Hillarys - Take 1

I’d already decided before picking him up that we’d go to Hillarys, a local beach side community. Shops, bars, restaurants, a baby show ground, water slides & of course, the beach itself. It’s a one of those places you just have to go if you’re here. The main thing I wanted him to try was Cold Rock, an ice creamery that sells a variety of flavours of ice cream as well as condiments they mix in for you. The condiments are things like chocolate bars, fruit sauce and more lollies than you could poke a stick at. The possible combinations are endless.

The intention was to have dinner, head over to Cold Rock, but after walking past all the restaurants and not making a decision, we resorted to having dessert for dinner. We had similar combinations, and a favourite of mine. We picked English Toffee ice cream and his with a Mars bar and mine with a Snickers.

Now here’s something you may not know, England doesn’t get debilitating heat waves, their birds are miniature (so apparently ours are big) and they also lack Cherry Ripes. So when he spied the container holding the bars, just waiting to be mixed into some tasty ice cream where I’ve got to let you in, his arrival in Australia introduced him to more than just the heat and oversized birds, it also introduced him to our humble Cherry Ripe; a chocolate bar they don’t have in the UK. Not one to crush a guys dreams of Cherry Ripe and ice cream, I promised we would return in the future.

After about 7pm at Hillarys, the only stores open are restaurants. Being quite satisfied with our ice cream we went to my house. The settlement had only occurred two days prior and I was overcome with pride. It was still in the process of being fixed up before I moved in, I didn’t care, I just wanted to show it off. There was the tour of the place, the explanation of the changes that were to be made; I was just bursting at the seams with excitement. He was really, genuinely pleased for me. I couldn’t have asked for a better reaction, he even envisaged the place with the all changes, imagining it with his stuff instead of mine.

We grabbed a couple chairs (left by the previous owner) and sat on the balcony. We watched the lights move on the horizon, checked out the stars in the sky, talked about what we wanted to do as careers and life in general. The memory of this night isn’t as clear as the others, but I know we chatted like really old friends. At one point, he went out on the balcony; he was leaning on the railing, giving the view a once over. The thought that crossed my mind was how much I wanted to walk up and put my arms around him. I put my mind back in check & chose to be satisfied just standing by his side.

Eventually, we made a move, and of course, because it was about 11pm and we hadn’t had dinner, we got hungry. We stopped in at the late night burger place near his place to pick something up before heading to his place. We resumed our positions on the couch, ate and chatted some more. I’m not quite sure how we managed to talk so much; we were together for about 6 hours at a time, each time. Even still, when the time came for me to go, the shared thought was that it was too soon.

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