Writing: In the Time It Takes to Melt

The heat had been clinging to everything for hours. It was the sort of heat that crawled over your skin like syrup, slow and inescapable, thick with humidity and humming cicadas. Outside the wide pane windows, the world was steeped in the soft blush of early evening—the kind of golden-orange light that could make even a parking lot look like it belonged in a photo album. The sky was peach-tinted and low-slung, smudged with violet at the edges, and though the sun was beginning its long descent, there was no real promise of coolness just yet.

Inside, it was a different kind of world entirely.

The door had swung shut behind her with a soft hydraulic sigh, sealing her off from the pressing heat and letting her step into something that felt almost holy in contrast. Cold, fluorescent air kissed the back of her neck and the inside of her wrists, settling against her overheated skin like a balm. Her eyes adjusted to the brightness slowly—white tile walls that gleamed like ceramic, interrupted now and again by a tile in bright cherry red or cobalt blue, placed in a way that felt more pattern than accident. The floor beneath her feet was checkered black and white, scuffed just enough at the corners to tell you this place had been here a while. Maybe longer than she’d even been alive.

The chair she sat in was red metal, the kind with the curved back that pinched just slightly when you leaned too hard. Its legs scraped faintly against the floor when she shifted, the sound slicing into the quiet like a whisper. Her table was topped with off-white plastic, the kind that never quite lost its sticky sheen no matter how many times it was wiped down. It wasn’t beautiful, not exactly. But it was familiar. It was real. And on a day like this, it felt like something to hold onto.

The ice cream in her hand—chocolate-dipped, still glossy and hard-shelled from its momentary plunge—had already begun to soften at the edges. A drop clung precariously to the bottom of the cone, threatening to fall. She tilted her head forward to catch it with her tongue, the taste as cold and immediate as a lake plunge. That particular brand of sweet: creamy, a little bitter at the very end, anchored her in the moment like an anchor dropped into water.

There was a sound, too—steady and unrelenting—the rhythmic churn of the soft-serve machines behind the counter. They rumbled like quiet giants, low and mechanical, letting out sudden little kicks and sighs as they froze sugar into form. She could smell it, too: that ice-cream-shop scent. Not just sugar, but something sharper. The metallic tang of machinery, the cold bite of ice, the unmistakable creaminess that lingered in the air like it had soaked into the walls over decades. A scent she’d never be able to name properly, but would carry with her for the rest of her life. One day, years from now, she’d pass by a vent in a strip mall or step into some other town’s version of a Dairy Queen and be taken back here in an instant. Back to this exact moment. This chair. This table. This heat.

Somewhere in the back, a teenage employee was mopping. She could see the sweep of the mop through the reflection in the glass of the sneeze guard—slow, circular, methodical. The visor on his head bore the store’s name, slightly sweat-stained at the brim, as if he’d been wearing it for too many summers. The mop water smelled faintly of lemon, a clean scent that tangled strangely with the sweet dairy air. He didn’t notice her watching. Or maybe he did, but knew enough not to break the hush.

She was alone here, mostly. And that, too, felt sacred. There was no music playing. No clatter of conversations. Only the machines, the hum of refrigeration units, the squeak of shoes against tile, and the quiet tick of time slowing down.

She’d come in just to escape. Not for the ice cream, not really. Or maybe it had been for the ice cream too, but mostly for this—for the momentary stillness. The feeling of being outside of time, cocooned in something that didn’t ask her to think, or move, or be anything other than just here. The heat outside had been relentless, pressing her down until it felt like even her thoughts had begun to melt. But in here, she could count the tiles. White, black, white, black. She could let her mind wander in a way it hadn’t been able to all day. She could breathe again.

The whole place felt like a leftover memory from someone else’s childhood. The kind of retro that didn’t try too hard. A space stuck in the in-between—made in the seventies to look like the fifties, aging into the eighties and nineties without ever really letting go of any version of itself. The kind of place you don’t notice until you’re inside it, and then once you are, you never quite forget it.

She knew she’d have to leave soon. Knew the sun outside was sinking fast, and with it, the time she had left before she’d be called back to whatever waited for her beyond the sticky glass doors. Maybe a bike ride home on hot pavement. Maybe voices rising too loud in the house. Maybe expectations she wasn’t sure she could meet. She wasn’t thinking that far ahead just yet.

For now, she had the cone in her hand. The cold against her lips. The smell of cream and lemon cleaner and the distinct hum of machines that, somehow, had become her momentary lullaby. For now, she had this strange, beautiful nowhere in between the heat and the dark, between what was expected of her and what she allowed herself to feel.

For now, she had this.

And that would be enough to remember.