Chapter Five
Josie
I woke up the next morning feeling like I’d been hit by a truck.
Not a big truck.
Maybe one of those small delivery vans that came with a cheerful logo on the side and a driver who waved while he ruined your day.
Every muscle in my body complained when I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling.
My feet ached before I’d even put them on the floor, my shoulders were stiff, and my right wrist was sore from scooping what felt like seven thousand servings of ice cream the day before.
Apparently, owning an ice cream shop was less cute aprons and happy customers and more realizing you had muscles in your hands you had never thought about before.
Still, I smiled.
Opening day had worked.
People had come. They had lined up. They had ordered cones, sundaes, milkshakes, waffle bowls, and enough cookie dough ice cream to make me wonder if I should double my next order.
Kids had pressed sticky fingers to the glass and pointed at flavors.
Parents had apologized while still buying more ice cream.
Teenagers had pretended to be too cool to care, then taken pictures by the mural like it had personally changed their lives.
It had been loud, messy, exhausting, and absolutely perfect.
Then Rome had walked in.
I closed my eyes and groaned. Not because I regretted him walking in. That would’ve been easier.
I groaned because I remembered exactly how he’d looked standing in my shop, dressed in black like he had some personal vendetta against color, tattoos covering his arms, dark eyes taking in everything without making a big deal out of any of it.
He had eaten the ice cream I picked for him, denied liking it while taking bite after bite, and then had the nerve to come back later with burgers like that was a normal thing men did.
It wasn’t normal.
At least, it wasn’t normal in my experience.
Bruce’s version of thoughtful had been texting me from the couch to ask if we had any chips in the kitchen. If he remembered my birthday before noon, he’d considered that effort. The bar had been so low in my marriage that it was probably buried somewhere under the basement floor.
Rome showing up with food because I’d mentioned I hadn’t eaten lunch should not have felt like a big deal.
It did anyway.
I threw the blanket off and sat up slowly.
My body protested, but I ignored it and reached for the sweatshirt thrown across the chair in the corner of my bedroom.
The apartment was quiet around me, the kind of quiet that had been unbearable right after the divorce but had slowly become something I could breathe inside.
The first few weeks alone had been awful.
I used to hate the silence. It made every room feel too big, every noise too noticeable, every empty space a reminder that my marriage had ended in the ugliest way possible. I would leave the television on just so there was something happening around me that didn’t involve my own thoughts.
Now, I liked it.
Mostly.
I liked making coffee without Bruce complaining there wasn’t any creamer. I liked leaving dishes in the sink until morning if I was too tired to deal with them. I liked sleeping in the middle of the bed, even if I still sometimes woke up on the left side out of habit.
I liked not having to answer to anyone.
I padded into the kitchen and started the coffee, leaning my hip against the counter while the machine sputtered to life. My phone sat face down next to the sink, and I didn’t bother checking it. If the world had ended overnight, someone else could handle it until caffeine hit my bloodstream.
The only thing on my schedule was Scoop & Swirl.
Day two.
I had survived day one.
Day two should’ve felt easier.
Instead, my stomach fluttered in that annoying way it had when I was nervous and pretending I wasn’t.
I pulled a mug from the cabinet and filled it halfway before the pot had even finished brewing. Patience had never been one of my stronger qualities, and owning a business wasn’t magically improving me.
Coffee in hand, I wandered to the small table by the window and sat down. My notebook was still open from the night before, where I’d scribbled a list of things I needed to restock before opening. Napkins. Waffle bowls. Strawberry syrup. More cookie dough if the world continued its obsession.
I had also written, in much messier handwriting, hire help eventually.
Eventually was doing a lot of work in that sentence.
I couldn’t afford help yet. Not real help, anyway. Maybe a part-time high school kid once I had a better idea of what normal business looked like, but for now it was me. Just me. I knew that going in, but knowing something and living it were two very different things.
Yesterday, I had smiled until my face hurt, scooped until my wrist ached, and cleaned until my back screamed at me. Then I had climbed a ladder after working fifteen hours because apparently exhaustion made me stupid.
And then Rome had caught me.
Well, not me.
The ladder.
Close enough.
I took a sip of coffee and frowned at my notebook.
He had been bossy. Not rude exactly, but definitely bossy.
He had walked into my shop like he belonged there, pointed out I was making bad choices, taken the box down like it weighed nothing, then told me to sit down and eat. Any other man might’ve earned a firm invitation to leave.
Rome had earned one too.
I just hadn’t given it. Because he had brought burgers. And fries. And pie.
I wasn’t proud of how easily my irritation had folded in the face of hot food, but in my defense, I had been running on coffee, adrenaline, and whatever fumes came from melted sugar.
Also, he hadn’t made a show of it.
That was the part that kept circling in my head.
He had just sat down, handed me food, and acted like it made sense to make sure someone ate before they collapsed into a freezer.
I didn’t need to be thinking about Rome. Not about any man.
