Page 17 of Soft Serve

Charles looks at me then, and I see it, the moment he registers what he's done, not with panic but with a quiet recognition that doesn't make it better.

"Right," Theo says after a beat. "Just saying. Help's available." He pushes off the doorframe, nods once at Charles in a way that contains an entire paragraph, and leaves.

Mrs. Calder sips her coffee.

The shop resumes.

I move through the next twenty minutes on the surface of myself, competent, present, and not thinking about anything except the task in front of me. It's a skill I developed when my grandmother was sick, and I was running the shop and sitting with her in the evenings, and not sleeping and not telling anyone how thin the margin was getting. Compartmentalization as survival. I'm good at it.

Charles doesn't try to speak to me.

He just works. Steady and quiet, not overcorrecting, not performing remorse, just present in a way that I can feel without looking at him.

During a lull just before noon, I slip through the side door, the one that opens onto the narrow strip of shade between Soft Serve and the insurance office next door. I just need a minute of air that isn't weighted with everyone else's attention.

The door has barely closed behind me when it opens again. I don't turn around.

"I know," he says.

"Then why?" I ask.

He comes to stand beside me, not close, leaving me some space, and we both look at the unremarkable strip of wall across the alley because it's easier than looking at each other.

"Because I didn't like the way they were looking at you," he says. His voice is measured, guarded, like he's rationing honesty. "Like the shop being difficult is your fault. Like you should need rescuing from something you chose."

I breathe.

"That's not your call to make," I say.

"No," he agrees. "It isn't."

"You don't know this town," I continue, keeping my voice level. "You don't know how they love me. That's not pity in there. That's twenty years of showing up. You walked into that and misread it."

"I did," he says.

"And you spoke before I could."

"Yes."

A truck passes on the street at the far end of the alley, the sound of it rolling through the quiet between us.

"Why does it bother you?" I ask. "Honestly."

He's quiet for a moment, and I can feel him measuring something, deciding how much of the honest answer to give.

"Because you work harder than anyone in that room and you do it without asking for anything," he says carefully. "And when people point at that, you smile and deflect and carry it alone. And I reacted to that before I thought about whether it was mine to react to or not."

I absorb that. It's more than I expected from him at this stage and less than the full truth, and I suspect we both know it.

"Don't do it again," I say.

"I won't," he says.

I believe him, and for some reason that unsettles me.

I push off the wall and reach for the door handle. My hand is on it, the door half open, with the noise of the shop spilling out into the alley, and I stop.

Not for long, maybe half a second, maybe less, just long enough to feel the weight of what he said and decide I'm not ready to put words to what it does to me.