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Chapter 1. A Paper Cap and a Touched Hand

(Mabel’s POV)

The paper cap sat in my palm like something borrowed, stiff and white and too small to cover anything that mattered. I folded the brim twice the way I always did, then settled it over my hair—copper strands already escaping, already imperfect. The striped shirt smelled like last week’s syrup and the industrial detergent Mrs. Patterson used in the laundromat across from my window. I tugged the hem down over my hips and pushed through the Frost Spoon’s front door.

The black and white checkered floor had been walked soft long before I started here. The white squares were grey now, the black ones closer to charcoal, and somewhere near the shake machine a piece of tape held down a lifted corner. The machine itself rattled like it had something stuck in its throat, frost gathering around its spindle in thin white crusts. Through the propped-open door, pollen drifted in pale clouds, and I caught the smell of cut grass and the green of something just mowed.

Jax stood behind the counter with his palms flat on the cool laminate, watching the ceiling fan wobble through its cycle. He nodded when he saw me. Just a nod, but his eyes did that thing they always did—saw too much, said nothing. Claudia was already spinning on the red vinyl stool nearest the register, her ponytail perfect, her fingers tapping against her thigh in a rhythm she probably didn’t notice.

“Morning,” I said, and the word came out warm enough.

Claudia glanced at me. “You look tired.”

“I look like me.”

She didn’t argue, which meant she agreed. Behind us the shake machine rattled louder, a sound I’d stopped hearing most days but today felt like a small animal chewing through something. I tied the strings of my apron and took my spot near the syrup pumps—chocolate, strawberry, caramel, all of them sticky and warm from the morning sun through the window.

The counter had hairline cracks where syrup had seeped in years ago, dark lines like veins. I ran my thumb along one while I waited, and I thought about Percy. Not because I wanted to. Because his absence was a hole in the shape of someone I barely knew. Out on health leave for months, Claudia had said once, and I’d nodded like I cared, but I didn’t. I’d seen him maybe four times, always in that too-big black t-shirt, always avoiding eye contact. I thought about him now because the space behind the shake machine where he used to stand was empty, and the emptiness felt like a question I hadn’t asked.

The morning rush came in waves. A woman with a toddler asked for a vanilla shake, and I made it while the little boy pressed his sticky hand against the glass display. A man in a ball cap ordered a chocolate malt, and his eyes didn’t look at my face once—they moved down, rested, moved back up. I smiled and handed him his change, and I didn’t let my hand touch his. He didn’t notice. They never noticed.

But the next one did. Older, maybe fifty, with a gold wedding band and a polo shirt tucked into khakis. He ordered a strawberry shake, and when I gave him his cup, his fingers wrapped around mine instead of the cardboard. He held on for a second too long, and his thumb pressed into the soft skin between my knuckles.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said.

I pulled back. My smile was still there—it was always still there—but my chest went tight the way it did, the way it had been doing since I was sixteen and a man told me I was sweet while he unbuttoned my shirt and left before my coffee finished. “You’re welcome,” I said, and my voice was warm, unhurried, because I had learned to make it that way.

Inside, the echo started. Too much. Not enough. Too much. Not enough. I heard it in the rattle of the shake machine and the wobble of the ceiling fan and the man’s footsteps as he walked away without looking back. Was I enough like this? The question lived under my ribs, and I had never found an answer that stuck.

Jax appeared beside me without a word. He took the man’s cup—already half-empty, the straw bent—and wiped the counter where condensation had pooled. Then he looked at me, and I saw that he had seen everything. He didn’t ask if I was okay. He just took my spot, his broad shoulders blocking the counter, and I stepped back into the space near the syrup pumps where the fluorescent light flickered every seven seconds.

Claudia shot the man a look from the register. Not a glare—something sharper, cleaner, a surgical cut that said I see you. The man didn’t notice her either. They never did.

Later, during the lull between lunch and the after-school crowd, we sat in the fourth booth—the one with the rip in the teal vinyl patched with duct tape gone tacky at the edges. Claudia tapped her fingernails on the table. Jax sat with his palms facing up, the way he always did when he was listening. I pulled my knees up on the seat and pressed my back against the cold wall.

“I starved myself once,” Claudia said. “In high school. So no one would look at my body like it was currency.”

Her voice was sharp and fast, the way it always was, but underneath it I heard something else—something that sounded like the year she didn’t eat. I didn’t ask questions. I just listened.

“Did it work?” I said.

“No. They looked anyway. They always look.” She tapped her fingernails again, then stopped. “But I stopped caring about what they saw. That’s the only part that worked.”

Jax said nothing. He just sat with his palms up, and the light from the window caught the edge of his crooked nose, the one he never fixed because he liked the way it looked. I thought about my body—pear-shaped, soft, round in a way that felt like home to me and like an invitation to everyone else. I thought about the men who had touched me without asking, the ones who left before the coffee finished, the ones who said “you’re sweet” and meant you’re easy.

“You two are the only warm light in this whole cold world,” I said, and I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

Claudia looked at me like she was about to argue, then didn’t. Jax’s lips moved in that silent laugh of his, just a breath.

“That’s pathetic,” Claudia said, but her voice was soft, and she reached across the table and tapped my hand once with her fingernail.

________________________________________

Three days later, the farmers market smelled like raw honey and fried pie dough and cilantro, and the bindweed behind the milkshake stand smelled green and slightly bitter when I brushed against it. I was working the outdoor shake stand with Jax, the trailer parked on cracked asphalt behind the old train depot. A bluegrass trio played somewhere near the flower tents, banjo and fiddle slightly out of tune. Bees worked the cut flowers, and the sun was warm on my arms, and I had almost forgotten the man who touched my hand.

Then Percy arrived.

He walked up to the stand with his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans, his charcoal hoodie zipped halfway despite the heat. His black hair was messy, overgrown, curling at the collar. His eyes were brown-hazel, warm but hesitant, and when he looked at me—really looked, at my face, not at my body—I felt something catch in my throat.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was gentle, stumbling a little. “I’m here for the produce order. For the diner.”

Jax nodded and went to the cooler behind the stand. I should have said something. I should have smiled and asked how he was feeling, back from leave, welcome back. But I couldn’t. Because the feeling that had caught in my throat was the same feeling I’d had at sixteen, at eighteen, at twenty, every time I thought maybe this one will stay.

And then the flashback came.

A hand around my wrist. A whisper in my ear: easy. A man’s smile that didn’t reach his eyes. The door closing before the coffee finished.

I went quiet. I stepped back from the counter, let my hands drop to my sides, let Jax handle the transaction. Percy picked up the cardboard box of tomatoes and onions and peppers, and he looked at me again—confused, maybe hurt, his brow furrowing.

“See you around,” he said.

I nodded. I didn’t trust my voice.

He walked away, soft-bodied, broad-shouldered, his black t-shirt faded and soft and too big for him like armor he’d been wearing for years. I watched him go until he disappeared between the white tents, and my heart was racing and my chest was tight, and I thought: Maybe I’ll never be ready for someone good.

The bindweed smelled green and bitter.

I pressed my palm against the cold metal of the shake machine and waited for the feeling to pass.