“Ugh.” I shove the half-constructed Gondola in his direction. “You’re foul.”
“And you’re extremely easy to rile up,” he says, drying his hands.
“I’m serious,” I say, emphatically uncharmed. I’ll be honest—sometimes I find it kind of fun, whatever weird back-and-forth thing Miles and I have going on. At the very least, it helps pass the time during lulls at the restaurant. But then other times it’s like he’s totally committed to being the grossest, most annoying version of himself, like he’s actively trying to put me off. “Why do you always have to do that?”
“Do what?” he asks, plastering an innocent face on.
“That,” I say, waving my hand vaguely.
Miles sets the Gondola down on the counter in its paper tray, a beat passing like he’s actually thinking about it. “Deflect?”
“I mean, I was going to say be yourself,” I fire back, surprised by his vocabulary. “But sure, deflect works too.”
He shrugs. “Generalized anxiety and oppositional defiant disorder, I guess,” he tells me. “At least, that’s what my therapist says.”
That is…not what I was expecting him to say. “Wait,” I say again. Since when does Miles go to therapy? “Seriously?”
Miles tilts his head to the side, pressing his lips together for a moment before nudging me gently out of the way so he can finish making the sandwich. “Seriously,” he says.
“Since when?”
He shrugs, reaching for a handful of shredded lettuce instead of looking at me. “A few months, I guess? After the whole almost not graduating thing, it was kind of a condition for my mom not kicking me out of the house.”
I gnaw on my thumbnail for a moment, which is definitely a health and safety violation. “Is it because of…” I trail off. “Like…stuff with your brother?”
Miles smirks down at the counter. “You can say his name, you know. He isn’t Voldemort.”
“No,” I say, embarrassed. “Of course he’s not.” Tommy is—was?—three years older than Miles and me. The summer before he was supposed to leave for Quinnipiac he picked up a rare form of meningitis from a water bottle at the camp where he was a counselor and spent the last eleven days of his life in a coma at a hospital on the Upper Peninsula. Miles never talks about him at all.
“Anyway,” he says now, his voice bright and booming like a game show announcer showcasing a brand-new car, “it’s actually still unclear whether I’m a mess because of stuff with my brother or whether I’m a mess because I’m just, like, a mess. But your hypothesis is noted for the record.” He raises his eyebrows then, mischievous. “Girls like a messed-up guy, right? Leather jacket, king of pain?”
“You’re doing it again,” I point out, although the secret truth is I do actually think he’d look sort of cute in a leather jacket. I bump his shoulder with mine without quite planning to do it—wanting him to know I think it’s good that he’s in therapy. Wanting him to know I’m sorry about Tommy, even if I never know how to say it out loud. “Deflecting, I mean.”
Miles makes a face, sticking the Italian-flag toothpicks in both halves of the sandwich and ringing the bell on the counter. “I’m working on it, okay? I have a little sticker chart and everything.”
“Do you really?”
He smiles for real now, his dark eyes catching mine and holding. “No.”
We look at each other for another moment, neither one of us saying anything. I can see his pulse ticking in his neck. It occurs to me that I almost want to tell him about Paula Prescott and my Summer of Yes—to trust him with something, maybe, the way he trusted me with all of this.
“Hey there!” Dad bursts through the back door into the kitchen just then, which is probably for the best. The last thing I need is Miles holding something like that over my head for the rest of the summer, trying to use it as a pretext to convince me we should hold up convenience stores and, like, sleep naked under the stars. “Exactly the two people I was looking for.”
“What’s up, Mr. Walls?” Miles takes a giant step away from me—shoot, I definitely had not realized how close we were standing—and jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Come on outside with me for a tick, would ya?” Dad gestures to the back door of the kitchen, where all the deliveries come in. “Your mom can cover the line.”
The two of us follow him out the back door and into the service alley, where there’s a small truck parked in DiPasquale’s designated parking spot. “Are we…moving something?” I ask, squinting a bit in the afternoon sun.
“Not exactly,” Dad says. “Drum roll, please?”
Miles and I exchange a baffled look. “Uh, what?” I ask.
“Oh, fine.” Dad grabs the handle on the moving truck’s door and tugs it upward in one swift motion. “Ta-da!”
Inside the otherwise empty cargo hold is a small cart on wheels with a decent-sized chest cooler attached. The whole thing is shiny sea-foam green, with a loopy red DiPasquale’s logo painted on the broad side.
“What do you think?” Dad asks, looking openly chuffed with himself.
“Um…what is it?” Miles asks, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Well, I’ve been calling it the Cream Cart,” Dad tells him proudly, “but we can change that if you kids can come up with something better.” He’s almost dancing around the thing, motioning us to step into the truck to check it out. “It’s for the summer. A stroke of brilliance if I do say so myself.”
He opens the lid to the cooling chest. It’s brand-new and divided into two halves: one with four circular holes that look like buckets or vats would fit into them, and the other revealing deep shelved compartments. “The Stracciatella, Gianduja, Fior de Latte, and Pistachio di Bronte go here,” Dad explains, pointing to the four round compartments, “and Nonna’s lady fingers go on the other side. And voila! A tasty dessert and beach-friendly spin on DiPasquale’s signature menu item.”
“So…ice cream sandwiches?” I ask.
“Ice cream Gondolas,” Miles corrects, the ghost of a smile playing across his lips. “Gosh, Rachel, get with the program.”
“Yes! That’s exactly right.” Dad is practically doing backflips. “Made with the customer’s choice of up to two of our signature gelato flavors and Nonna’s delicious cookies. Haven’t you noticed her perfecting the recipe?”