“I want to help her,” I said, “but I’m not sure how.”
Lanz stayed silent for a long minute, and then smiled. “Gelato.”
I blinked. “Huh?”
“We will add gelato to the menu!” Lanz was already moving around the kitchen, grabbing eggs and milk from the refrigerator, and sifting through the fresh fruits and spices that sat on the counter. I hadn’t noticed until just then how, over the last few days, the parlor’s kitchen had been filling with Lanz’s fresh ingredients. Now that I thought about it, I realized that each day he’d brought in some lemons from the farmers’ market, or a coconut from one of the trees outside his apartment building. Slowly but surely, he’d been transforming our kitchen. “We’ll start with vanilla,” he said with decisiveness.
“But we already have vanilla ice cream. Isn’t vanilla gelato kind of … basic?”
Lanz stared at me, his mouth agape. Then he let loose a string of Italian that, even though I couldn’t understand a word, sounded a lot like ranting. “Basic!” He practically spat the word. “Do you call a grand jeté basic? Or a tombé?”
“No way,” I scoffed.
“Because it is art!” He deftly measured milk and cream into a saucepan. “There is nothing basic about gelato. Five hundred years, gelato has existed! It was invented for the court of the great Medicis. My great-great-great-grandfather passed this recipe down to his son, and then to his son after him, and so on and so on …” His eyes gleamed with pride. “Until my father passed it on to me. It is a tradition.”
He looked so uncharacteristically serious, I suddenly felt the urge to laugh. And then … I was laughing. “I’m sorry,” I hiccuped. “It’s just … for a second, I thought you were going to tell me that if I ever shared your secret recipe with anyone, you’d have to kidnap me … or something.”
He only smiled at that, making my cheeks burn hotter. Then he handed me what looked like a charcoal-colored snap pea. “Smell.”
I hesitantly lifted the bean to my nose and breathed in. The silky-smooth scent of vanilla flooded over me. “Yum.”
He nodded toward the saucepan. “Into the pot.”
I dropped it in, and within minutes, the liquid began to simmer. Lanz scooped out the vanilla bean and opened the pod, scraping the seeds back into the pan, then throwing away the pod shell. We added eggs, just like we had when we’d made ice cream before, only Lanz put in fewer eggs and less cream.
“Less fat means more flavor,” Lanz explained. “And we churn it more slowly than ice cream, too, so less air gets into the mixture. But before we do that, we strain the custard.” He poured the custard slowly through the strainer in the sink. “This makes the texture smooth and creamy.”
When the custard was ready, we set it in the refrigerator. While we waited for it to chill, we worked on Lanz’s English reading. The rain kept falling, and the shop stayed quiet. Before I knew it, Mom was closing up for the night.
“We’ve been making gelato, and it’s still got a few more minutes left to churn,” I told Mom when she came into the kitchen. Suddenly, I realized I was reluctant to leave. For the first time in years, I actually wanted to stay at Once upon a Scoop. “Lanz and I will finish it, and I’ll meet you at home after? Go relax, Mom! Take a bubble bath.”
“A bubble bath,” she repeated, like she’d forgotten there was such a thing. “That sounds amazing.” She looked from one of us to the other. “Okay. Make sure you lock the door again on your way out. Keep your cell on.” She kissed me and waved to Lanz. Then she was gone.
A few minutes later, the gelato finished churning. I grabbed an ice cream scoop, but Lanz placed his hand over mine. “Never use a scoop with gelato.” He produced a special paddle from one of the bags he’d brought with him. “Always una pagaia.” He dipped the paddle into the thick, creamy cloud of gelato and dished us up a big bowl to share.
“Let’s try eating it out front,” I suggested, grabbing spoons for us. “We can pretend we’re customers.” We walked out into the parlor, and I gasped. Outside the shop’s windows, we could see a fiery pink-and-gold sunset. “Look at that. The rain’s finished.”
“Let’s eat outside,” Lanz suggested. “Gelato is always served at a warmer temperature than ice cream. The beach will be the perfect place for it.”
“The sand’s going to be wet from the rain,” I protested.
“Isn’t sand always wet?” Lanz laughed. “That is the whole point.”
Really, it wasn’t the sand, it was the idea. Sunset, beach, boy. A not-Ethan boy. Oh boy.
I locked up the shop and Lanz carried the bowl of gelato and our spoons to the beach. When we reached the sand, he slipped off his Vans and I kicked off my flats. We found a spot to sit that was relatively dry. The sun had dipped below the horizon, casting the last of its glittering golds onto the water. Only a few people milled about in the distance.
“Well. Aren’t you going to try it?” Lanz asked, nodding to the gelato. Before I could protest, he lifted the spoon to my mouth.
Rich, satiny vanilla ribboned over my tongue with almost impossible softness. “It’s like eating a cloud,” I murmured, “but the flavor’s so … intense.”
“My father says that ice cream is a nice first date. But gelato … gelato is love at first sight.”
I kept my eyes glued to the water, not daring to glance his way.
Then he pointed to the waves and whispered, “Delfini! Look!”
The fins broke the surface a hundred yards from shore—a pod of dolphins frolicking in the white caps.
“They’re bellissimi. Beautiful.” Lanz followed their path through the waves with his eyes.
“Yes. They are.” I scooped another creamy spoonful from the
