Chapter 3
The table was too shiny. Summer stopped in front of it, looking at the orange varnish; they had driven forty minutes for something she wouldn’t want to see over breakfast.
Jonah took one look at her face and put the tape measure away. “All right. There are more in the back.”
They found two more in a back room. She liked the one with green legs until Jonah sat at it and knocked his knee, then tried moving the chair back without attracting her attention.
“You can’t sit there,” she said. She put her hand on the wood beside his.
“I’ve only just sat down.” He shifted again. “I thought we were finding you a table.”
“For the kitchen.” Summer pulled out the other chair. “You’re going to eat at it too.”
He looked up at her, then got out and tried the round one. This time he could stretch his legs; Summer sat opposite him, resting her elbows on the worn wood while the saleswoman fetched its extension leaf.
They bought it for delivery the following Saturday. At the counter, Jonah reached for the receipt and Summer reached for it too, laughing as their fingers collided.
Outside, he waited while she buttoned her coat. She took his hand, and they went down the road to a crowded little restaurant where the waitress asked whether they minded sharing a corner of the long table by the window.
Summer was still deciding whether to check the bakery’s sales when Jonah leaned across her for the salt. His sleeve brushed her wrist, and she remembered their first lunch.
In January he had arrived at the bakery with a cake carrier his mother had borrowed.
Summer had been standing on a chair, pulling the Christmas lights down one loop at a time because the previous owner had attached them with hooks too small for her fingers.
The shop smelled of burned sugar. She had ruined a batch while dealing with a customer who wanted to know why a January cake cost the same as a December cake if business was quieter.
“Where do you want this?” Jonah asked. He stood inside the door with snow melting on his shoulders. “Mom said you might need it this afternoon.”
“On the counter. Anywhere you can find.” She stretched for the last hook and felt the chair shift beneath her. His hand came to its back before she could ask.
“Have you got a ladder?” Jonah asked, testing the back of the chair while she held the cord. “This leg’s loose. I wouldn’t get up on it again.”
“It’s in the back. Behind everything else.” She freed the light cord and let it fall over her shoulder. “I’m almost finished.”
He stayed until she came down. She had met him at his parents’ anniversary dinner the previous autumn, delivering a cake into a dining room where everyone else had known where to sit.
He had carried the empty boxes to her car, then come back because she’d forgotten her bag.
She remembered his hands against the cardboard more clearly than the conversation.
“I can fix that,” he said. He crouched beside the chair and pressed a thumb against the joint. “It’ll get worse if you leave it.”
“Your mother offered to come and decorate for me,” Summer said. “Now you’ll tell her I’m up here breaking my neck.” She wound the light cord too quickly around her hand, trapping one of the little bulbs.
“She offered to decorate the office. Nobody let her.” He pressed the joint again. “You only need a bit of glue here. Have you got any?”
Summer freed the trapped bulb. Somewhere in a drawer there was glue, though she couldn’t remember whether it was suitable for furniture.
She’d have to let him open drawers until he found it, and half the contents would come out with him watching.
“I burned something,” she said. “That’s why I’m being difficult. Quite a lot of something.”
“I thought you were making caramel.” He stood, brushing his hands together. “Is there anything left?”
“Not of that.” Summer went behind the counter and took a knife to a loaf cake that was cooling unevenly. The end had sunk, but she knew the rest would be good. “You can have this if you don’t tell your mother; she’ll be jealous.”
He took the slice on a paper napkin and ate it while she went back for her own. She cut hers from beside the sunken end, then trimmed it to match the size of his. He was already looking at the coffee machine when she returned.
“Coffee?” she asked. She pointed toward the machine. “It’s still on.”
He glanced at his watch, and she began to turn away. Then he took his coat off and laid it over the chair he had steadied, carefully enough to make her smile despite herself.
They talked until two customers came in together and Summer had to abandon him.
One wanted a cake she could collect the following morning, although she hadn’t decided how many people were coming or whether the party was happening at all.
Summer wrote down the possibilities while Jonah drank his coffee near the window.
Each time she looked across, he seemed comfortable enough that she didn’t have to apologize for keeping him.
By the time the women left, she expected to find his empty cup. Instead he was fastening his coat, waiting to say goodbye. He had folded his paper napkin into a small square and set it beneath the cup. She wished she’d remembered to offer him more coffee.
“Are you open tomorrow?” he asked. He nodded toward the little sign with the winter hours. “It says closed.”
“I’m closed. I’m still here.” She heard how pathetic that sounded and added, “I have orders to finish.”
“Do you stop to eat?” His expression changed as soon as he asked, and she realized this had not been an inquiry about her working conditions. “I mean, would you like to get lunch?”
Summer had taken up the counter cloth without knowing what she meant to wipe. “With you?” she asked. “Sorry. Obviously with you.”
