Page 38 of Cosy & Chill
Late-Night Surprise
“Two days without meetings. Bliss!” Leo divided the third round of French toast between their plates and carried them back to the breakfast table. The church clock struck ten, and Leo relished the lazy start to their Saturday after the week they’d had. When Finn wasn’t knitting, he’d been cleaning and stocking the store, while Leo had talked to so many people that even his extroverted soul was worn out and tired.
“This toast is dreamy,” Finn declared, dusting his plate with more cinnamon. “I could live on this.”
“Have you never had French toast before?”
“Not to my knowledge. My father’s a bacon and eggs kind of guy, and my gran was happy with tea first thing.”
“Did she teach you to knit?”
Finn licked powdered sugar from his lips in a way Leo found utterly distracting. “She was always knitting or doing crochet. I spent a lot of time with her—my mum worked, you know? One day I picked up needles and yarn, and… turned out I was some kind of a natural at it.”
“That I’d agree with. You positively breathe knitting. Do you think she’d have liked our store?”
Finn’s smile dimmed, and Leo hated having been the cause. He reached across the table and touched Finn’s hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“It’s okay. I really wish she could see us. She’d love Cosy & Chill.”
“Mine would, too.”
“Did she teach you to make ice cream?”
“No, sweet things weren’t her thing at all. It changed when she had chemo. She was sick and feverish all the time, and ice cream was the one thing she could eat.” Leo remembered that time in far too much detail. “Problem is, a lot of commercial ice cream has sweeteners and thickeners and preservatives and none of those were good for her. I taught myself to make organic ice cream for her, experimented with flavours she liked. And once she was gone…”
“You turned your new skill into a business.”
“I needed something to do.”
“I can imagine.” Finn raised his coffee cup. “Let’s drink to our grandmas. For always encouraging us.”
“For believing we’re special when nobody else did.” Leo lifted his cup too and didn’t feel silly doing so. He rarely talked about his grandma, especially now he struggled to decide what to do about her will. But to find that Finn had had an equally close tie to his grandmother was a comfort. “We’re nothing if not sappy this morning!”
“You’re just tired. You’ve been buzzing around like a blue-arsed fly.”
“So have you.”
“Actually, no. I’m doing very much what I always do. Just in a different place. Minus my daily post office runs, since you’ve been doing them for me.”
“Scrubbing the store and stocking shelves?”
“Different place, as I said. Back at my parents’ house I’d have been cleaning and sorting yarn. It’s so much easier with all this space. I can buy yarn in bulk now!”
He was genuinely excited, and Leo, who’d lived in a tiny bedsit with two huge freezers for a year, could see the point. Breakfast eaten, they took their coffee mugs into the living room and settled on either end of the large sofa. Finn plied his needles, while Leo leafed through his notebook, and they discussed anything from pop-up banners to flyers and newspaper ads.
“We should do social media. Instagram and TikTok.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Finn looked so horrified that Leo had the urge to kiss the expression off his face. “It’s not difficult.”
“For you. Marketing is not my natural habitat.”
“No really. Let me show you.” Leo bounced off the sofa, raced upstairs, and returned with a few of Finn’s finished pieces. One by one, he set them up on the big dining room table and took photo after photo of scarves, hats, jumpers, and artistically arranged skeins of yarn. “I’m going to rename my Instagram account Cosy & Chill. We can post images of the store and show off your work alongside my ice cream posts.”
“You’ve photographed ice cream?”
“I’ve photographed all sorts. My freezers, my utensils, the market stall, happy customers…” He held up his phone and showed Finn how to scroll through the feed.
