Begin Again - A.I

thirty five.

"Would it have to be only one flavour?" I ask.

"No, any flavour. But you'd run out of options rather fast."

I hesitate, sipping at my soup. "Never eat ice cream," I finally answer.

"What?" He cries. "Wrong choice."

"Oh, please. You're asking me to give up all foods for one, or give up one for all? Easy."

"But it's ice cream."

"I think I could survive without it."

He points his fork at me threateningly. "It's people like you, Stanford, that make me hate the world that we live in." I just roll my eyes. "Ice cream lives on in the heart of the young."

"What does that even mean?" I shriek.

"You don't know because you're a hater."

"Okay, how about this one. Would you rather be able to fly or be able to read minds?"

He chews his food as he thinks. "They both have good points," he says. "I mean flying is flying, that's just freaking cool. But mind reading would mean I'd be able to know everything you think about in that pretty little head of yours." He shoots me a playful smile.

I blush a little. "There isn't much."

"Now that's a lie."

"W-What do you wanna know?"

He looks at me for a while, and I start to wonder if he is actually trying to read my mind. He then smiles and shakes his head. "I'll leave the deep questions for another time. Maybe I'll get you drunk first so that you'll be honest."

I laugh nervously because I'm not really sure what else to do. If Ashton knew even a tiny bit of what goes on in my head he'd run for the hills. Here I was sitting across from him in a random Chinese restaurant in Sydney, a thousand miles from home, and yet I had never felt like I've belonged more. I didn't know what Ashton and I were doing, but whatever it was it was nice. And whatever it was I wanted it to stay.

"Fortune cookie time." He rubs his hands together in a childish excitement. He then holds up his cookie to his ear and shakes it. "Come onnnn cookie, give me something good." I watch as he cracks it between his fingers and pulls out the paper slip inside. 

"What does it say?" I ask since he's taking too long to read it to me himself.

"'Something you lost will soon turn up.'" He shrugs and screws it up. "Boring. You go."

I open up mine and read the message inside and I feel my heart momentarily collapse. 

"Come on, what is it?" Ashton pushes. He doesn't see me tense up.

I look up at him and force a smile. "Just a stupid one about life being a journey," I say.

"Man, those fortunes sucked. Anyway, you ready to go?"

I give a nod and stand up, folding my fortune up and slipping it into my jacket pocket before following Ashton out of the restaurant.

------

The hotel we're staying in is a hundred times better than Ashton's house, and I'm ever so grateful for everything about it. It reminds me a lot of back home, but thinking about that leads me down a path I don't really want to venture down so I just watch Ashton lug the bags upstairs instead. 

"We got two rooms," mum says as she walks beside me up the stairs. "You and Ashton will be sharing, there should be two single beds. It'll just be like old times, huh? How fun!"