Parker Austin, Part Two.

At that precise moment, 4:19am, Parker was waking up with a start and experiencing that startling feeling of not knowing where you are. He looked around himself realizing the fact that he wasn't at home in bed, but rather at Aubrey's home, in her bed. A sharp crack of lightning reminded him of the reason he had woken up in the first place. Aubrey slept through everything, she was great like that. Once she hit the pillow, she was dead to the world until she was awakened by the need to eat. "The exact opposite of me, ironically enough," Parker thought. He rarely had a good night's sleep that didn't involve a sedative. As the storm got closer and louder outside, as if purposely trying to wake him from his first undisturbed sleep in weeks, he gingerly laid back down in bed. He faced Aubrey and her ashy blond braids falling over her face.

He thought back to the month earlier when they had first met. After he had bought his book he had left the store, only getting about 13 feet away before he realized he had forgotten his wallet in "Hanna-Jane's". He turned back, stepped back in the shop, and found that Smirking Girl looking though it! Without even checking outside to see if she could catch him before he left! Parker's first thought at this discovery was about how outraged he was. It involved a lot of unsavory language. Immediately following that first thought came a second, less hostile one. He was actually kind of turned on by this random girl's utter lack of conscience...
"Find anything good?" he said.
"Nope," Smirk Girl said, still smirking. "But since I know your name now, I guess It's only fair to tell you mine. It's Aubrey."
"Audrey?"
"No, AuBrey. With a B."
"Oh. Pleasure to meet you Aubrey," said Parker. Then he took his wallet, turned, and left.
Skip to 3 hours later. Parker sits home on his bed, blowing smoke out of his barely cracked open window. "Jesus Christ it's cold," he muttered as he removed his wallet from his coat pocket. Recalling the earlier incident with Smirk Girl/Aubrey, he flipped open the creased leather wallet to find a half of a ripped yellow sticky-note with an address, time and date on it. Parker was almost shocked by this turn of events. And shocked was something he hadn't been in a long time. Sure he was used to girls hitting on him, he would have had to be completely dumb not to get the fact that high school girls loved the brooding type, not to mention the college girls. But they were all so boringly predictable, always asking him to tutor them at their houses after school or over-complimenting his appearance. What he had not counted on that day, was the fact that this Aubrey girl had been so crafty about it. Who sneaks a grungy paper into someone's wallet, not knowing if they'll come back to get it or even if they will look inside it on time anyway? That would be Aubrey. The note said to be there, and the curiosity of it all had won him over.
On the day he was to meet her at the inconsequential corner of 8th and Frost, he arrived 15 minutes early. She was already there and eating some sort of exceptionally gooey and sugary looking pastry out of a white paper bag. As he approached, she looked up and handed him the grease soaked bag. "Here, eat this and then let's get going." she said with the authority that only came from being an older sibling.
"Oh?" said Parker. "Where to?"
"Who knows," Aubrey said, and how right she was.

As Parker laid there in bed, staring at the textured ceiling in Aubrey's apartment, with a torrential downpour occurring outside, he recalled that particular conversation as the start of it all. They had spent the rest of the day sampling ice cream from four different shops around town, while Aubrey kept a ledger deciding the rating and description of each store's flavor. He continued to think of that day and others like it in a dream-like state until the rain turned to drizzle and the black night sky shifted to a bleak morning gray.
"Hey, you" said Aubrey, smirk-less, as she cracked one eye open to the day.
"Hey yourself" said Parker smiling.
And then he said, "How do you feel about ice cream for breakfast?"