Ice cream is a thing during Michigan summers. There is a quaint, non-chain ma and pa that makes in-house, from scratch ice-cream on almost every corner of town. My apartment for the summer just happened to be a mile from Great Lakes Creamery. They have blue ice cream there which tastes exactly like Paramount's Kings Island Blue Smurf ice cream. Smurf ice cream is the stuff my childhood dreams were made of... Anyway, Great Lakes is the bomb and everyone should get a chance to eat 3 scoops while catching up with a close friend.
A bunch of the other co-ops had left for the weekend to visit family except for me and a guy from Northwestern named David. It was my roommate, Jane's birthday and I think it might have also been Easter weekend. Which explains why everyone was fleeing Midland. David and I tried to entertain ourselves but Midland is tiny. By Saturday afternoon we were board. Before anyone gets fuzzy on who I was interested in at this point, David is a great buddy but he was in a serious long term relationship and I was pretty keen on this Josh kid. Though, I hadn't told ANYBODY. Except for my girlfriend from school who had just started a pretty special relationship with a boy named Jon ;)
I texted Josh that afternoon asking if he wanted to grab ice cream with me. I guess I had sort of initiated things but I totally don't remember it feeling like that. During co-op, you were always away from home and familiar friends so everyone was game for becoming instant friends. You invited everyone to join in whatever plans you had all the time. It kept us from being board in the world's smallest town for a global company's headquarters.
Josh was reffing a soccer tournament all weekend (I later found out). So he was too busy earning money to respond back. I took his non response to mean he was busy so David and I went for ice cream. Later that day Josh would call me and explain how he would LOVE to go for ice cream because it had been hot all weekend while he was reffing. My response [that I am so not proud of and we still talk about it to this day] was "sorry we already went, maybe another time?". Yes! That is what I said. Can you believe me? Well, I can't either.
Flash forward 2 nights later. Josh texted me after work asking if I would get ice cream with him to make up for inviting him along then ditching him over the weekend. I said I would meet him there. I got to Great Lakes when my phone rings. It's Josh telling me he is outside my apartment. He was there to pick me up. Whooops! I told him thanks for coming to pick me up but I was already there. I can not believe my 21 year old self now but there are many more of those moments to come.
This moment had arrived where I was face to face with this gorgeous blonde haired, blue eyed man. I felt like I was talking to an old friend, even though we hadn't really talked much before this moment. We talked about our childhoods, what high school was like for us. I shared about loving college and my study group of girl friends I couldn't live without. He told me about his high school buddies who became irreplaceable friends. We talked about his younger sister. I told him about my older sister. We bonded over sports and playing soccer. I would later find out all about more about why soccer was so important to him and why he started reffing. We shut down Great Lakes and they kicked us off the porch at 11pm.
Josh had offered to buy me ice cream that night but I had just eaten dinner and wasn't very hungry. I had rejected this guy twice now without even realizing it. What was I thinking?! I was too busy listening to the stories he was sharing and enjoying his incredibly loud [some times obnoxious but mostly charming] laugh.
It didn't phase him. Though, he still does tease me about rejecting his ice cream offer. He called me about a week later asking me if I had plans for Saturday..
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Mrs. W
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