Stay Sweet(30)

Next, Amelia fills a bucket with warm water at the slop sink and carries it outside and around to the bathroom. On her way, she sees Grady sitting underneath a tree, the lawn mower in pieces on the ground, his brow furrowed in concentration, a smear of grease across his cheek.

Through the bathroom walls, Amelia can hear Cate singing along to the oldies station—“My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Chapel of Love,” “Mr. Sandman.” Amelia has her hands inside a pair of yellow rubber gloves, her bare knees on a folded piece of paper towel. Whoever cleaned the bathroom last August (probably Britnee, now knowing what Cate said about her) didn’t do a very thorough job. There’s a ring of grime inside the porcelain toilet bowl, and Amelia scrubs it with a piece of steel wool with all the elbow grease she can muster.

The bathroom is the least-favorite chore of Meade Creamery girls. It would be one thing if it were just for the girls, but it’s used by customers as well, and it boggles Amelia’s mind how careless they can be about making sure paper towels find their way into the trash can. At the very least, to be a human on earth, people should wipe up their own pee from the toilet seat.

Amelia sits back on her heels and wipes her brow. The bathroom really should be cleaned, at least superficially, once a day. That rarely happens. It’s a chore specifically for the newbies, so a newbie has to be on shift, and even then, they have to be explicitly told to do it. And that, Amelia knows, is why it was the last job left up for grabs. Today, she’s fine to clean it herself. It’s her way to thank everyone for busting their butts.

After the toilet shines, she snaps off her gloves and checks her phone. Less than one hour until they open. She steps outside, dumps out the water in the dirt, and heads back toward the stand.

Grady notices her and bounds over. “Lawn mower is fixed and I cut the rest of the grass. I’m going to run up and grab a quick shower, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure.”

“You look tired, Amelia,” he says.

“Thanks?”

“Wait, no. What I meant is that I know you’ve been working hard. I’m sorry if I was freaking out before,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to get in anyone’s way. I just want today to go well.”

“That makes two of us,” she says.

At the very least, there’s that.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


A FEW MINUTES BEFORE ELEVEN, Amelia feels a rush of anticipation, the same way she has on every opening day. Peeking around the door, she sees that the line for ice cream is out to the road. There are couples, packs of kids straddling their bikes with their allowance tucked into their socks, teens looking down at their phones, families on vacation with fresh sunburns, a group of women in hospital scrubs, even four old men listening to a baseball game on a small handheld radio.

Grady is in the office, filling the two register tills with cash. He’s showered and dressed up in a pale-gray cotton blazer over a white oxford shirt and tan chinos that are snug to his legs.

Cate hooks her chin on Amelia’s shoulder and whispers, “It looks like he’s dressed for a yacht christening.”

Amelia covers her mouth to keep the laugh in.

Though he doesn’t look up, Amelia senses that Grady knows they’ve been talking about him. His cheeks flush pink.

Sheepishly, Amelia retrieves a cordless drill from the supply closet and presents it to Grady. “Would you like to do the honors and take the plywood down?”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

It’s tradition that the most senior girls work the windows on the first shift of opening day, with two girls standing by behind them to assist in making the orders. Amelia and Cate take their positions. And as the clock ticks over to eleven, they high-five, hip-check, slide their windows open, and take their first orders of the season.

No matter how fast Amelia and Cate scoop, the line doesn’t seem to get any shorter. It’s partly because everyone who comes to the windows wants to talk, saying things like “I was so worried the stand would close forever!” or “It wouldn’t be summer without Meade Creamery!”

And for the first time, Amelia doesn’t feel sad when she thinks of Molly’s death. In fact, she hopes Molly is up in heaven, somewhere in that perfect blue summer sky, sitting with Wayne Lumsden on a fluffy white cloud, looking down on her stand, able to see all the happy faces and hear the compliments.

Meanwhile Grady walks the line, snapping pictures and shaking hands. Even the mayor shows up, with her husband and new baby, and introduces herself to Grady. He brings them straight to the window and benevolently instructs Amelia and Cate to, for the rest of the summer, put whatever the mayor orders on his personal tab. Mayor Heller looks embarrassed, and politely declines Grady’s offer for freebies and the chance to cut the line.

“That was awkward,” Amelia says quietly to Cate.

“His personal tab?” Cate snarks back. “What a cheeseball.” And then she pokes Amelia in the side, making Amelia bend and squeal; however, she manages to keep the top scoop of strawberry on her sugar cone from rolling off.

She and Cate do this a lot, see if they can get each other to mess up an order. They’ll banter with each other’s customers, joking with them that they picked the wrong window, teasing that they’d have put way more sprinkles on a cone than the other would have, two cherries instead of one on the top of a sundae. Both of their tip jars fill up fast, more dollars than change by a long shot. The younger girls see it and are in awe. Happy awe, because tips get split equally at the end of every shift.