Callie raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s a bakery. There’s always flour everywhere.’
Mae glared. ‘I hate the bother. It throws off the whole day. I don’t want to deal with it.’
Callie nodded slowly, indulgent. ‘Sure. Okay.’
Mae bristled. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘That look. Like you know better.’
‘Okay.’
‘I just don’t want it,’ she said more quietly. ‘That’s all.’
‘Mae,’ Callie said gently. ‘If this is about me, you can just say.’
Mae’s throat closed. She shook her head too hard. ‘It’s not.’
‘Okay.’
‘It’s not,’ she repeated, cheeks burning.
‘Mae…’ Callie hesitated. ‘If it means anything, I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t,’ Mae said, sharp as a warning.
Callie froze.
‘This is exactly why I don’t want all of this back in my bakery,’ Mae went on, voice tight. ‘Because I don’t want to talk aboutthat.’
She expected Callie to retreat. She’d been careful with Mae since the moment she came back, like one wrong word might shatter something fragile.
But Callie’s mouth tightened, her jaw firming in a way that usually meant trouble. Her eyes sharpened. The easy, careful mask she had worn since she came back had cracked. ‘Well, maybe Idowant to talk about it,’ she snapped, voice suddenly raised.
Mae’s pulse roared in her ears.
So that was how this was going to go.
Back Then
By the time Mae finished getting dressed for her date with Callie, her bedroom looked as if three different women had had three separate breakdowns in it.
She went with jeans in the end. And the nice blouse. Not the really nice blouse—that felt like tempting fate—but the soft blue one that made her look, hopefully, like someone who might go on a date on purpose.
She stared at herself in the mirror and tugged and pulled the outfit to its maximum presentability. ‘You’re going on a date with Callie,’ she told her reflection, as if it didn’t already know. ‘Andsheasked. Practically begged. You’re not the one who needs to be nervous, so just calmdown.’
Her reflection did not calm down.
Mae took out her phone and read the message again.
It’s your afternoon off on Thursday, right? Thoughts on a picnic? You, me, our tree, no witnesses. x
Mae had stared at the words ‘our tree’ until they blurred.
It was just their same old tree. Nothing was so madly different. Except that now they might kiss under it.
Mae’s stomach flipped.
