Page 1 of Scoop Me Up
Chapter 1
Sam
As I stood in my kitchen, finalizing the year’s flavor of choice, my best friend Cooper looked on, eyebrows raised, giving his two cents on everything from ice cream to my love life.
“What’s in this batch, again?” Cooper asked.
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Fig, tamarind, walnut, and maple.”
“And you’re sure you don’t want to call this year’s flavor I Don’t Give a Fig?”
I snorted and shook my head. “I appreciate your naming skills, but I think I’ll give this one a softer name. Granny’s Delight.” I wanted to honor my grandmother, who’d inspired my love for ice cream and my dream of opening my own shop.
Cooper shrugged. “Have it your way.” He drummed his fingertips on the kitchen table a few times before speaking again. “So, how was your date? You met the guy on an app, right?”
I turned to face him. “Yeah, he lives in Dairy,” I said, referring to the small town nearby. “He wasn’t exactly a winner.”
“You’re not going out with him again, I take it.”
I shook my head “Definitely not. He spent most of the date talking about himself. He didn’t ask me a single question. Then, at the end, he went onto this twenty-minute-long rant about how much he doesn’t like kids and how teachers these days are just glorified babysitters. When I finally told him that I’m a teacher, he asked why I don’t get a real job.”
Cooper’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open. “You’re not serious.”
“Unfortunately, I am.”
“Yikes.”
I turned back to my mixture and finished prepping to put it in the freezer. “Yikes is right.” With a sigh, I tucked the ice cream into the freezer and went to sit next to Cooper. “I’m never going to find anyone, am I?”
He shook his head and chuckled softly. “Don’t give up hope. There’s plenty of fish in the sea.”
“Maplewood is more like a little pond than the sea, don’t you think? I think I’ve probably dated all of the single people between here and Burlington. Like that guy who called my goals too much like a made-for-TV movie. And all of the ones who ghosted me or just wanted a hookup or couldn’t handle that I’m nonbinary.” I sighed deeply.
Cooper reached over and patted my shoulder. “You’ll find someone. Don’t rush it. All in due time.”
“Easy for you to say. You flirt with just about anyone who walks by.”
He shrugged. “I just like to have a good time.”
“Whatever you say.”
With that, Cooper stood and walked over to my refrigerator. “You’ve got wine in here, right? Let’s celebrate.” He tugged the door open and started to rummage around.
“There’s a bottle of sangria in the door.”
He stepped back, bottle in hand, and closed the fridge door. “Jackpot.”
I furrowed my brow. “What are we celebrating?”
With a shrug, Cooper took the wine bottle to the counter. “Escaping a miserable date. And Frozen Fest. This year’s win.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said, taking the bottle from him and pouring two glasses of the wine.
We made our way to the living room and watched bad reality TV for a while, drinking our sangria while offering vocal commentary on the show. When Cooper left an hour or so later, I debated going to bed but decided to stay up for a while instead.
I looked through my ice cream journal, a tattered notebook stuffed full of notes for the future shop of my dreams. There was a section rating my flavor experiments, a section with recipes, and a section with creative flavor names. Most of those name ideas were courtesy of Cooper. I also had a section of pages devoted to the future shop, with layout ideas, decor, paint colors, and more. Those pages had paint samples, magazine cutouts, and my poorly-done sketches, a mood board of sorts. I even had news articles about the larger ice cream scene and any interesting shops that popped up across the country. The bottom line was that I’d been working toward this for a long time and I wasn't going to letanythingget in my way. I was ready and I was tired of waiting. This year was going to betheyear. If I won, I was going to leave my teaching job and take the plunge, opening my own shop.
I woke early the next morning—too early for a teacher during the summer, if you asked me. I was teaching summer school, though, and students waited for no one. As I walked through the halls, I encountered a few of the other summer school teachers, including Lance Anderson, the math teacher for summer school.
