Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Daisy
By Saturday afternoon, I have learned that fake dating a grumpy former hockey player is a lot like assembling furniture from a box labeled Scandinavian Minimalist Console Table.
At first, it looks simple.
Then you realize half the pieces are missing, the instructions were translated by someone with a personal grudge, and somehow someone’s mother is already involved.
I should stay in the storage room and declare myself an ornamental pumpkin. It feels safer. Seasonal. Low expectations. People might compliment my shape and move on.
Across the room, Bea is doing inventory with the grim focus of a woman preparing for war or a holiday pastry rush, which may be the same thing if you own a café in Boston.
The second the temperature drops below sixty, people start acting like they’ve been personally summoned by cinnamon.
They need warm beverages. They need books.
They need pastries with names like “maple harvest crumble,” as if baked goods can provide emotional continuity.
But Bea has to be ready.
The back room smells like coffee beans, cardboard, cinnamon tea, paper dust, and the box of decorative mini pumpkins Bea claims she ordered for the front window “ironically.”
There are thirty-six of them.
No one orders thirty-six pumpkins ironically.
Bea sets a notepad on top of a crate of oat milk. “You’re making the face.”
“I have many faces.”
“This one says you’ve done something foolish and are now trying to organize it into a binder.”
“That is hurtful.”
“It’s inventory. Accuracy matters.”
I look back at my phone.
No response from Forrest yet.
Probably because he’s growling at it. Or staring at it like it personally insulted black coffee. Or trying to figure out how to answer without using more than four words and one emotionally constipated punctuation mark.
“You gonna tell me what happened,” Bea asks, “or do I have to guess?”
“He told his agent,” I say.
Bea pauses with one hand inside a box of tea tins. “About the fake dating?”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “His mom knows—”
“His mother knows you’re fake dating?” she groans. “That man has the survival instincts of a decorative napkin.”
“No. She thinks we’re actually dating.”
“Oh.” Bea straightens. “That’s better.”
“Not if she informed the entire town before breakfast.” I slide down the wall and onto the floor like a Victorian heroine receiving tragic news, except with worse posture and less inheritance.
“My mother is disappointed. I’m not only dating the enemy, I never told her I met someone.
She’s offended because somewhere in Winterberry Cove, a woman in a quilted vest is whispering my name over a decorative cider barrel. ”
Bea marks something on her notepad. “That’s not how cider barrels work.”
“In Winterberry, everything works if you add gossip and seasonal florals.”
Bea clears her throat.
“Stop breathing judgmentally,” I order.
“I own this café. I’m entitled to oxygen with commentary.”
“This has become an emergency.” I set my phone on a stack of pastry boxes and rub both hands over my face. “I need help.”
Bea lifts one eyebrow. “From me?”
“Yes.”
“With your fake relationship?”
“With the optics of my fake relationship.”
“Ah.” She nods. “So the lie has branding issues.”
“The lie has family involvement, small-town news circulation, and a former professional athlete who apparently announces things to his agent before consulting the woman currently holding the fake-girlfriend clipboard.”
Bea stares at me.
I lower my hands. “Metaphorical clipboard.”
“Good. You know I hate them.
“I am aware. I’m emotionally unstable, not reckless.”
My phone remains silent.
I hate that part of me wants Forrest to text back something blunt and irritating, because apparently my standards have dropped so low they now live beneath the café with the spare napkins.
Bea watches me a little too closely.
I point at her. “Don’t say it.”
“I can support you,” she claims.
“Emotionally, yes. Strategically, probably not.”
“I could totally do it,” Bea claims. “I helped my mother keep this place open for fifteen years through three recessions, a rat in the poetry section, and a man who tried to pay for a cappuccino with a haiku.”
“Was it a good haiku?”
“No.”
“Then yes, strategically also.” I grab my phone. “It’s time to call Winnifred.”
“That’s your sister-in-law, right?”
“Yes, and she has great fake-dating experience, a grumpy husband, and access to Winterberry’s gossip sewer.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Are you calling your brother grumpy?”
I nod. “With love. And evidence.”
“I had no idea there was a Winterberry gossip sewer.”
“Fine. It’s more like a drainage system with mums.”
The problem is, calling Winnifred means admitting this is real enough to require consultation. Texting Forrest about zero-star fake dating is one thing. Calling the woman who fake dated my brother before marrying him because I may now be fake dating her cousin is another.
That feels like going to a specialist.
A fake-dating specialist.
Also, a grumpologist.