Especially not a twenty-nine-year-old tattoo artist who rode a motorcycle, wore too much black, and looked at me like he wondered what I looked like without my apron on.
I stood and headed for the bathroom, carrying my coffee with me because there were very few situations in life that couldn’t be improved by caffeine. Getting ready took longer than it should have, mostly because I changed shirts twice and then got mad at myself for caring.
The first shirt was too tight.
The second was too loose.
The third was fine, which meant I immediately hated it.
I stared at myself in the mirror, wearing jeans, comfortable shoes, and a pale blue T-shirt with the Scoop & Swirl logo printed across the chest. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and my face looked tired but not terrible.
I looked like a woman who had opened an ice cream shop and lived to tell about it.
That should’ve been enough.
So why had I changed shirts like Rome was going to walk in with a clipboard and grade me?
I didn’t even know his last name.
Actually, maybe I did. Had I seen it on the tattoo shop window? Bad Habit Tattoo. Rome DeLuca, Owner. Maybe. Or maybe I had made that up because his name felt like it needed a last name that sounded slightly dangerous.
I groaned and leaned closer to the mirror. “Get it together, Josie.”
My reflection did not seem convinced.
By the time I pulled into the parking spot behind Scoop & Swirl, it was just after eight.
Main Street was waking up slowly, the way small towns did before most people had finished their first cup of coffee.
A delivery truck rumbled past, the bakery two doors down had its lights on, and the morning sun bounced off the front windows of the businesses lining the street.
My gaze went across the road before I could stop it.
Bad Habit was dark.
Of course it was dark.
It was eight in the morning.
Most tattoo shops didn’t open at eight in the morning, and Rome didn’t strike me as the cheerful early-bird type. He struck me as the type who came alive after noon and judged people who used phrases like rise and shine.
Still, I looked. Then I hated that I’d looked.
I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat and slammed the car door a little harder than necessary. The sound echoed down the alley, and I winced.
“Smooth,” I muttered.
Inside Scoop & Swirl, I flipped on the lights, and the shop glowed to life around me. The tables were clean from the night before, the floors mostly passed inspection, and the display freezer was full enough to make me feel like I had things under control.
That was probably an illusion.
But I was willing to enjoy it while it lasted.
I tied on my apron, washed my hands, and got to work.
There was comfort in routine, even if my routine was only one day old. I restocked napkins and spoons, refilled the topping containers, wiped down the counter, checked the freezer temperatures, and wrote the day’s featured flavor on the small chalkboard near the register.
Double Chocolate Fudge.
I paused with the chalk still in my hand, then I rolled my eyes.
I should’ve picked strawberry cheesecake. Or butter pecan. Or literally anything that didn’t remind me of a tattooed man sitting at one of my tables pretending he didn’t like the exact thing he kept eating.
I erased the board.
Then I stood there with the chalk in my hand, annoyed at myself.
Double Chocolate Fudge had been one of the best sellers yesterday. It deserved to be featured. It had nothing to do with Rome.
I rewrote it in bigger letters out of spite.
By nine-thirty, I had the register ready, the freezer organized, and the first batch of waffle cones cooling behind the counter.
My wrist still ached every time I moved too quickly, so I wrapped it with a compression bandage I’d found in the first-aid kit and told myself that was practically the same as self-care.
At ten, I unlocked the front door.
The first customer came in at ten-oh-seven.
Then another.
Then a mother with two little boys who spent five minutes debating between bubblegum and birthday cake like the fate of the world depended on it. By eleven, I had a small but steady stream of customers, enough to keep me busy without feeling like I might need to fake my own death to escape.
It was good.
Normal.
Manageable.
I smiled, scooped, rang people up, wiped sticky fingerprints off the counter, and answered the same questions about hours, flavors, and whether I made milkshakes.
Yes, I made milkshakes. Yes, I had dairy-free options.
No, I did not have pistachio yet, but apparently I needed to because three people asked before lunch.
Every so often, I looked across the street.
Not on purpose.
Never on purpose.
I would turn to throw away a napkin, and somehow my eyes landed on Bad Habit. I would wipe the counter and glance out the window. I would hear a motorcycle and look up before I could talk myself out of it.
Bad Habit stayed dark until almost noon.
Then the black motorcycle rolled into the lot.
My hand froze on the scoop.
Rome swung off the bike in one smooth motion, pulled off his helmet, and ran a hand through his dark hair. He wore black again because apparently that was his entire wardrobe, and he moved with the same easy confidence I’d noticed the first time I saw him.
He didn’t look across the street.
Not once.
He unlocked Bad Habit and disappeared inside.
I frowned at the ice cream in front of me. “Of course.”
A teenage girl standing at the counter blinked at me. “Um, is that my rocky road?”
I looked down.
It was not rocky road.
It was mint chocolate chip.
“Sorry.” I dumped the wrong scoop into a waste cup and forced a smile. “Long morning.”
She gave me a look that said she absolutely did not care but was trying to be polite.
Fair.
I made her rocky road and spent the next hour determined not to look across the street.
I failed seventeen times.