I ran all the way home and it wasn’t until I’d almost reached my house that I noticed I’d been sticking to the outside, leaving enough room for someone to run next to me.

4

HUG A JAMIE

I stood behind the counter of Paradise Ice Cream and looked longingly at the door. In the four days that I’d been working at the ice cream parlor, I’d had exactly five customers. And one of them was just a guy who wanted change for the parking meter. If Sloane had been there, and we’d been working together, it would have been awesome, and the lack of customers would have been the job’s biggest perk. But since it was just me, alone, all day, I found myself looking up hopefully whenever anyone walked by, crossing my fingers that they wanted some ice cream. But although people sometimes glanced in the window, they walked on, usually to the pizza parlor.

My customer-free and silent workplace wouldn’t have been so bad, except when I left my job I had to go home, where my phone was still silent and I had nobody to hang out with.

I hadn’t yet been able to cross anything else off the list, and two nights earlier, in a low moment, I’d taken a picture of it and e-mailed it to Frank’s school address. I’d regretted it as soon as the e-mail had gone through, but since I hadn’t heard anything from him, I figured that he was either not checking his school account over the summer, or that he’d forgotten all about our unexpected running conversation. Either way, I’d made no progress, and it was making me anxious.

Now, I looked away from the door and down at the napkin in front of me, where I’d compiled a list of all the Jamies from school I could think of. I didn’t know any of them well, and I honestly didn’t think I’d be capable of calling one of them up and asking if I could come to his house and hug him. I’d just remembered one more—I was pretty sure the guy who’d been in the mascot costume last year had been named Jamie—when the over-the-door bell jangled and a girl rushed into the shop.

I pushed the napkin to the side and tried to look professional. “Welcome to Paradise,” I said, smiling at her.

She froze in the doorway and I realized why she looked familiar—she was the girl who worked two doors down at Captain Pizza. “Hi,” she said in a shaky voice. I looked closer and realized that her face was blotchy and her eyes looked puffy. Aside from that, though, she was pretty—petite and curvy, with bright blond hair and bangs, and pale blue eyes that seemed to be about twice the size of normal people’s eyes. She ran a hand through her hair and took a step closer to the counter. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I actually don’t want any ice cream.” I sighed and nodded; at this point, I felt like this shouldn’t even have surprised me. She took a big, shaky breath. “I just needed to get out of there for a moment. And if I went to my car, everyone would be able to see . . .” Her face crumpled and she held her hand up to her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said in a choked voice. “I’ll be gone in a second.”

“Um,” I said as I looked around, like one of the signs about handwashing and checking freezer temperatures would help me in this situation. I came out from behind the counter and twisted my hands together. “Are you okay?”

The girl nodded and gave me an incredibly bad version of a smile, one that turned wobbly and collapsed after a few seconds. “No,” she sobbed, starting to cry in earnest. I reached for one of the napkin holders on the counter and brought it over to her. She sank down onto one of the metal chairs and pressed a napkin to her face. “I just feel so stupid, you know. I should have seen it. It was right in front of my face. Like, literally. But my cousin Stephanie always said I was too trusting.”

“Should have seen what?” I asked, taking a step closer to her. I couldn’t decide if it would be rude or helpful to point out that, in the movies at least, people who were in emotional crises often got through it with some ice cream.

The girl wiped under her eyes, then blew her nose on the tissue and looked up at me. “That my boyfriend was cheating on me.”

“Oh god,” I said, pushing more napkins at her. “I’m so sorry—”

“With my best friend.”

“Oh,” I said, swallowing hard.

“And we all work together.” She pointed in the direction of the pizza parlor. “Next door.” Telling me all this information seemed to bring the gravity of the situation back again, and she burst into fresh tears.

“Um,” I said, taking a step closer to the table, “is there a possibility that maybe you just misunderstood? Maybe your best friend didn’t mean it, or maybe you saw something that wasn’t . . .” My voice trailed off. A memory, one I didn’t like to think about if I could avoid it, was suddenly intruding with full force—that night in May, Sam’s house, the look on Sloane’s face, the glass shattering at her feet.

“No,” the girl said, her voice choked, as she shook her head. “I was out on delivery, and the last two were right near each other, so I got back super early.” Her voice got quiet, and shaky. “And that’s when I saw Bryan and Mandy, making out by the employee cubbies.” She looked up at me and I saw her eyes were spilling over with tears. “That was our place. It was where we used to make out.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, handing over another stack of napkins, realizing that I might have to get her another dispenser soon.

