Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Now
Mae needed a minute. That was what she’d said.
But a minute wasn’t going to cut it. She needed a bloody straitjacket, if they still had those.
If they didn’t, she thought they should bring them back because she clearly needed restraints.
She was not in charge of herself anymore.
She’d kissed Callie. Passionately and angrily and resentfully and sexily.
Mostly that last one. She’d forgotten what a good kisser Callie was. Perhaps because she couldn’t live with the knowledge after she was gone. You couldn’t reminisce about the taste of bacon if you had to be a vegetarian, could you? You’d have to lie to yourself that it wasn’t all that.
But Mae had just had a bite of a bacon sandwich. The time for lies was over.
Behind her, she could feel Callie not leaving. Just standing there, trying not to make noise. But Mae could hear every breath Callie took. And it made thinking impossible.
Mae’s lips still tingled. Her skin still felt too tight.
She’d spent more than a decade building a life around not wanting Callie Price. Around burying it all. And in one moment, she’d undone every shovelful of effort. Why? Was she a masochist? Or was it she’d glimpsed something she’d loved? The same old Callie, still in there. Still magnetic.
‘Mae?’ Callie’s voice was cautious. ‘Do you want me to go?’
Part of Mae did want that. The part that was sane and liked things to be predictable and make sense. And a second part, a part that was still angry, was also on board.
But there was a third part.
Mae sat down on her couch. ‘Just… don’t move,’ Mae said, voice unsteady.
‘Can I not move while sitting? Because it feels weird with me standing over you like this.’
Mae nodded. Callie sat down, careful to position herself a cushion away from Mae.
And they sat there in a thick silence. Mae half hoped someone would fart, just to break the tension.
But no one did. Which meant Mae had to speak. ‘I’m not built for this.’
‘For what?’
‘For feeling like this again.’
‘Mae…’
‘Don’t,’ Mae said, voice barely above a breath. ‘Don’t say my name.’ What she didn’t add was that it was making that special brand of crazy rise up again.
‘I wasn’t trying to…’ Callie stopped. ‘I don’t know what I’m trying to do, actually.’
Mae couldn’t think of a response to that. It was better she didn’t. Her mouth had done enough damage as it was.
Another silence followed.
Callie sighed. ‘Would it be better if I went?’
‘Yes,’ Mae said. She meant it. This was no good.
Callie nodded. ‘If that’s what you want.’ And she stood and walked out.
Mae kept sitting on that couch, thinking, How the hell am I right back here?
Back Then
On the way home, Mae’s feet didn’t touch the ground.
Her whole body felt fizzy, light, as if something heavy she’d been lugging around for years had quietly dropped off somewhere between the bakery and their tree.
But she was not stupid. She knew this changed everything.
You didn’t go on a date with your best friend under your childhood tree and kiss them like that, and then go back to ‘mate, can you pass me the remote’ as if nothing had happened.
And with the change came risk. She’d gambled everything on this. That was a frightening thought.
But she wasn’t looking her fear in the eye. She was letting it sit in the corner of her vision, ignored. She was letting herself have this feeling. This love.
She smiled so much on the walk back that two separate neighbours gave her suspicious looks. At one point, she caught sight of herself in the post office window and almost didn’t recognise the dopey, moon-faced idiot reflected there.
‘Pull yourself together,’ she muttered, cheeks hurting.
She went up to the flat. The shop was shut for the day. The clatter downstairs told her that her dad was still tidying up.
Mae desperately wanted to go to her room and lie on her bed and replay every second of her afternoon before any of it could fade. But then she heard the thud of stairs, and the front door swung open.
‘Oh good, you’re back,’ her dad said, wiping his hands on a tea towel. He was still in his apron, hair flattened with sweat. ‘I was just about to come looking.’
‘You’d have had to send a search party,’ Mae said. ‘I’d emigrated to ten minutes away.’
‘Did Callie enjoy the food?’
‘Mmm. Thanks for that.’ She didn’t want to say more. She wasn’t ready to.
‘You’ve got grass in your hair, love.’
She reached up, felt a stray stalk, and yanked it free, cheeks heating.
