Page 12 of Soft Serve

I finish with the tourist family, take my time about it, and when I finally move toward him, he's leaned against the far end of the counter with the patience of someone who has decided to wait and means it.

"You didn't say you were coming back today," I say.

"You didn't say I couldn't," he replies.

Mrs. Calder makes a sound into her coffee cup that could charitably be described as a laugh.

I look at him, at the morning light catching the silver at his temples, at the absolute absence of urgency in his posture, and I think about what my grandmother would have said.

That one's been carrying something heavy for a while.

"If you're staying," I say, keeping my voice level, keeping everything level, "you're not standing there decorating the place. Wash your hands. You're helping."

Something moves through his expression, brief and warm, before he straightens.

"Where?" he asks.

I point at the sink.

He goes without another word, and I turn back to the counter before he can see that convincing myself this is just wariness is going to be significantly harder than I planned.

Chapter 4

Charles

By the third morning, I’ve learned several things about Soft Serve.

The freezer on the left runs two degrees colder than the one on the right, and Paloma compensates for this automatically, without thinking, the way you compensate for something you've known so long it's become reflex. The chalkboard menu changes based on what she's working on rather than what's seasonal, which means it's unpredictable in a way that keeps people coming back to check. The stool at the far end of the counter is Mrs. Calder's and has been for what I'm told is eleven years, and sitting on it, even when she isn't there, is not something you do.

I learned that one the hard way on day two.

I have also learned that Paloma uses humor the way other people use distance. She’s sharp and quick and deployed with such precision that you're already smiling before you register that she's put another foot of space between you.

I find it, against all reasonable judgment, completely compelling.

She's working on something new this morning, something she hasn't named yet, moving through the kitchen with a focus that borders on private. I've been given the unglamorous task of restocking the topping station, which I am doing with what I consider appropriate diligence and what Rosie has described, not unkindly, as the energy of a man who has never restocked a topping station in his life.

She's not wrong.

"The sprinkles go in the third container," Paloma calls from the kitchen without looking up. "Not the second. The second is nonpareils."

"I know the difference," I say.

A pause.

"Do you?" she says.

Rosie coughs from behind the counter.

I move the sprinkles to the third container.

The morning runs the way I'm beginning to understand mornings run here, steady and layered, the town filing through with the comfortable familiarity of people who know they're welcome and don't need to prove it. I'm learning names. Not because it's strategic, though it is, but because this place operates on names, on the texture of knowing and being known, and arriving here as a stranger has made me acutely conscious of every gap in that fabric.

Theo gets two scoops in a cup. Always.

James gets whatever Paloma recommends and trusts her completely, which I suspect is the highest form of currency in this shop.

Eli comes in at irregular intervals and always orders something different, and always has an opinion about something that has nothing to do with ice cream.