Page 66 of Fake it ’Til Fall

“Wedding week?”

“And fundraiser week.” Her smile arrives late. “My mother has discovered service bundling. Very modern of her.”

“You don’t want to go.”

“Wow. Those detective skills. Truly breathtaking.”

“Daisy.”

She taps the pen against the page. Once. Twice. The sound is small but tense enough to pull at the air between us.

“No,” she says. “I don’t want to go. I would rather let a group of poets describe the ocean to me for six consecutive hours. But like I said, Gloria quit, the wedding is in trouble, the vineyard needs the money, my mother asked for help, and they’re paying me enough to stop pretending my finances aren’t one dental visit away from becoming a true-crime podcast.”

She presses the pen harder into the page. “I don’t want to go back like this.”

“Like what?”

She wiggles her nose, which means she is about to make something painful sound adorable and I am going to hate everyone who taught her to do that.

“I like what I do here,” she says. “I do. But anyone back home is going to think I downgraded my life. From fiancée in charge of vineyard events to two jobs, barely affording rent, and eating emergency sandwiches from a man who judges my carbohydrate technique.”

“I don’t judge the technique.”

“You made notes with your face.”

“You made crumbs on my dog.”

“Puck volunteered.”

“He lacks boundaries.”

“So do our mothers, and yet here we are.”

The joke lands, then bruises.

She looks at the tiny pumpkins on the windowsill instead of me.

“I wanted to go back eventually with a better story,” she says. “A better job. Better shoes. Maybe a boyfriend who owns a blazer and has never cheated on me with a woman who uses the word ‘tablescape’ without irony.”

I say nothing.

Her mouth twists. “Or no boyfriend. That would’ve been fine too. I am a modern woman. I own a tote bag with feminist punctuation.” She glances down at the sandwich. “Just not . . . this.”

This.

Single. Tired. Broke. Useful.

I hate it for her.

I hate it more than I understand it.

“Winterberry Cove seems to like perfection,” I say.

She glances at me and holds there, studying my face in a way that feels too careful for a woman who was threatening dessert puns thirty seconds ago.

“What do they want from you?”

I look at the café window. Rain traces the glass. Inside, cups clink, milk hisses, and Bea tells someone that no, they cannot pay for a scone with “exposure,” whatever the hell that means.