question.
Which brings me to this moment. Standing on the sidewalk in the cold, clutching a waffle cone stacked with three spiraling layers of matcha, strawberry, and ube soft serve, moaning like I have lost all sense of public decorum.
"I could come here every single day," I declare, savoring the final swirl with the kind of focus I usually reserve for exam prep. "Every. Day. This place is my new personality. Forget figure skating. Forget academics. I am a soft serve girl now. That is my entire identity."
I practically inhale the rest of the cone.
Which is probably why Etienne is gawking at me.
His brown eyes are wide, his lips slightly parted, his waffle cone hovering forgotten in his hand while he stares at me with an expression that is caught somewhere between fascination and genuine alarm.
Like he has just witnessed a nature documentary moment, one of those scenes where a predator consumes its prey in a single devastating motion and the narrator whispers something reverent about the brutality of the natural world.
I giggle nervously.
"Oops." I wipe a smudge of ube from the corner of my mouth with my thumb. "Am I being weird?"
He blinks. A flush creeps up his neck, painting the skin beneath his jaw a warm shade of rose that I find entirely too endearing on a man his size.
"No," he manages, though the word comes out strangled. "Just... you cannot be moaning like that."
My face ignites.
Not a gentle warmth. A full combustion event that starts at my collarbones and rockets upward until my ears are burning and my freckles are probably glowing like tiny individual heat lamps.
Etienne is blushing too, his gaze darting sideways at the couple walking past us on the sidewalk, and the shared embarrassment makes the moment ten times more charged than it needs to be.
He clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand in that way he does when he is flustered, the gesture so characteristically him that my stomach flips.
"Not like it does not sound nice," he adds, quieter now, the words tumbling out before he can catch them. "Or uh..."
He groans, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Just give me a second to calm down before we keep going."
Oh.
Oh.
The realization lands like a comet. Not a slow dawning awareness.
An immediate, full-impact collision with the understanding that my completely innocent ice cream enjoyment has had a decidedly non-innocent effect on the six-foot-two Alpha standing in front of me, and my entire body responds to that information with a rush of heat that has absolutely nothing to do with embarrassment.
I lean closer.
His pine and cedar scent thickens in the space between us, laced with something warmer, something richer that was not there a minute ago.
A darker note beneath the clean woodsy freshness, like embers buried under snow.
My Omega instincts catalogue it instantly, filing it away in the part of my brain that responds to Alpha pheromones with a precision I wish I could apply to my coursework.
"Do I turn you on?" I ask, my voice pitched low enough that only he can hear.
Etienne's jaw tightens. His eyes lock onto mine, and for a suspended breath, we just stare at each other on this frozen sidewalk while the world continues around us like it has not noticed that the air between two people just became thick enough to cut with a blade.
He pouts.
Actually pouts. The expression is so out of place on his usually composed face that I nearly burst out laughing, but the look in his eyes is too heated for laughter, too raw, too honest in a way that pins me where I stand.
"You are thriving at the idea, aren't you?" he mutters.
"Very," I grin, wide and unapologetic, and then I take a massive bite directly out of the remaining chunk of waffle cone and ice cream.
Teeth first. Into the frozen mass. Like a shark.