The Seventy-Five-Mile Trip

1. Nolani

The first thing people noticed when they entered Crème & Chill was the smell.

Brown butter waffle cones crisped against hot irons while strawberries simmered into a ruby-colored purée behind the bakery counter, their sweetness mingling with toasted pecans, vanilla, and the faint trace of coffee that lingered near the register.

Most customers were smiling before anyone greeted them.

I liked to believe the ice cream wasn’t solely responsible.

Morning sunlight poured through the storefront windows and stretched across honey-colored floors.

Along the largest wall, hand-painted portraits of Black musicians and authors rose above curved booths upholstered in caramel and cream.

Louis Armstrong lifted his trumpet toward a sky filled with musical notes.

Zora Neale Hurston watched over a group of teenagers sharing a basket of beignets, and Maya Angelou’s familiar face rested above a line from one of her poems. At the back of the shop, beneath an archway painted to resemble the pages of an open book, children wandered in and out of Scoops & Stories with library cards tucked into pockets and ice cream stains decorating their shirts.

Everyone had advised Nyla and me against sacrificing valuable seating for a reading nook when we opened the shop three years earlier. Books didn’t turn tables, they’d warned us. Shelves took up space. Children lingered much longer than their parents intended.

That had been the point.

I was reviewing weekend inventory on my tablet when a pair of glitter-covered sneakers stopped beside me.

My attention lifted from the ingredient list to a little girl with two puff ponytails perched at the top of her head, while the back was braided and finished with yellow beads.

Chocolate ice cream gathered around her mouth as she held a crayon drawing against her chest and waited until she was certain I was looking before extending it toward me.

“I made this for you, Miss Nolani.”

“For me?”

She nodded, sending the yellow beads at the ends of her braids clicking together. “That’s you, and that’s me.”

The drawing featured two stick figures standing beneath an enormous pink sun. One had long black curls, a bright dress, and eyelashes stretching halfway across her face. The smaller figure held an ice cream cone nearly as tall as she was.

“You even remembered my favorite flavor.”

“Strawberry,” she announced.

“You’ve been paying attention.”

A proud smile spread across her face. “Mama says I remember everything.”

Her mother hurried over from the nearest booth with a purse hanging from one shoulder and a half-zipped diaper bag tucked beneath the other arm. “I’m sorry. I told her not to interrupt you while you were working.”

I crouched until I was level with her daughter and turned the page so we could admire it together. “She didn’t interrupt anything. I’ve been needing something new for my office.”

The little girl’s eyes widened. “You’re gonna put it in there?”

“Right above my desk.”

“For everybody to see?”

“For everybody.”

She wrapped both arms around my neck before I could prepare for the hug.

I steadied myself against the display case and hugged her back, laughing when she whispered that I smelled like cake.

Her mother thanked me twice before guiding her toward their booth, where a baby had apparently discovered that dropping a spoon was more entertaining than using it.

I stayed beside the case another moment, smoothing the wrinkled corner of the drawing with my thumb.

“You’re going to need a second office wall.”

Nyla appeared behind me, carrying two metal pans of peach cobbler ice cream.

Although we were identical twins, nobody who knew us well ever had trouble telling us apart.

She wore her hair in a blunt, shoulder-length bob, while mine fell in curls beyond my shoulders.

Her apron somehow remained spotless through entire shifts.

Mine had acquired a streak of strawberry purée before nine that morning.

“The Louvre rotates its exhibits,” I said, moving aside so she could reach the refrigerated case. “I can do the same.”

“The Louvre also has climate control and armed security.”

“I have climate control and Kareem.”

At the opposite end of the counter, our six-foot-four assistant manager lifted his head at the sound of his name.

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to be involved.”

Nyla slid the first pan into place. “You’re already museum security.”

“I need a raise.”

“You got one last month.”

“I need another.”

His request disappeared beneath laughter from the employees working behind the counter. Nyla shook her head as she arranged the second pan beside the brown sugar bourbon vanilla, adjusting the label until it sat perfectly straight.

Saturday mornings belonged to families. Parents came in after soccer games and dance classes.

Grandparents claimed corner booths with newspapers, coffee, and grandchildren they had no intention of rushing.

Teenagers wandered through Scoops & Stories, pretending they’d only come for ice cream, then emerged with novels tucked beneath their arms.

