In a New York Minute(30)

“Do you want something?” she asked, shrugging that giant handbag off her shoulder and zipping open a side pocket to pull out a small leather wallet.

I shook my head. “I’m good,” I assured her.

“Why not?” she asked, her eyes lifting, hinting at an eye roll. “Oh no. Are you keto? One of those weird sugar-free people?”

“I’m definitely not keto,” I said, a defensive edge to my voice. “I just save sugar for special occasions.”

“Hayes”—she clasped a hand to her chest, faking a dramatic gesture—“are you suggesting that the discovery of your cousin on a date with my best friend is not a special occasion?”

“I’ll let you know when the occasion is special enough,” I replied, chuckling at her performance.

“Your loss,” she said with a shrug.

“Or gain, since I won’t be torturing my body with a carcinogenic substance that’s purposefully manufactured to be addictive,” I said playfully, knowing instinctively this would needle her.

“Oh my god.” She gave an exaggerated grimace. “You are worse than I remembered.”

I laughed. She was beautiful, especially when she was joking around. At least, I hoped she was joking.

I stood back as she ordered, watched as she chatted with the mustachioed older man who leaned out of the truck’s window. She handed over her money, and moments later he passed her a cup steeped in red and yellow, the scoops already bleeding together in the hazy nighttime heat. She took a small wooden spoon and dug it into the ice with zero hesitation.

“Mmm.” Her eyes disappeared for a second, rolling back in ecstasy. She was so…simple. No…Understated. No…Elegant. That was it. Even as she stood there devouring a sweating cup of ice. Snarky too, and chock-full of emotions and colors and thoughts, which seemed to tumble out, unrestricted. But above all, elegant.

For some reason, my mind went to the pewter candlesticks my grandmother Beverly kept in the center of her dining room table. Beverly was known in our family for her extravagance, the one over-the-top member of our usually deliberately reserved family. She liked her eyeglasses huge and her jewelry even bigger, chunks of gems and raw stones, collected from all corners of the world. And her house matched her outfits, all color and glass and flowers and art.

But there, in the center of an antique twelve-person dining room table, surrounded by art painted by her grandkids and a Keith Haring painting that I’m sure was worth more than my entire company, were two small pewter candlesticks. And while she was constantly changing the design of her house, those damn candlesticks never moved. I asked her why once, when I was in high school, helping to clear the plates off the table on Christmas Eve. “Because,” she’d said matter-of-factly, “they’re the prettiest things in this whole house.”

Franny’s voice yanked me out of my childhood memories and brought me back to the present.

“My grandma Elsie used to buy me the best Italian ice at this sweet little bakery in New Haven near her house,” she said, reminiscing with a smile. “Like homemade. Fresh lemons and everything. It’s one of my earliest memories, eating Italian ice in a plastic beach chair in her backyard.”

“And how does this one measure up?” I asked.

“It’s delicious,” she said in between bites. “But it still doesn’t even compare.”

She spooned up a giant melty scoop and brought it to her mouth, but her timing was off by a second, and some of it dripped onto the front of her dress. “Oh my god,” she said. I assumed she’d be annoyed by the mess, but instead she looked down and then up at me, and she let out a laugh, dabbing herself with the tiny single napkin the ice cream guy had given her.

“My grandmother overboiled her broccoli and served it with too much salt,” I offered. Grandma Beverly had been a notoriously awful cook. “I would have liked going to your family’s house better.”

“Well, my grandfather also kept rabbits in the backyard and turned them into rabbit stew. So if you could survive the rabbit murder, you were rewarded handily in Italian ice.”

I grimaced. “How did he…?”

She motioned with her hand that held the spoon, twisting it sharply as she made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Broke their necks, without a hint of remorse.”

I laughed in disbelief. “You grew up in New Haven?”

“West Haven, but close enough.”

“I’m from right near there,” I said.

“Let me guess,” she said, pausing to stare at me with knowing eyes. “Greenwich.”

I let out a small laugh. “Westport,” I said.

“Same difference.”

I nodded in agreement. She wasn’t wrong. WASPy, affluent, filled with country clubs, popped collars. The towns along Connecticut’s Gold Coast were one and the same.

“So”—I glanced toward her—“why has it been a not-so-great day?”

“Oh my god, where do I even begin?” she moaned.

“From the beginning?” I replied, and she let out big laugh in response. She had the kind of laughter that made you want to join in, be in on whatever joke she was telling. I smiled back at her and felt myself relax, which was odd, because I hadn’t even realized how tense I’d been.