Chapter Twenty
Cammie
There were only a few more days until Pride, and I'd been putting off the inevitable for too long.
I was going to have to talk to Mel. I hadn't seen her since that night on the couch, but I was sorely under-prepared for Pride and wasn't going to be able to pull together the amount of desserts I would hopefully be able to sell before the parade by myself, never mind get the float decorated in time.
It was going to be incredibly awkward, but I was going to have to ask for and accept her help.
I looked up at the bakery door’s bell ringing, wondering if my thoughts had somehow summoned Mel to the empty cafe, but it was Dorrie.
"Hey, Dorrie," I called out, trying to hide my worry and stress behind my smile.
Based on Dorrie’s frown, I was unsuccessful.
"Do you want to tell me why you're moping around here?" she asked with a no-nonsense look I rarely saw on her.
"I'm not moping," I offered.
"Sure looks like it to me," she said. "You and Mel might as well be two teenagers for all the moping I'm dealing with."
"What do you mean?"
Was Mel upset too? I'd thought she'd be relieved. After all, she was the one who pulled away, and she agreed when I said it would be better to cut things off before I could ruin them.
Mel had to know me pretty well by now through Mattie, at least. She had to know that there was something wrong with me.
I wasn't built for forever. I'd gotten close with Justin, but he'd left. No one ever stayed. My parents moved south, Mattie moved to the city, and the man who was supposed to love me and stay forever… left. I wasn't a forever person; I was the one forever being left.
If things had started with Mel, if she'd gotten close enough to me, she would've learned that too… eventually.
"I mean, she's been moping around my kitchen sighing and talking about the bees and the festival and Mattie, anything except the bakery and you, and oh dear, you have it bad, don't you?"
"What? No, come on, you're being ridiculous."
It wasn't surprising that she'd noticed, though, and was even less surprising that she didn't buy my halfhearted denial.
"I might be a hundred years old so I definitely wasn't born yesterday."
I sighed, knowing I wasn't going to out-stubborn Dorrie and admitted, "You're not even close to a hundred, but maybe you're right. Maybe I do have it a little bad."
"Finally! I'm glad one of you is admitting it. And you girls say I’m stubborn," she huffed. "Well, Mel has been outdoing me all week."
"I mean, if she doesn't want to see me that badly, maybe you are the one being stubborn?"
"I'm very stubborn, but she does want to see you, and it sounds like you want to see her, too.
Tell you what, why don't you come over for dinner tonight, and we can hash things out then?
We're running out of time until the festival, and while sapphic yearning is very appropriate for the Pride, a little sapphic loving would be even better. "
I groaned, putting my hands up to cover my ears. "You did not just say sapphic loving."
She was cackling while I asked, "Are you sure dinner’s a good idea?"
"Definitely, just come over and leave the rest to me."