Page 3 of Soft Serve

"I'm here because Whitaker Creamery Group wants to partner with Soft Serve for National Ice Cream Day," he says. "It’s a temporary campaign with high visibility and significant reach."

"You want to use my shop as a set?"

"I want to collaborate with it," he says. "There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"Yes," he says simply. "One respects what you've built, the other doesn't."

I stare at him. He stares back. It’s like a staring contest. I don’t want to back down; it feels like this is an important moment in this discussion.

"You came alone," I say slowly. "No PR, no contracts, no team. You walked in here like a regular person and ordered a single scoop."

"I did."

"Why?"

Something shifts in his expression, it’s brief and honest, and I file it away before he smooths it back over.

"Because I wanted to understand what I was asking for before I asked," he says. "And because I suspected that walking in here with a briefcase and a pitch deck would not go well for me."

Against every instinct I have, I almost smile. I don't fully, but I think about it.

"Smart," I say instead.

"I have my moments."

Behind me, Rosie makes a sound that she converts, not very convincingly, into a cough.

I lean forward on the counter, close enough that he'd have to be blind not to read the intention in it, and I hold his gaze with everything I have.

"Here's what you need to understand about this place," I say. "My grandmother built it from nothing in 1974. My mother worked it through high school and left, which is her right. I came back, and then I stayed, and then I chose it. This shop has outlasted two recessions, a flood, a road widening that nearly took the front wall, and every chain within a thirty-mile radius that thought Hearts Bend was an easy market."

I let that sit for a second.

"It is not a location," I continue. "It is not an opportunity. It is not content. And any conversation about Soft Serve starts from that understanding, or it doesn't start at all."

He hasn't moved, hasn't flinched, and hasn't looked away.

"Understood," he says.

Just that. There’s no negotiation, no pivot, and no attempt to reframe. I straighten slowly, unsettled in a way I don't entirely trust.

"I haven't said yes to a conversation yet," I tell him.

"No," he agrees.

"I haven't said no either."

"I noticed," he says, and there's something in it that isn't quite a smile but lands in the same neighborhood.

The bell rings behind him as Millie pushes through the door with her backpack still on. She’s late from school, her cheeks are flushed from the heat, and she pulls up short when she clocks the man standing at my counter.

Her eyes go wide. She looks at me. I give her nothing.

She dumps her bag behind the counter with impressive restraint and starts washing her hands without being asked, because Millie has known me since we were seven years old, and she understands when a situation requires silence.

I look back at Charles Whitaker.