Chapter Three
Alfie
“For the last time, I am not making you banana custard ice cream!”
“But ice cream is just frozen custard! And not all of us suffer from your unholy hatred of bananas!”
“It’s still a no!”
“Alfie,” Milo called, determined to once again drag me into this ridiculous argument.
He and Darcy had been fighting over banana ice cream for weeks, and at this point I wasn’t sure if Milo actually wanted it or if he was just being stubborn.
Maybe it was the tiredness. We’d all been here since seven, even though we weren’t opening until half-ten. “Tell Darcy—”
“I’m not telling Darcy anything if it doesn’t have to do with the budget or customer service,” I said as I looked up from the iPad that was connected to our point-of-sale stand, making sure everything was working and correct before we opened our doors.
I’d spent two days putting in the inventory and doing test purchases, making sure nothing was going to go wrong, but that didn’t mean the system was completely foolproof.
Since Lick It! was an artisan ice cream parlour, it didn’t have the biggest menu, with eight ice creams and five sorbets, but we were also offering hot and cold drinks, including homemade milkshakes and ice cream frappes, so I’d programmed everything in to make everyone’s lives a little bit easier.
I had no idea whether we were going to be busy or not, but the weather forecast was good, it was the week before half-term and there were already a few tourists and visitors floating around, and Darcy and Milo had been on a marketing charm offensive for the past few weeks, including handing out samples along the beach front.
The odds were as much in our favour as we could get them to be.
“Also, is now really the time to be having this argument?” I continued. “We open in forty-two minutes and there are still a lot of things that need doing.”
There weren’t but it was the only way I could think to get them back on task.
I could taste the nervous-excitement hanging in the air, and it wasn’t pleasant.
The three of us had given up so much for this venture, and now the thing that had started as Darcy’s childhood dream was about to become reality.
“We’re fine,” Darcy said as he straightened a stack of homemade waffle cones.
“It’s going to be fine, I promise. The ice cream is ready, we’ve got plenty of stock, we’ve got plenty of cones and we can easily make more, Milo makes incredible coffee and milkshakes, and you have crunched the numbers to perfection. ”
Milo smiled and walked around the counter to put his arm around my waist, nudging my hip.
“Seriously, it’s going to be fucking amazing.
And it’s half-term next week and the weather’s meant to be scorching, so I’m pretty sure we’ll be overloaded with people looking for something cold.
Oh, that reminds me, we should go and put the boards out. ”
“I can do it in a minute,” Darcy said. “Unless you wanted to touch them up?”
“Only if you’ve smudged them.”
“My life is not worth that.”
I chuckled. Milo had always been the most artistic of us, so we’d left him to design the wooden, chalkboard A-frames for outside the shop and at the end of our cobbled street, since the shop was just tucked away from the front and would be easy to miss until people knew we were here.
I’d been expecting the signs to be fun, maybe a little silly or suggestive, but I hadn’t been expecting Milo to draw sexy pin-up boys holding ice cream, by hand in chalk marker because he wanted to test out a few designs before he went with something permanent.
“They’re waterproof, right? Just in case we get a sudden downpour. ”
“Yeah, I got some specialist outdoor markers,” Milo said. “I might have to actually paint over it when I want to change the design, but that’s a problem for another day.”
“You spent long enough on it so it’s staying for a while,” Darcy said, adjusting the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt. We’d debated getting T-shirts or something branded to wear, but Darcy couldn’t find anything he liked so eventually we’d all decided to just wear what was comfortable and on-brand.
I’d found a couple of light blue shirts, Darcy had gone for powder pink which looked perfect with his shimmering golden hair, and Milo had gone for a white, vintage-style shirt with pin-up sailors printed on it.
It was very Milo.
But this was the man who also had a mullet, so the shirt was the most stylish thing he owned.
“I can’t believe it’s finally here,” I said, smiling nervously as I looked between the two of them.
“I know,” Darcy said. “When I was six and I said I wanted to own an ice cream shop, I didn’t think it was going to come true. I still can’t believe you two are here too.”
“You know us,” Milo said. “Can’t let you do this shit on your own. And Alfie desperately needed rescuing from that soul-sucking accounting job.”
“Hey! It wasn’t that bad!”
“It wasn’t great though.” Darcy grinned and winked. “Otherwise, you’d have taken a lot more convincing to pack it in and move back here.”
“Well, you’re horrible with numbers so you wouldn’t have gotten far. Someone has to keep you and Milo on track.”
“A toast then,” Milo said as he grabbed an ice cream scoop. “To us. For giving up our boring as fuck lives and making our ice cream dreams come true, because we’re fucking awesome and we deserve this shit!” He grinned as he reached for one of the cones. “What flavour do you want?”
“Cinder toffee, always,” I said without hesitation.
The honeycomb flavour Darcy had developed was one of the best things I’d ever eaten, and I could have devoured a whole tub without question.
It was sweet and rich with chunks of cinder toffee the size of small meteors.
He’d even drizzled some of the liquid toffee syrup into the ice cream base to add swirls of sauce alongside the chunks.
Darcy had taught me how to make honeycomb in the shop’s kitchen, and I’d only burnt my fingers twice but it’d been worth it for the smell alone.
“Thought so,” Milo said. “What about you Darcy? Cinnamon and white chocolate?”