‘There’s some cake left if you’re hungry,’ he said. ‘That lemon drizzle that didn’t sell.’
‘Their loss.’
‘Quite. Before you disappear, can we have a quick chat?’
She swallowed. ‘About what?’
‘Let’s have a cuppa,’ he said, already heading for the kitchen.
She followed him. Her bedroom door, second on the left, called to her as they passed. She resisted the urge to dart in and barricade herself in with her silly grin and her memories.
In the kitchen, her dad was filling the kettle. Real life was coming calling, she could smell it.
She sat down at the table.
‘You’re pulling a face,’ he observed as she banged the sugar jar a bit harder than necessary.
‘I’m not.’
‘You are.’ He watched her for a moment, lines around his eyes deepening. ‘You all right?’
She forced herself to relax her jaw. ‘Fine.’
The kettle clicked off. He poured tea and sat down opposite her, handing her a mug.
‘So,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking at the rota for the summer. You know Jen’s leaving. So it’s just me in the back now.’
There it was. The angle of descent.
‘Right,’ she said carefully.
‘You’ve done brilliantly helping out up front.’
‘Thanks,’ Mae murmured.
‘And now it’s time to think about what comes next,’ he said. ‘And I thought you might like to go full-time now, as a baker.’
He smiled at her, warm and proud, as if he was offering her something wonderful. Mae’s stomach flipped, but not in the pleasant Callie-adjacent way.
‘Right,’ she said again, the word catching on her tongue. ‘Full-time baker.’
He chuckled. ‘I know you know a lot already, but you’d need proper training. Can’t take the place over without being a real baker.’
Head first, she thought. Straight back down to earth.
‘You’ll make this place even better when it’s yours.’
It wasn’t that she didn’t like the bakery. She just didn’t like that it was assumed. That the path ahead stretched out in one straight line from the ovens to the grave without room for any other version of her.
‘What about…’ she began, then faltered.
He looked up. ‘What about what?’
Other things, she wanted to say. Other lives. Other places. Days that didn’t start at four in the morning.
She knew how she wanted to say it. She’d thought of this moment many times. ‘I love this place, but I can’t live here forever. I’ll come back, obviously. But I have to make my own way. Not right away. But soon. Someday soon.’
But it was too big. She tried to make the words smaller, more manageable. ‘I just thought…’ Her fingers tightened on the mug. ‘Maybe I’d have a bit of time. After finishing school. To… work out what I want.’
‘You’ve been working it out since you could reach the counter,’ he said, laughing, as if she were being adorably silly. ‘Not everyone gets this, you know. A place ready for them. You’re lucky, love.’
She knew. She did. People in the village told her all the time how lucky she was, how secure, how nice it must be to have something concrete. No hunting for jobs, no scary world.
She also knew that the word ‘lucky’ could feel like a hand on the back of your neck, gently but firmly steering you in one direction.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I know.’
‘Besides,’ he added, softer, ‘I can’t do this forever.’ He glanced round the little kitchen, the ceiling with its slightly yellowed patch where the damp kept threatening. ‘And I always liked the idea of you being here, taking over. Keeping it in the family. Your mum would’ve loved that.’
There it was. The trump card. They’d started this place together, Mae’s mum and dad.
So, for him, it was all tied in. Family and the business.
That was what made this hard. She wanted to reject the bakery, but she didn’t want to reject him.
And she didn’t know if it was possible to do one without the other.
‘You don’t have to worry about me taking over yet,’ Mae said with slight desperation. ‘You’re not old.’
He gave her a warm smile and took a sip of tea. ‘So. We’ll get you in the back from September, yeah? Ease you into it. By Christmas, you’ll be running circles round me.’
He was looking at her so hopefully. So certain. There was no malice in it, no desire to trap her. Just love and assumption.
The cloud from the date finally gave up, dissipating.
She took a breath that felt like swallowing a stone. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘All right.’ It wasn’t the time. She’d find her bravery later.
‘Good girl.’ His relief was immediate, obvious. He reached across and squeezed her hand. ‘It’ll be brilliant. You’ll see.’
She squeezed back, because that was what you did when someone you loved was happy.