Winnifred might be my best bet to fix whatever Forrest already broke, which is impressive, considering we have been fake dating for approximately twelve minutes, and I have already considered changing my name, moving to Canada, and becoming a woman who sells jam at farmers markets under mysterious circumstances.
I call her.
She answers on the fourth ring, slightly breathless. “If this is Soren calling on a three-way call to ask where I put the receipt for the bassinet, tell him I filed it under ‘Things I Will Find When He Stops Hovering.’”
I close my eyes. “It’s just me, Daisy.”
“Oh.” Her voice changes immediately. “Is everyone alive?”
“Physically? Yeah.”
“Good start.”
“Spiritually, I’m not sure, which is why I’m calling.”
“Better start. So . . . what happened?”
I inhale.
Then I tell her.
Not everything. I am not a monster. Also, some details deserve to die quietly in a café storage room beside thirty-six decorative pumpkins.
But I tell her the essentials: I have to be in Winterberry the first week of November, which she already knew.
Forrest needs a significant other for optics.
I agree to be her. Then, Forrest told Mark.
Mark told Forrest’s mother. His mother told the town.
Plus, of course, I mention there are rules.
Somehow, this entire fake relationship has gone public before we have even decided whether Forrest owns an appropriate sweater.
Winnifred laughs.
“What’s so funny?” I demand.
“I already knew you were dating my cousin,” she says. “Mom sent a special newsletter with the update that yet another Wolfcraft has betrayed the family by entangling himself with a Thorn.”
“She did not say that,” I say, trying not to sound anxious.
Obviously, I fail. My voice has the structural integrity of a wet napkin.
“Not in those exact words.”
“Oh, good. So only spiritually libelous.”
“Pretty much.”
“Fantastic. I’ve always wanted to be a line item in someone else’s family collapse.”
“I was planning to call you later and discuss this sudden relationship.”
“Well, it’s now public knowledge in Winterberry Cove, and I feel like I’m about to get caught.” I press my free hand to my forehead. “Not even dramatically caught. Worse. Socially caught. Someone might call me concerned and then ask whether I’ve tried magnesium.”
“Your biggest problem was announcing the fake relationship before the event,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“People have plenty of time to ask questions and request details.”
I go still.
“Oh, no.”
“Yes.”
“I’m doomed. This is over. Tell my niece or nephew that I love them dearly but had to move to another country and change my name.”
“Bit dramatic.”
“Fine. Another state and a haircut. I’m flexible in a crisis.”
She scoffs. “You’ll be fine.”
“I need damage control.”
“Fine,” Winnifred says, though her voice suggests she has filed that away in a mental cabinet labeled Daisy is doomed, but in an interesting way. “Who knows this is fake?”
“Mark, his agent, and Bea.”
Bea raises her hand, then realizes Winnifred can’t see her and says, “Present.”
“Hi, Bea,” Winnifred says. “Nice to finally meet the owner of the most amazing coffee shop. One day, I’m visiting your shop instead of Winterberry Cove.”
“It’s cozier,” I say.
“Less likely to involve blood feuds,” Bea adds then says, “Hello, fake-dating survivor.”
“You told her?” Winnifred asks me. “It’s supposed to be a secret and for the record, I prefer fake-dating scholar.”
“Noted,” Bea replies.
I glare at the ceiling. “Can we please focus?”
Winnifred clears her throat. “Right. First rule of small-town gossip: never give them too much detail.”
“I love detail.”
“I know. That’s why I’m telling you not to.”
“That feels personal.”
“It’s practical. Detail is where lies go to die,” she says. “Details are where aunts find loose threads and pull until you’re standing naked in front of a punch bowl.”
“My worst nightmare,” I sigh. “Mostly because I have at least three aunts who would comment on my posture.”
Winnifred continues, “Your story needs to be simple enough to repeat and boring enough not to investigate.”
“Boring?”
“Mostly true,” she clarifies. “That’s the trick. Don’t build a whole lie. Use what’s already there.”
I reach for my notebook from the shelf where I stashed it after yesterday’s contract negotiations. “Okay. Mostly true.”
“How did it start?”
“The coffee shop where I work,” I say. “Early March.”
“Mid-February,” Bea interrupts. “He was avoiding the Valentine’s Day sale display. It annoyed you.”
“Good, you have a witness,” Winnifred says. “Then what?”
“There’s Puck, the dog,” I continue. “Emotionally central. Legally questionable.”
“Perfect. Simple story. You met at The Turning Page. He kept coming in. He brought his dog. The dog tangled you in his leash, and that’s your first kiss.”
“That’s my first kiss?” I arch an eyebrow. “A leash-related incident?”