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She grabbed Marcus’s free hand in one of hers and Joselyn’s with her other hand, so the three of them made a circle of hand-holding. “When I first started working with the two of you, you were just a business owner and a consultant. And look at you now! Business partners and, judging by your hands and the looks on your faces, you’ve become even more than that.”
Marcus opened his mouth to reply, but the woman had already dropped their hands, turned around, and was striding away. “Now come along—we’ve got lots to do!”
She led them to one of a few smaller conference-like rooms and sat them down at a table that had a design portfolio resting on it. “Last we talked, it was before you became business partners. Do you still want the overall look to be welcoming, fun, open, and not cluttered?”
They both nodded, so as Sandra turned the portfolio so it was aimed toward them, she said, “Okay, I’ve got a couple of different designs for you.” She pulled a regular-sized piece of paper from the portfolio and placed it to the side. “I’ve kept the same color scheme as your logo, of course, but I’ve lightened the colors a bit. We don’t want things to be quite so ‘in your face’ for your customers as it would be if we kept them this bright and bold.”
She flipped open the portfolio to a design on a large piece of paper, looking at the inside of the building from the perspective of the front door. Light gray tiles covered the bottom half of the walls and cyan paint filled the space above. Pink lights lit columns on either side of the left wall between the front and back counter. The With a Cherry on Top logo was big on the wall, centered between the two columns of light. The pink lights also shone down from under the countertop onto the bottom half of the front counter.
He reached out a hand to touch the design. “Wow, Sandra! This is incredible.” His eyes lingered on it for a few more moments before he looked over at Joselyn to see her reaction. He couldn’t tell what she thought of it by her expression, so he raised an eyebrow in question.
“It’s nice. I like it.”
His eyebrows drew in as he looked back at it. He thought it was way more than ‘nice.’
“For a different take, I’ve also designed this,” Sandra said, moving the first paper out of the way, revealing a second image of the store from the same perspective, but designed differently. This one had giant circles painted on the wall at the right, each one at least a foot in diameter. Several were piled up on one side, moving to fewer on the other, like they were spilled out of a giant bucket. They were in four different colors, all of which went well with the logo.
Several other large circles were painted here and there on the other walls, but not nearly as many as that biggest wall. It kind of made the whole place look chaotic. Compared to the first design, this one was awful. Maybe if he hadn’t seen the other design first, he would— nope, he still wouldn’t like it.
“Oh, I love this,” Joselyn breathed.
Marcus’s attention flew to her. “Really?”
“You don’t?”
He shook his head. If it was about something else, he would’ve probably just gone with what Joselyn said. But he was going to have to look at this every single day, and he just couldn’t.
“Ooo!” Sandra said, clapping her hands like this was an exciting show she was watching. “This is the first time you two have disagreed about designs. Interesting. Okay, Marcus, tell me what you like about the first design.”
Marcus reached out and pulled the first design closer. “It looks fun. There are lots of interesting things going on, and it has nice clean lines.”
Sandra nodded, then said, “Joselyn—tell me what you like about the second.”
“All the color. And...” she moved her hands around like she was trying to capture some feeling in a word, “the movement, I guess.”
Marcus ran his hands over his face. He and Joselyn had agreed on so many things that it hadn’t occurred to him that they might find something they disagreed on. Especially not the design. They had agreed to always defer to the other person when it was their area of specialty—the ice cream for him, and business decisions for her—but they hadn’t considered design when they’d made that rule.
All along, he had enjoyed his and Joselyn’s spirited conversations. But disagreeing on big things like this was concerning him. He shifted in his chair, trying to get more comfortable.
Sandra studied both of them for a moment before giving a single sharp nod and pushing both designs to the other side of the table, revealing the same image of the inside, but one that was void of any design elements. Then she got out a giant package of pencils in every color and went to work. Marcus was surprised she wasn’t using a laptop to make a new design so she could color an entire wall with a click of a mouse, but as quickly as her hands moved, maybe she had found that a laptop slowed her down.
“These will be thick slats of wood starting from the ceiling right above the half wall at the back counter, out just past the end of the front counter,” she said as she finished drawing the last lines, “so it will look almost like an awning over the ordering area. And we’ll paint them the four colors from the second design. That way we’ll bring in more color and have the clean lines that Marcus likes.”
Then she started drawing lines down the walls and making them look three-dimensional. “We’ll do some build-outs a few feet wide and an inch or two away from the wall to break up this big long wall into smaller sections. Then we can paint them different colors.” She drew some diagonal lines on a few of the sections of the wall that were recessed. “Then we’ll have some one-inch trim spaced a few inches apart repeating at an angle on some of these, bringing in the movement that Joselyn likes.
“We’ll do the same on this wall for uniformity and to carry the theme throughout. In these two recessed sections,” she drew a giant ice cream cone with a single scoop of ice cream on top, “we can have your builder cut out a shape of an ice cream cone and I will paint it like your signature flavor.”
Marcus watched in amazement as the whole thing came together like she was putting together a puzzle. As she added in the last of the color, it was as though she had just placed the last piece and everything was right.
She turned the design in their direction. “What do you think?”
“It’s perfect,” Joselyn said, and then looked over at him, her expression a mix of apprehension and excitement.
Marcus let out a breath of relief. “I think so, too.” The whole time Sandra had been drawing the new design, he just kept thinking back to the reason why Joselyn had broken up with him back in high school— because of disagreements— and he worried that they were heading down the same track again. Luckily, the designer was good at what she did and got them past that.
Or at least he thought they were past it. Sandra took them out onto the floor of the building so they could do some shopping, and they stopped to look at tables first.
“We’ve got two great options on tables. They’re both the same width— we’ve got that one that’s square with rounded corners, and then that one that’s a circle.”