“Yes, with me,” he said. “There’s a place around the corner. Or somewhere else, if you’re sick of this street.”
She had refused two invitations that week, both from people she liked. Now she was calculating whether the cakes needed to cool for an hour or two before she could finish them, and how much of that time she could spend around the corner with him.
“One,” she said. She touched the sign with her finger. “If you’re still free then.”
“I’ll be here.” He opened the door, letting in a rush of cold. “Wear a coat. An actual one.”
The next day he was five minutes late. Summer had already decided not to mind and then to mind enormously when he came through the door with an apology about a supplier who had changed a price while pretending not to have done so. He stopped when he saw she was ready.
“I made you wait,” he said. His gaze moved over her hair, which she had washed and left down. “You look nice.”
“I had time to change.” She picked up her bag before he could realize she had brought three sweaters in and chosen among them while a tray cooled. “Are we still going?”
They ate soup at a table that rocked whenever either of them cut bread. Summer spent the first ten minutes talking about work because she could do that without wondering whether she was talking too much, then stopped in the middle of an explanation about butter prices.
“You don’t have to ask me about the bakery,” she said. She put her spoon down. “I do know some other things.”
“I wanted to know about it.” Jonah leaned back. “What else do you know?”
Summer stared at him. The waitress passed with two bowls, and she nearly asked whether the soup was made there before stopping herself.
“I used to go swimming,” she said, and immediately wondered why she’d chosen that. “Early, when the pool was nearly empty. I’d get out just as the people who wanted to talk arrived.”
“I haven’t been in years,” he said. “I keep meaning to go. Do you miss it?”
“Yes. I keep leaving the bag by the door, intending to go, and then putting it away because it’s in the way.” Summer took a sip of water. “What did you mean, you keep meaning to go? Would you actually go, if somebody asked?”
“Probably,” he said. “I’d complain about the time, if you meant that early.” He broke off a piece of bread, considered it, and added, “I wouldn’t promise to be much company.”
“You don’t talk while you’re swimming.” Summer was smiling now. “That’s the attraction.”
“Then I’d be excellent company,” he said. “It’s the getting there I’d struggle with. I’m not a morning person and I struggle with follow-through. I’ve got a guitar at my parents’ house that I’ve been going to collect for about three years.”
“Do you play?” Summer asked. “You didn’t say.”
“Badly. That’s probably why I leave it there.” He began brushing crumbs into a little heap on his plate. “Dad will ask me to play something, and then he’ll sit there listening. He used to be impressed when I could get through a verse.”
Summer set her spoon down. “I still can’t dive properly. I can swim for an hour, but I go down the steps with the old ladies.”
“You could teach me the swimming,” he said. “I’ll teach you the three chords I can remember.”
“Is three enough?” she asked. “I don’t want to have to stop halfway through something.”
“It’s enough for a song. You might not like the song.” He glanced at her bowl. “Have you finished? I was going to ask for coffee.”
She ought to check the time. The cakes would be cool by now; she could see herself returning to the silent kitchen, taking off the coat she’d been so pleased to wear for him. “Coffee would be good,” she said. “I don’t have to rush.”
Outside the bakery afterward, they stopped beside the locked door. She stood holding the key, wanting to be kissed so badly that the ordinary street seemed too public.
“I have to make a delivery Wednesday,” she said. “But after that I’m free.”
“Wednesday, then.” His hand touched the loose end of her scarf. “Summer, can I kiss you?”
She stepped closer instead of answering, catching the front of his coat. He kissed her gently at first, then with enough intent that she forgot the cold key against her palm. A bus stopped behind him with a sigh of brakes.
On Wednesday he came back. That evening she let him stay after closing, and they washed bowls together until she kissed him beside the sink, flour on her sleeve and warm water still running over his hand.
The bowls stayed in the sink until he left.
At home that night she lay awake remembering his wet fingers against the back of her neck.
Now, in the present, Jonah was offering to exchange seats because hers was in a draft. Summer looked at the soup bowls being carried toward another table, then at him; he was still waiting for an answer, halfway out of his chair.
“No,” she said. She touched his hand where it rested beside the salt. “I’m fine here.”
While they waited for their soup, Jonah told her Kylie had accepted dinner and wanted to bring wine.
Summer asked him to say white; she was thinking of chicken with cider.
He passed the phone across so she could answer herself, and she added that she was looking forward to meeting her before handing it back.
“You didn’t ask if there’s anything she doesn’t eat,” she said. Jonah turned the screen toward her again, showing the earlier reply. Kylie had written that after a year of feeding herself, she would eat anything somebody else made.
Summer smiled and pushed the phone back toward him as their soup arrived.
She tore the roll they had been given and put the larger piece on his plate, then took it back when she saw he had received a whole one of his own.
Jonah watched her butter it, wisely saying nothing, and moved his foot until it rested beside hers beneath the table.