It's the dead middle of July, and the warmth of the early evening wraps around Camille's bare shoulders and settles on her lips like an embrace. She bounces on her toes, and even the long queue at the ice cream stand can't ruin her mood.
Jo has her fingers tangled loosely in her ponytail as she swipes it off the back of her neck, and she's singing softly to herself. (Camille loves it when she sings, loves these moments when her actions are natural and unstudied and utterly peaceful.) She rolls her eyes to look at the sky and says something mundane about the heat, but she's still smiling so it obviously can't bother her that much.
It doesn't bother Camille at all. If there weren't so many people standing around her, or a coveted spot in line to keep, she would be doing cartwheels just to feel the warm air move over her skin. The sun is setting now, and the scorching white rays have softened into beams of orange reaching over the crest of the building. When Jo moves into just the right spot, her hair catches fire with the color, and she squints and laughs and moves back into the shade like it never happened.
They get their ice cream - mint chocolate chip for Jo, as always, and today Camille chooses something dubbed Triple Chocolate Threat with extra rainbow sprinkles, please - and start walking down the street with very little purpose.
Camille is distracted, watching Jo tuck her scoop away with studied efficiency. A napkin wrapped around the base of the cone, and regular little licks up from the edge to the top of the ice cream until it disappears, and not a single drip is allowed. By the time Camille realizes that she's staring, her ice cream is running in muddy rivulets over her fingers.
Jo gives Camille one of her looks, half amusement and half exasperation and all eyebrows, and offers her napkin. As she nibbles neatly at the edge of her cone, Camille attempts to run damage control, until she's forced to take a huge bite of ice cream and accept the brain freeze. She wrinkles her nose, and goosebumps rise on her arms. Jo laughs at her face and hugs her shoulders briefly with one arm.
Briefly, of course, won't do for Camille, so she throws out the broken remains of her cone and finds a fountain to rinse her fingers. As soon as she's dry and non-sticky again, she walks closer to Jo and slips one arm around her waist. Her fingers hook through a belt loop on Jo's cut-offs.
On any normal day, Jo would blush and squirm away and give some lame excuse about it being too hot for that and glance around for potential onlookers. But this isn't a normal day - this is the perfect summer day, and they're far enough away from the Palmwoods crowd that this street might as well be in a different universe, and there's nothing to hinder Jo's instinct to slide a hand up Camille's back and play with the strap on her shoulder.
And maybe Jo's realizing something that Camille already knew, or maybe they've both known for a long time now. It doesn't matter, because this moment stretches for infinity, the golden glow lasting long after the sun has set. There isn't any need for words.