“Actually, I think I’ll go for tea and biscuits.”
“Happy days.”
Milo scooped us all out some ice cream and we took them out to the front part of the shop, where we had a few chairs and tables for people to sit. We had a few more to go outside, and I’d get Milo to help me put them out when Darcy went out with the boards.
“Are you any closer to finding your sexy tournament mystery man?” Milo asked as he licked his ice cream, a shit-eating grin forming on his face.
I sighed. I knew I shouldn’t have told them about meeting Jonathan or about how we’d spent the whole evening chatting and it was only after I’d gotten halfway back to Heather Bay that I’d realised I’d forgotten to ask for his number.
I’d spent the whole week trying to find him on Instagram but the only thing I could remember was his first name, and that didn’t exactly get me far.
I didn’t even know if he used his real name online. With his job, he might use something else to protect him from being stalked by angry families.
“No,” I said despondently. “And he’s not a mystery man. I’ve got his first name, what army he plays, that he works for a funeral home, and that he had a North Yorkshire accent.”
“Great, super helpful details there,” Darcy said. “Although you said he was a hot goth, so that’s one thing. How many hot goths are there at Sword & Flame tournaments?”
“Not many.”
“Start there then. Surely you can look for any photos from the weekend? Or the tournament results list—won’t that have his name?”
There was a beat of silence as I stared into space.
“You didn’t think of that, did you?” Milo asked, the shit-eating grin spreading to his voice. “Seriously, sweetheart. Are you that hopeless?”
“I’m not hopeless! I’ve been busy.”
“Don’t worry,” Darcy said as he patted my leg. “Milo and I will find him for you. Just give us a brief description and twenty-four hours.”
“You are not stalking him!”
“Relax, it’s not stalking,” Milo said. “It’s just a bit of in-depth, casual searching. Totally not stalking and completely legal.”
“You two are the worst,” I said with a shake of my head before taking a bite out of the side of my cone.
“No, we’re the best and that’s why you moved back from rotten old Sheffield.
” Milo winked as he shoved half his cone into his mouth, doing his best impression of a hamster.
He chewed and swallowed, miraculously managing to avoid spewing crumbs everywhere.
“Come on, finish your ice cream. We’ve got shit to do. ”
“I’ll grab the boards,” Darcy said as he stood up and stretched, smoothing down his shirt and adjusting the sleeves again. “Do you think I look all right? I wasn’t sure about this shirt.”
“You look great,” I said. “It’s perfect.”
“Cool… cool… Okay boards. Boards… we’ve got fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes.”
“Breathe.” I took his hand and squeezed it tightly. I’d never seen Darcy so nervous before, not even when he’d sheepishly handed over his attempt at a budget spreadsheet. “The shop looks amazing, you look amazing, the ice cream is amazing. It’s going to be amazing.”
“That’s too many uses of amazing,” Darcy said with a soft chuckle. “Now I think it’s all shit.”
“It’s not, I promise. Go and put the boards out and we’ll finish getting everything ready.”
“Okay, I’m going.” He turned to walk away and then stopped and threw me a smile over his shoulder. “Thank you. I mean it. I couldn’t do this without you.”
“You’re very sweet, but you can be sweet later. Go!”
Darcy unlocked the door, grabbed the boards which were propped up next to it, and disappeared with them.
“Shit, I’ve never seen Darcy this nervous,” Milo said as he grabbed a small stack of brightly coloured metal chairs to put outside. “Not even when he agreed to let me pierce his ear when we were thirteen.”
“I still can’t believe he let you do that.”
“The infection wasn’t that bad! His ear was fine.”
I snorted as I grabbed one of the three round tables we had to go with the chairs.
It was an obnoxiously bright pink and I kind of loved it.
The other two were a similarly obnoxious teal and bright orange.
“Yeah, because needing to see a nurse because your earlobe is three times the size it should be and oozing is fine.”
“Don’t nitpick! You can’t tell me you think Darcy’s fine?”
“He’s definitely not, but this is his dream. Wouldn’t you be nervous?”
“Mate, I’m shitting the bed as it is,” Milo said, as we walked out into the warmth of the early June sunshine. “But…”
He trailed off and I was about to ask why, when I saw what he was looking at. The small group of people, waiting outside.
Oh.
We had customers.
“Hey folks,” Milo said as he put the chairs down, his natural charisma radiating out of him. “Give us a couple more minutes and we’ll be with you. We appreciate you coming out so early. I didn’t think you’d be queuing.”
“Are you kidding, it’s ice cream?!” The excited voice belonged to a blond man with a beaming expression and pink summer dress printed with strawberries, a matching strawberry shaped handbag slung across his chest. “And you’re new here, of course we’re going to support you.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to find any sort of words. Darcy must have seen these people when he took the boards out, and hopefully it would’ve given him the boost he needed.
And as if by magic, the man himself appeared around the corner, his golden hair shining like a halo and a charming smile lighting up his face. “Wow,” he said as he reached me. “I didn’t expect this.”
“Me neither,” I said as I set out the table and slid it into place as Milo appeared hefting the other two. “I told you not to be nervous.”
“You win,” Darcy said. “I’ll find your mystery man as your prize.”
“First things first,” I said, watching as two more people strolled down the cobbled street towards us. “We should probably serve some ice cream.”