It was more of a challenge than I’d expected.
“I’ve been thinking,” Darcy said as Wendy began to make our coffees. He had a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes, and I immediately knew he was thinking about work. Although, that wasn’t anything new. I didn’t know if Darcy ever stopped thinking about work.
“I don’t know how popular it would be, but I’d love to experiment with a dark chocolate and chilli ice cream. And we don’t really have anything with coffee either, so maybe something like a tiramisu. Or we could try to do a pumpkin-spiced coffee flavour. It’s mostly just cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, so it should be fairly easy to make, especially since we’ve already perfected adding dried spices to the base.”
I nodded, my brain lighting up as it started trying to figure out how to make these work. Figuring out flavour combinations and how to pair them was one of my favourite things to do. I’d picked up so many tips and ideas from my time working in local restaurants wherever I’d landed, but Darcy had this amazing gift for flavour and what would work well in an ice cream.
It was no wonder Lick It! was already such a success, because every creation he dreamed up was delicious.
“Let’s do all of them,” I said.
“You think they’d all work?”
“Probably, but if they don’t then at least we gave it a try.” I grinned at him encouragingly. “Isn’t that how you created your menu in the first place? By playing around with things.”
“Yeah, it is.” A soft smile crept across his lips as he turned slightly to look out across the beach. “I used to spend hours every night perfecting recipes and testing new flavours. It was exhausting and sometimes frustrating but… it was fun too. There’s something about throwing things into a base and seeing if it works, tasting it when it’s churning and realising it’s exactly what you imagined. Even if it’s a bit off and needs tweaking, that realisation you made something good, it’s almost magical.”
He flushed and shook his head, laughing quietly like he was trying to play his emotions off. Did he think I’d think he was pretentious or weird? Because I didn’t. I totally got what he meant.
“It totally is! It’s an awesome feeling, man,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder and squeezing. “I think, if you love food, it’s not a feeling that ever goes away. Whenever I’m in a kitchen, whatever I’m cooking, that first taste when it’s right? Best thing in the world. And the second best is giving it to someone else and watching them fall in love with it too.”
“Right! And when they tell everyone else? When they want to share it with people they love? Nothing can beat that. Ice cream—well any food really—it’s got this way of bringing people together and creating these little moments of joy.”
Wendy turned around with our coffees and I put my reply to Darcy on hold to scoop them up and pass one across to him so he could add sugar. I cheerfully thanked Wendy and told her I’d see her in the morning, because even if it was a bit colder than I was used to, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to swim in the sea as often as I could.
It was one of my favourite things in the whole world.
“Do you want to walk a little?” I asked, gesturing towards the front as I adjusted my bag on my shoulders and pushed my hair out of my face. “Or do you need to get back?”
“We can walk a bit,” he said. “I’d need to head that way anyway.”
I grinned, very happy he’d accepted my offer. We’d been working together for a few weeks now, and I didn’t feel like I knew Darcy half as well as I wanted to. He kinda fascinated me and I had this feeling we had more in common than he let on. I just needed to figure out who he was under the layers of stress and exhaustion he tried to pretend weren’t there.
But I’d been around enough burned-out chefs in the past to know Darcy was one bad day from a full-on meltdown, and that would suck. So, I’d decided I was going to prevent it from happening.
I wasn’t sure how yet. I just knew that I was.
Like most things in my life, I’d figure it out as I went. Things usually worked out if you trusted the universe. At least, they worked out a good seven or eight times out of ten. And sure, the things that’d gone wrong had blown up pretty spectacularly in my face, but I’d learned my lesson and moved on.
There was no point dwelling on things from the past I couldn’t change or do anything about. All I could do was keep moving forward and not make the same mistakes.
“Why did you decide you wanted to open an ice cream shop?” I asked as I sipped my coffee. It wasn’t the best coffee I’d ever had, but it was warm and comforting and made by someone who cared, so it did the job just fine.
“It’s been my dream since I was six. There used to be this little ice cream shop on the end of the front, just there, where Bob’s is”—he pointed at one of the fish and chip shops on the other side of the road—“and when I was little, my nan used to bring me down after primary school on a Friday to get one. It was something I always got really excited about, and I used to spend all Friday thinking about what flavour I was going to get. And when we used to play games in the playground, andsomeone wanted to play shop, I always wanted it to be an ice cream shop. I don’t think I can remember a big defining moment where I thought ‘I’m going to run an ice cream shop one day’, it was just always there.”
“I love that,” I said, because I did. Watching someone get to follow their passion and make their dream come true was fucking awesome. Not everyone got to, and that sucked to me because everyone should get the chance to do what they loved.
Within reason, obviously.
If your dream was making puppy fur coats like Cruella de Vil, then you could get in the fucking sea.
“Thanks.” He was smiling again. It looked good on him. “For a long time, it was only something I did as a hobby, I never really thought it would stick, but then I lost my corporate marketing job last year and decided fuck it. You only get one life.”
“You do, and you have to live it the way you want.”
“True, although I’m sure the doctor would prefer it if my life plan involved less stress.”
“Yeah, stress isn’t good, but you’ve got me and Ellie now, plus Alfie and Milo. Together, we’re gonna rock the rest of the summer and it’s going to be awesome.”
