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It wasn’t just the family thing that was worrying him. So many things had been going wrong with the business that he was sure that Joselyn was wishing she had never partnered with him. He should’ve just let her have the building from the beginning, and there probably wouldn’t have been so many troubles.
When Marcus pulled up to the shop Saturday morning to meet with Nate, Joselyn was already getting out of her car. He met her on the sidewalk and gave her a quick kiss, but he could tell that she was every bit as stressed out as he was. Her movements were quick and focused on the building, and her eyebrows were scrunched together like they always were when she was worried or thinking hard.
Once they walked inside, they found Nate and one of his crew working on installing the tile flooring back in the kitchen. There was still evidence of the damage the ice cream machine caused Thursday afternoon, but for only a day and a half later, it was looking much better.
“Come on up front,” Nate said, getting to his feet. “I’ve only got one guy here today because my crew doesn’t work on Saturdays, but we’re trying to finish in plenty of time for you to decorate and get everything in place and still have time to make the ice cream before opening day.”
Nate had been focused on business, but possibly because of Marcus’s and Joselyn’s lack of enthusiasm, Nate threw out a jauntier, “Just two weeks from the big day, right?”
Marcus tried to force a smile through his worries about the place. “Yep!”
“Okay, well,” Nate said, “I asked you two to come in today because I contacted the guys who did the countertop, and they can’t replace it with the same materials because they won’t be back in stock in time. So we have these two choices instead, and I think either one would look good with your color scheme. What do you think?”
One was wood strips that would look just great— it was a beautiful color, but it reminded him too much of a chopping block at the restaurant, and didn’t make him think “ice cream” at all. The other was a nice, crisp white, which went well with the other white accents they were using. So he pointed at the white sample at the same time Joselyn pointed at the wood one.
Joselyn stiffened for a small moment, so Marcus said, “Actually, let’s go with the wood.” But Joselyn had also immediately said, “White’s just fine. Let’s use it.”
Nate looked at them like he was amused but hid it quickly. Probably because both Marcus and Joselyn were so on edge.
“The wood countertop,” Marcus said, a bit more firmly.
“This is Sandra,” Joselyn said, lifting her phone so she could see the screen. “We should probably take this.”
Nate gave them a nod and headed back into the kitchen area to work on the floor, and Marcus and Joselyn headed toward the back of the shop while Joselyn answered the video call.
“Couple of bumps, sweeties,” Sandra said. “Nate will have the booths ready to upholster by Wednesday, but the fabric we ordered will no longer be in on time. I’ve already pulled three different fabric samples that I think will work, though, and all three can be delivered by Wednesday.”
Joselyn didn’t ask about them— she just asked, “You said acoupleof bumps?”
“The other,” Sandra said, a bit more cautiously this time, probably sensing Joselyn’s mood, “is just that we’re a couple of tables short. That one will work itself out, I’m sure. Let’s not worry about it.” She aimed the camera at the samples. “So what do you think about the fabric?”
Joselyn looked at Marcus, so he said, “I’m fine with whatever.”
“I am, too. Do you want to just pick the one that will look best?”
“You... don’t want to?” Sandra seemed to not know how to respond. “Okay. I’ll send a picture of it later.”
After Joselyn ended the call, she pushed open the back door and headed outside. Marcus followed her into the back parking lot, toward the building that would soon be Macie’s Paws and Relax, where the grass between the two buildings was finally free of snow after so many months.
Joselyn slumped her back against the building.
“Rough night?”
She nodded. He wanted to reach out to her, to wrap his arms around her and protect her from everything in the world that could cause her to look so downcast. But something about the feeling he was getting from her made him stay a few agonizingly far feet away.
“Remember back two-and-a-half months ago when we first started planning this new business?”
He nodded, smiling just thinking about it. If anyone ever asked him to name the most magical part of his life, it would be that. “It’s been a lot of fun.”
She stayed quiet for a long moment before saying, “We stopped having fun.”
He let out a long, slow breath. Dealing with the dozens of problems they had come across in the past week had definitely been anything but fun. He was tired enough that if someone had told him that the past seven days had actually been seven weeks, he’d have believed it. Maybe the two of them just needed some distance from the business. Maybe they should go on a date again like they did last Saturday. He wondered if they had enough time to fit it in. He was about to open his mouth to ask when Joselyn spoke.
“I’m not sure our relationship can handle being in business together. It throws a wrench into everything, and now nothing is working out.” She looked down at the asphalt, pushing a little stone with the toe of her shoe. “Maybe my family knew what they were talking about when they said we shouldn’t date.”
Marcus realized that at least a small part of him thought he must have been wrong to worry about the Zimmermans because hearing it come from Joselyn made that part of him feel like it was crashing to the ground.
He swallowed down a lump in his throat. “Dating isn’t what has caused everything to go wrong. It’s the only thing that has been going right.”
