I spy Gio through the glass door, stacking pastries into the display case. There’s a woman at one of the tables sipping coffee, and a guy reading a newspaper at another. I push the door open and Gio looks up, a series of micro-expressions crossing his face that tell me he’s not sure how to navigate things either.
“Morning,” I say, dumping my bag on one of the counter stools.
“Hey, you,” he says.
Two words, and now I feel like the class nerd who made out with the cool guy at the school disco last night. If this was high school, I’d drop my bag about now and he’d come over and help me pick up my books. But it isn’t high school. We’re in our thirties and we’ve been around the relationship block enough to know this is a dangerous neighborhood and you’d be wise to guard your bag rather than let it spill out.
“Iris, I wanted to—”
He stops speaking when the door pushes open and a couple of women come in and hover near the counter.
“You guys go, I’m still thinking,” I say, turning to wave them forward.
“Can we get everything in here?” One of them touches the display case, her eyes scanning the contents. “And”—she pauses to count on her fingers—“fifteen Americanos to go, please?”
Her friend sighs beside her. “Staff meeting, caterer let us down.”
“Of course,” Gio says, glancing at me.
“Can I help?” I say.
He hands me an apron, and for the next few minutes we work as a team, me boxing pastries, him making coffee, and it feels harmonious, last night’s tension melting away as I tie string around the green-and-white-striped boxes.
The woman in front of me reads the customer notice on the counter and then looks at me.
“Will there be gelato again soon? I miss that stuff.”
Gio turns from the machine with takeaway cups in his hands. “We hope so,” he says. “It’s a temporary glitch.”
The customer nods, already moving on to a different conversation with her colleague.
A temporary glitch. His words knock around inside my head as we pack and stack the order to go. It’s a good summary of us, we are a temporary glitch in each other’s timeline.
It feels unnaturally quiet when they leave. The woman at the table has gone too, leaving just the guy behind his newspaper over by the window.
“I think we should —” I begin quietly and stop again, because Sophia returns, her arms full of milk cartons.
“Managed to bum these from Priscilla,” she says, leaning forward over the counter to put them all down at once. “She said you can pay her back with lunch sometime.”
I conjure Priscilla from memory, the woman in the gelateria across the street, and swallow down unnecessary needles of jealousy. Gio can have lunch with whoever he wants. As can I, of course. I layer the cartons in the fridge beneath the counter as Gio restocks the display case and Sophia hangs her coat.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says. “About the gelato situation.”
“Join the club,” Gio says.
She pauses and squares her shoulders. “Hear me out here? I know you’re working on the recipe, and I’ve every faith in you both, I do. But those machines back there are standing idle when they could be making us a profit, you know? How about if we schedule some guest flavors, make a big splash about it with publicity?”
“This again.” Gio looks absolutely unconvinced. “Vanilla for—”
“Forever, I know,” she cuts in. “But at the moment we’ve got nothing forever, and the way I see it, it’s a chance to be creative.”
“We’ll get the recipe right, we’re closer than ever,” he says, stubborn.
I stay low and rearrange the milk cartons in order to keep myself out of the conversation, because I can see both sides. Gio is dead set on keeping things exactly as they are, Sophia is full of fire and ambition and ideas for change. We’ve had many conversations about flavors and pastry recipes—she’s a self-taught cook who loves to experiment and she regularly tries out new twists on old pastry classics for Belotti’s customers. And she’s good. Really good. I can see so much merit in what she’s saying.
“Say you’ll think about it, at least? Small batches, unusual flavors, put the story out there that we’ve misplaced our recipe and, while we hunt it down, come try out our exciting guest flavors?” She ends with jazz hands and a wide smile.
“So you want to announce to our competitors that we’ve lost our family recipe, let them all know Papa can’t remember it? Have you stopped for even one minute to think how that would make him feel?” Gio throws his hands out to the sides and glares at his sister.
“Well, let’s just let New York forget we make gelato altogether then,” Sophia spits back, slapping her hand down hard on the counter. “How do you think Papa would feel about that?”
They stare each other down, at an impasse, and the guy with the newspaper closes it and shoots me a rather-you-than-me look as he exits.
Gio breaks first, huffing as he turns on his heel and disappears into the kitchen.
“Talk to him for me? He might listen to you,” Sophia says, rolling her eyes. “He’s just so freakin’ set in his ways.”
I think about his comment last night, that his sisters all see him as locked in behind this counter, and I can understand how they all find security in playing their designated roles.
“Well, I can try,” I say, non-committal.
“I don’t get why he always has to be so damn stubborn,” she says, and I wonder if she realizes she’s just the same way. “I mean, I love him and everything, but his unbendability drives me up the wall sometimes.”
“There are worse things he could be,” I say, trying to soothe things.
“Are there? Because right now it doesn’t feel that way.”
“You’re just going to have to trust me on that one, then,” I say. “I guess he’s grown used to having to hold things together on his own and it’s a hard habit to break.”
Sophia’s expression softens. “I know,” she says with a sigh. “But he isn’t on his own. He never has been, even when Pen died. We’ve all been here beside him the whole time.”
“And he’s incredibly lucky to have that,” I say. “But you can have all the support in the world and still feel alone when you turn the lights out at night and there’s just you trying to work out how to get through tomorrow.”
“Oh God, I’m sorry, Iris, I’ve put my foot in it without engaging my brain,” Sophia says, her dark eyes full of concern as she puts her arm around my shoulders. It catches me by surprise, this sisterly tenderness, something that comes easy to her and that I’ve never known before. “You can tell me to shut up if you like, but I’m always here if you need to talk about stuff. About your husband, I mean. Gio told me.”
I swallow hard, blindsided.
“Because I read about how to talk about grief after Penny died, about mentioning her loads, how it’s good to know other people remember the person you’ve lost too,” she says, rushing her words out in an even faster jumble than usual. “And I know you don’t have that kind of support here, people who knew him, so if you want to talk about him, you can to me, okay?”