The next day was pretty much a carbon copy of the last, except this time, Evie asked. “Did you give Shepherd the message yesterday?”
Joe looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up. Again, his eyes swept nervously to the back room. “Of course I did.”
This time, Evie got the message too.
Had it hurt her feelings? Yes. She’d be lying if she denied her already battered self-esteem hadn’t taken another hit.
Wasn’t she good enough? Adrian didn’t think so. The realization that her already-tattered sense of self-worth could be further crumpled surprised her less than the fact that there was anything still left to crumple. The Shepherd situation was just the latest insult, but the wound was older and deeper, festering since before the ink dried on her divorce paperwork.
Adrian’s departure had left a crater where her confidence should be—a hollow ring of self-doubt that echoed with every perceived slight, every unreturned message, every look that lingered anywhere but on her.
Shepherd’s avoidance was just another stone tossed into the void. She wasn’t the type of woman men lusted after - women like Victoria and Brandi, who might have been poured from the same mold. A skinny, glamorous mold.
Evie was a small-town homebody. A mother who loved baking. Adrian had been blunt about her inadequacies; her curvy figure, her ‘Mom’ persona, her lack of ambition to live a glitzy life outside Frostvale.
Shepherd’s approach was the subtler, more refined art of making himself invisible until the very molecules of his presence evaporated from her orbit. And yet, despite all this, Evie couldn’t keep herself from hoping for more with each new encounter, like a moth repeatedly flinging itself at a heatless light.
Did that make her a fool? She hoped not.
Evie didn’t want to be like Shepherd, living a lonely, grumpy life and running for the hills at the first sign of connection. She desperately wanted to believe there was someone out there specially for her.
So she tried to rationalize it. Maybe she was just misreading things, projecting her own expectations onto people who never asked her to.
Maybe Shepherd really was just busy, or maybe he’d been burned one too many times and was only protecting himselffrom yet another complicated entanglement. But the excuses felt thin, like the translucency of spun sugar—beautiful in concept, fragile in reality. They dissolved the moment she was alone with her thoughts, making her second-guess herself again as she cycled through her conduct that morning. Did she sound desperate? Was her joke about “selling like hot cakes” the final nail in the coffin of her dignity? She replayed every beat, every line of dialogue, every flick of Joe’s eyes to the back room. It all pointed to one thing… she wasn’t wanted, not by Shepherd, anyway. It shouldn’t have stung as much as it did.
So when Asher stopped by the bakery to drop off a new order for gingerbread men for the kids in his toy store, ‘the kind with the little marshmallow buttons,’ he’d specified, in a delightfully earnest way, Evie, still raw from Shepherd’s ghosting, found herself laughing too loudly at Asher’s jokes and matching his easy enthusiasm with a brightness she didn’t quite feel.
When he’d asked if she wanted to ‘hang out’ sometime, she’d said yes without hesitation.
Maybe it was a date, maybe it wasn’t, but it was forward motion, and that was enough for her. She’d gone home that night and stared into her closet, contemplating what Frostvale considered appropriate for a first outing with the town’s most eligible toy store owner. Something cute but not try-hard, festive but not costume-y, flattering but not like she was trying to rub it in someone’s face.
And yet, as she settled on her favorite berry-red sweater and lined her eyes with the thinnest trace of eyeliner, the doubts returned. Was she enough? Would anyone ever see past her cheer, her relentless optimism, to the person underneath—the one who still woke up some nights convinced she’d been left for being too much?
Or maybe not enough.
It was a fine line to walk, and Evie knew she’d never mastered it. Still, she was determined to put on a good show, if only to convince herself.
She smoothed down her sweater, fussing with the decolletage as she peered at her reflection. Was this too casual for a date? Or was she overdressing? The uncertainty gnawed at her.
She hadn't been on a proper date in years. Not since before she married Adrian. The thought of putting herself out there again made her stomach churn with a mix of excitement and anxiety.
In the end, she rang Posy and decided to spill all to her friend, hoping for advice
In her agitated state, the familiar ringtone seemed to stretch on forever before Posy’s cheerful voice finally came through.
"Hey babe, what's up?" Posy chirped.
Evie let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "I think I have a date with Asher. Maybe. Possibly? I'm not sure, and I'm freaking out a little."
She could practically hear Posy's eyebrows shooting up. "Whoa, back up. Start from the beginning, girlfriend.”
Evie paced her small bedroom as she recounted Asher's visit to the bakery and his invitation to ‘hang out.’ Her stomach did little flips as she described how flustered she'd felt, how she'd agreed without really thinking it through. And how that was all because of kissing Shepherd and having him ghost her.
Her friend listened patiently, letting Evie's anxious words tumble out in a rush.
"And now I don't know what to wear, or how to act, or if I'm reading way too much into this," she finished, flopping down onto her bed with a sigh.
"Oh honey," Posy said when Evie finally paused for breath. "First of all, Shepherd is an idiot, and it sounds like he’s running scared, but that’s his loss and not on you whatsoever!”