I loved watching the room fill. Every conversation, chair scraped across the floor, and burst of laughter became part of a rhythm I’d spent years imagining before Crème & Chill had a name, a lease, or enough money in the account to purchase its first commercial mixer.

The dream had started in the kitchen of our childhood home in Self Ridge, where Nyla and I made ice cream in plastic bags filled with rock salt because Mama refused to buy another appliance.

Later, we borrowed Nana’s hand-crank machine and experimented with whatever we found in her pantry.

Peach preserves. Candied pecans. Sweet potato pie.

The first batch of banana pudding ice cream froze so hard Nana threatened to use it as a doorstop.

We’d come a long way from plastic bags and impossible bananas.

“Why is your eye twitching?” Nyla asked.

“My eye isn’t twitching.”

“It is.”

I lifted a hand toward my face. “Which one?”

“The left.”

“That’s my responsible eye.”

“That’s your exhausted eye, Noli.”

I looked at her. “You diagnosed that medically?”

“I diagnosed it as the twin who’s been watching you run on caffeine and poor judgment for two weeks.”

“You’re four minutes younger than me. Stay in your lane.”

Nyla gave me a flat look. “You got four minutes on me and have been abusing the authority ever since.”

Before I could answer, the bell above the front door chimed, and a man entered carrying a cardboard box with one side sagging beneath the weight of its contents. The logo across his shirt belonged to one of our dairy suppliers, although the delivery wasn’t scheduled until Monday.

“Ms. Thomas?”

“That’s me.”

He approached the counter with an apologetic expression and lowered the box carefully. “We had a refrigeration issue at the warehouse. Your order is fine, but the driver mixed up two invoices. I’ve got half of yours and half of a shipment that belongs across town.”

I opened the box and inspected the containers inside. “Where’s the rest?”

“They’re trying to locate it.”

“Trying?”

His shoulders rose with a breath. He looked young enough to be on his first delivery route, and the shadows beneath his eyes suggested the morning had already asked more of him than he knew how to fix.

“I called my supervisor,” he said. “He told me to leave this and head back, but I know y’all have an event tomorrow. I didn’t want you finding out after we closed.”

Nyla stepped beside me and scanned the invoice.

We were catering a birthday party for eighty people the following afternoon. Half the cream listed on that order wouldn’t carry us through the first flavor.

“What does the warehouse have available?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Call them.”

He reached for his phone immediately.

While he spoke to his supervisor, I opened our inventory system and began counting what we could redirect from regular production.

The shop continued around us, though the employees nearest the counter lowered their voices.

Everybody understood how quickly a supply shortage could turn an ordinary Saturday into a problem.

“They have the cream,” the driver said when he ended the call. “It was loaded onto another truck headed north.”

“How far?”

“About forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll go get it.”

Nyla turned toward me. “No.”

“We need it.”

“He can bring it back.”

The driver glanced between us. “I can meet the other truck and return before noon.”

“What time did your shift start?” I asked.

“Four this morning.”

“And when does it end?”

His hesitation answered first. “When the route is complete.”

I looked at the invoice again. The mistake wasn’t his, yet he’d driven across Self Ridge to warn us before somebody above him decided it was worth mentioning. Sending him on another ninety-minute round trip solved my inconvenience by extending his.

“Give me the location.”

“Nolani.”

“It’s fine.”

“It is not fine. You’ve been here since five-thirty.”

“So have you.”

“I went home before midnight.”

I ignored that unnecessary detail and handed the tablet to Kareem. “Can you finish the count?”

He accepted it with the expression of a man who agreed with my sister but valued continued employment.

The driver typed the location into my phone. “I’m really sorry about this.”

“You told us before it became an emergency. That helped.”

Relief crossed his face. I signed for the partial delivery and thanked him before he carried the empty box toward the door.

Nyla waited until it closed behind him.

“You’re not going.”

“I’ll be back before lunch.”

“We have employees.”

“We also have a birthday party tomorrow.”

“And you have a co-owner standing directly in front of you.”

I reached beneath the register for my keys.

Her hand covered them first.

The employees closest to us immediately discovered urgent work at the opposite end of the counter.

“Nyla.”

“Noli.”

“You can’t block my keys.”

“I can if I’m faster.”

“We are the same speed.”

“You’re tired. I have the advantage.”

I tugged once.