Sweeter Than Summer

1 | peaches n' scream

"You come here a lot?" Frank was asking.

"I will now," Sunglasses replied. She, finally, took them off her face and shoved them into her beach bag – orange, with green palm trees.

Frank smiled, but only with one side of his mouth. When he replied, his voice sounded strained, like he was trying not to laugh. "I'll look forward to it."

When she walked to the counter to pay, I saw why; the bottom half of her face was completely different from the top half. It looked like, after wearing those sunglasses to multiple beach trips, only part of her face had developed a tan.

"Five fifty please."

After charging it to her card, she stuffed a stack of napkins into her bag and left. Almost immediately after the door swung shut, Frank dissolved into laughter.

"It's not funny," I told him. Quieter, I added, "That poor lady."

"Five minutes ago you didn't feel that way," Frank objected. "You should have seen your face. It was like Tinker Bell, when they lock her in that drawer."

"She wasn't even listening! She asked a question, so I answered it, but she wasn't even listening to the answer, and she didn't even order it." When I realized that I was only proving his point, I added, at a normal speaking level, "but I wouldn't even wish that kind of tan line on even my worst enemy."

"Which she was."

"What? No."

"January," Frank said, "Whenever anyone refuses to order the Flavor of the Day, you take it as a personal attack."

"Who's attacking who?"

Poppy emerged from the walk-in freezer with a fresh batch of rocky road, setting it on the ground between me and Frank.

"Anyone who doesn't want 'peaches n' scream' is wounding January's pride," Frank explained.

"I don't get why no one is ordering it," Poppy said. "It's good."

That made me grin. "That's what I thought too. Which is why I made a ton, and now no one's eating it. My dad's going to be so mad when he finds out I wasted all that perfectly good cobbler."

Frank fished the old container of rocky road out of the glass case and, after managing to excavate a few last spoonfuls from the bottom, brought it out back to the sink to wash.

"Just give it all to me," Poppy said. "I'll eat several pints of that stuff."

"So will I. We'll split it."

We shook on it just as the door chimed.

The two teenagers who walked in were definitely siblings. Or, possibly, on second thought, they could have been one of those couples who just eerily looked alike. But I would've bet money on the former, solely based on the way they were arguing, loudly, just inside the door.

"I can't just ask," the smaller, and rounder, girl was saying.

"You can just ask," her brother bit back, clearly frustrated. Even though he had turned to face her, only letting us see the back of his neck, you could tell from our distance that it was bright red. "Or I'll ask for you."

Poppy, beside me, cleared her throat. "Welcome to Franny's Homemade Ice Cream, what can I get for you?"

The girl sent one last glare in her brother's direction, then marched past him, right up to the counter. "Are you really hiring?"

Poppy glanced sideways at me, so I said, "yes, but only for summer help."

The girl looked surprised to learn that she could, in fact, just ask. "Can I have an application?"