“And so I said, ‘What is this supposed to mean?’ I really was maybe willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I swear,” she said, pressing the napkin under her eyes again. “But then Bryan takes Mandy’s hand and tells me that we need to talk. Can you believe it?” She started crying again, and I reached over and tentatively patted her on the back.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I . . .” Something occurred to me, and I asked hopefully, “Your name isn’t Jamie, by any chance?” After all, I was halfway to hugging her already.

“No,” the girl said, straightening up. She pointed to her T-shirt, which was designed to look like a military uniform. On the shoulders, there were pizza toppings where medals would have gone—mushrooms and peppers and pepperoni slices. DAWN was printed on the shirt in military typeface, right over her heart. “Dawn Finley.”

“Emily,” I said. “Hughes.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, giving me something that was closer to a real smile this time. “I’m really sorry about this,” she said, pushing herself up to standing and scooping up her crumpled tissues. “Thanks for listening.”

“Sure,” I said, standing as well. “Are you sure you don’t want any ice cream? On the house.” Technically, I wasn’t sure I was allowed to do this, but considering nobody had even come in to get any samples, I figured that a scoop or two wouldn’t necessarily be missed.

“No, thank you, though,” Dawn said. “Sorry again.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Really.” Dawn gave me a half smile, then squared her shoulders and took a deep breath before pulling open the door and heading back toward the pizza parlor.

The bell chimed, then faded, and I was left alone again.  And as I walked back to stand behind the counter, I realized that the silence somehow felt louder than it had before.

The afternoon passed with glacial slowness. I cleaned and then re-cleaned the glass cases, then re-organized the ice cream in the walk-in freezer, first by flavor grouping, then alphabetically. I wasn’t in charge of locking up—that was Elise, the assistant manager, who came at closing every day. I had my eyes fixed on the back entrance, just waiting for Elise to show so that I could clock out and go home. I was trying not to think about the fact I had nothing to go home to, really, just parents who couldn’t be disturbed and a little brother probably lurking in a doorway and no life whatsoever. I just wanted to get out. I was looking so intently at the back door that I didn’t hear the bell jingle, and didn’t notice there was someone in front of me until they cleared their throat.

“Sorry,” I said, turning around quickly. Dawn was standing there, holding a pizza delivery carrier with a stack of tickets on top. “Oh, hi.” She looked slightly better than she had earlier in the day, but her eyes were still red-rimmed and puffy.

“Hey,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “I just wanted to thank you again, and apologize for earlier.”

“It’s really fine,” I assured her. To my surprise, I realized I wanted to know what had happened when she’d gone back to work, what Bryan and Mandy had done. But I didn’t actually know this girl, and now that she seemed embarrassed and slightly uncomfortable, I was starting to feel that way too.

“So if there’s anything I can do, let me know,” she said, shifting the carrier to her other hand, closer to the counter. “And I can get you a lunch special with my discount! Just come in any weekday, and . . .”

Dawn kept going, telling me about the pizza deals she could probably get for me, including a can of soda, my choice, but I was no longer hearing her. Instead, my eyes were fixed on the top delivery ticket. It was going to an address in Stanwich, to a Jamie Roarke.

I gasped. It felt like a sign. And if not a sign, at least an opportunity that I wasn’t about to pass up. “Actually,” I said, interrupting Dawn, “there is something you can do.” She raised her eyebrows, and I took a breath, my eyes still fixed on the name on the delivery slip. “Can I deliver pizzas with you?”

* * *

“And then Mandy started talking about how she felt like she never saw me anymore, and asked if I could get her a job at Captain Pizza too,” Dawn said as she barreled down the road. I nodded and gripped on to the side of the car, feeling my foot press down on a phantom brake. I wasn’t sure if Dawn was driving like this—fast, and a little distractedly—because she was reliving the Bryan and Mandy saga as she told me about it, or because she always drove like this, but either way, it was clear that we were definitely going to make Captain Pizza’s promised delivery window. “And so I put in a good word for her and she got a job as a hostess, and it was so great for a while, and she and Bryan really got along, and I just thought everything was perfect, you know? I didn’t even suspect anything else was going on.”