Stay Sweet(72)

*

Amelia is cleaning up after a batch of strawberry when she hears Grady come into the house. He washes his hands, then comes downstairs. He’s a little sunburned.

“How’s it going out there?”

He hooks his chin on her shoulder. “Good. At least I feel useful.” His phone rings.

“Is that your dad again?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been avoiding him for days. Is that smart?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. But it’s not like he’s calling to find out how I am or anything. He wants to talk business. He went through the books and he has all these new ideas for me.”

“All bad ones, you think? Nothing that might be worth considering?”

“Good or bad, once he tells me them, they won’t be optional.”

“You’re doing a great job. There’s ice cream to sell; the girls are happy.”

He kisses her neck. “What are you doing tonight? Let me take you out on a date.”

Her eyes slowly close as she melts into him. “We can’t.”

“What if we went someplace far? Like a few towns over.”

“Things are just getting back to normal with me and Cate. If word got back to her before I told her about us . . .”

“So tell her! Or I can tell her, if you want.”

“I’ll tell her eventually. Just not yet. Anyway, don’t you have schoolwork you’re neglecting?”

“Promise me we’ll go on at least one date before the end of the season. Okay?”

She nods, but what happens after that? She doesn’t ask Grady, in part because she’s got ice cream to make, and also because she doesn’t know herself what she wants the answer to be.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR


WHEN THE ICY CLOUD DISSIPATES, Amelia smiles at the wall of cardboard ice cream drums. It feels good to see the walk-in freezer filling back up. A few more days of this, Amelia thinks, and she should be able to get back on the schedule rotation, working at the stand with the rest of the girls.

But life is pretty sweet right now, popping in for a little girl time at the stand when she has ice cream ready, then heading back up to the house to have lunch with Grady.

On this afternoon, Amelia hangs up the ski jacket and enters the office. Cate is there, applying lipstick on the three newbies, who are squished together on the love seat, lips pouted in preparation for their turn.

“Hey, Amelia! I never tried this on you!” Amelia comes over and parts her lips. Cate draws the lipstick on and gives her a tissue to blot. “Oooh. That’s a great MLBB on you.”

“A what?”

“My Lips But Better. Go look!”

Amelia walks over to the mirror. It looks lighter pink on Amelia, like her actual lips, which is sort of anticlimactic. Then she sits down on the corner of the desk, watching Cate make over the newbies. Cate has already calculated the receipts for the first shift, but Amelia takes them and smooths them out and fastens them together a bit more neatly.

And then Amelia looks up. “Does something smell weird in here?” Since no one answers her, Amelia follows her nose, searching around the office. Underneath the credenza, she finds a crusty beach towel that stinks of a million gym lockers.

A few days ago, temperatures had crossed a hundred degrees. Amelia came down and saw that Cate had lined her truck bed with a tarp, filled it with water, and had the girls swimming between customers.

A moldy towel, a messy stack of receipts, and a schedule that never goes up on time. She takes a deep breath, reminding herself that she needs to be okay with these trade-offs. The other girls wouldn’t ever complain about these things.

Though she probably could stay and hang out awhile, Amelia tells Cate she needs to head back up to the farmhouse. Better that, she decides, than let these little things bother her.

After throwing the towel in the dumpster, Amelia drives back up to the farmhouse in her lipstick, excited to show Grady. She’s never wearing makeup around him, never in normal clothes. It would be nice to go on a date with him. There’s a miniature golf course twenty minutes away. Sure, Grady plays golf, he’s got his own clubs, but Amelia has never missed a putt through the spinning blades of the windmill. She thinks she can probably take him.

She’s slipping inside the house when she hears Grady in the midst of a heated argument in the living room. He’s so focused, he doesn’t even look up. Her stomach sinks with every step down to the basement. Could Grady’s dad have figured out they went to the beach house?

A few minutes later, Grady comes down hot.

“That didn’t sound like it went well,” she says gently.

“Yeah. My dad’s not happy with our bottom line. The stand makes a decent profit, but a lot of the revenue gets turned back over into the business, cost of ingredients, payroll. So he’s been talking to his buddy Rod, who works in restaurants, and . . .” Grady shakes his head. “I don’t even want to tell you.”

“What?”

“My dad thinks we should stop making homemade ice cream and start serving, like, Hershey’s or whatever. Something we can buy in bulk from a distributor.”

“What? That’s crazy! The ice cream is what makes Meade Creamery special!”

“I know.”

Amelia shakes her head, resolute. “No, Grady. You can’t. Absolutely not.” Molly Meade would roll over in her grave. “This is ultimately your stand, Grady. If you don’t want to take his advice, you don’t have to.”