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It’s mid-September, and the busy season at Ginger Scoops is winding down. After Thanksgiving in October, we’ll only be open four days a week, Thursday through Sunday. I’m excited to have more time off, and we’ll close for a few weeks at some point so I can take a much-needed vacation.
Today, however, the weather is still warm, and I’m glad. It’s Saturday, and before opening at noon, I have both my family and Drew’s family over to Ginger Scoops so they can meet each other. Aunt Anita is in town with her family for the weekend, and my father, my grandmother, my grandmother’s boyfriend, Lillian, and Lillian’s husband are also here. Lillian is very pregnant and will give birth any day now. Drew’s parents have come with Adrienne, Nathan, and Michelle.
It’s going okay so far. Everyone has their own cup of ice cream, and a few people have elected to try my special flavor of the month: mooncake. My mother preferred mooncakes with red bean filling; my dad and I preferred lotus. The mooncake ice cream is red bean-flavored with small pieces of salted egg yolk. My grandmother is particularly fond of it, which no longer surprises me. Dad decided to forgo the mooncake ice cream in favor of ginger and passionfruit, but he tries a bite of mine.
“Your mother would have loved this,” he says.
Yes, she would have, but unfortunately, I’ve had to build a life without her.
I glance at the photo on the wall and smile.
Dad and I are in a much better place now. He’s no longer questioning all my life decisions, and I feel like I can talk to him, even if he doesn’t always understand.
Having finished my mooncake and ginger ice cream, I set down my cup and rest my head on Drew’s shoulder. He puts his arms around me, and even though I get to touch him every day—we live together now!—this never gets old. I love every touch, every word he whispers in my ear.
“Cousin Chloe!” Keisha runs up to me with a drawing in her hand. Keisha, Sasha, and Michelle have been drawing in the corner together since they finished their ice cream. “I drew a picture for you.”
It’s a man and a woman. The woman is wearing a dress, and I think that’s a veil? There are streamers with bells hanging overhead.
“It’s you and Drew getting married,” she says.
“It’s lovely,” I say. “When will our wedding be?”
“Next spring!”
“I don’t know if it’ll be that soon. But...one day.”
“You should have a big wedding, like Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.”
“Um. I doubt it will be quite that big, but I’ll keep it in mind.”
Michelle rushes over to Drew. “This is for you. It’s a picture of you riding a unicorn and eating an ice cream cone!”
“Thank you. It looks just like me.”
She giggles.
“I hear you’re talking about weddings,” Drew’s mom sits down across from me.
“Well...”
“I already made the guest list.”
“Mom!” Drew says. “I haven’t even proposed.”
“Maybe you should work on that. At least this one won’t leave you at the altar.”
I’m glad to have Drew’s family in my life. His mom seems to have gotten over her disappointment that I’m not a doctor or an engineer and didn’t finish university. She keeps telling her friends to come to Ginger Scoops.
The ice cream shop is doing reasonably well, and I’m happy with how the first summer went. There were even a few Saturdays when the line-up went out the door. The problem with my job, however, is that I don’t have the weekends free to spend with Drew, but we spend every night together now that I’ve moved in with him.
I look around my shop, with its pink walls and rocking unicorn and cute stuffed alpacas on the shelf.
Most importantly, though, Ginger Scoops is currently full of family, of people who are important to me and Drew. Our fathers are talking about golf, Lillian and Deidre are talking about pregnancy, Grandma is explaining her recipe for lime Jell-O salad to Adrienne, Sasha is showing Anita the picture she drew of a T-Rex who can’t eat ice cream because his arms are too short.
And the man I love presses a chaste kiss to my cheek and promises to do more—much more—after I finish work.
* * *
When I get home from Ginger Scoops at ten o’clock that night, Drew is sitting in the recliner, a bottle of bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout and a bar of chocolate beside him. There’s a half-finished elephant amigurumi in his lap.
Yes, my boyfriend now crochets.
It took him a little while to get good at it, and the first thing he made was basically a deformed worm, but he’s since crocheted me a pretty decent snail and an octopus. Now he’s working on a butterfly.
“How was your day?” he asks, setting aside his crocheting.
“Good.” I collapse onto his lap.
“Are you too tired to take me up on my promise?”
“Ha! No. But let’s just stay here for a few minutes first.” I wrap my arms around his neck. “I was talking to Anita about going to China one day. Flying into Hong Kong and visiting Guangzhou, then my family’s ancestral village. Maybe you and I could do that together?”
“Of course.” He presses a kiss to my temple, and I burrow against him.
I know that in China, I’ll feel like I don’t fit in. As I do in Chinatown, and when I walk into a room where everyone is white.
That’s okay. I’m glad to be who I am, and I’ve found my place in the world. Ginger Scoops might be a cheery ice cream shop, but it provides me with the connection to my mom that I craved, and it makes me happy. I wouldn’t call those things “frivolous”.
Ginger Scoops also led me to Drew.
When I first met Drew Lum and he ordered a single black coffee rather than ice cream, I never imagined that one day, I’d be overwhelmed with love for him.
How things have changed.
I start unbuttoning his shirt as I kiss his lips, sighing in contentment when I get my hands on his bare chest. I’m so incredibly lucky to come home to him every day. He definitely doesn’t melt my inner ice cream sandwich, even if that’s what most of the world thinks.
No, he’s the man who cherishes me for who I am, the man who makes me feel like I can accomplish anything. A man who will make a great husband and father one day.
We’re going to have an amazing life together. I know it.
“Take me to bed,” I whisper.
And he does just that.