11. Chapter 11
Evie
I’ve been coming to The Honeybee almost daily since it opened.
Before that, Nora ran a small bakery counter out of a shared kitchen space, and I bought scones from her there.
Before that, she sold muffins at the farmers’ market from a folding table with a handwritten sign.
I’ve essentially been giving this woman my money in exchange for baked goods in every configuration her career has taken, and I don’t plan to stop.
The café sits on the corner near the town crossroads, a converted storefront with pale yellow paint and window boxes that overflow differently depending on the month.
Right now, marigolds are going bronze along their tips, and sweet potato vine trails low enough to brush the pavement.
The wooden sign hangs from a wrought iron bracket, a small carved bee perched on the letter H.
Two chairs sit beneath the striped awning outside, cushions still damp from last night’s rain. The chalkboard by the door announces PUMPKIN SPICE EVERYTHING! in Nora’s looping handwriting, the chalk already smudging at the edges from people brushing past it.
The bell above the door gives its cheerful two-note announcement, swallowed by the hiss of the espresso machine and the low murmur of morning customers.
My mouth waters reflexively at the sugar and spice hanging in the air.
The place feels like a sauna. It’s Nora’s annual ritual of cranking the heat in September, as if willing winter to arrive faster.
The place is tiny and overstuffed in the best way.
Mismatched chairs pulled up to light wood tables.
Open shelves crammed with mugs and teapots that Nora has collected from every estate sale within a fifty-mile radius, each with a story she’ll tell you unprompted.
Plants hanging from the ceiling beams, vines long enough now that tall people have to duck near the back corner.
The pastry case is half-empty already, croissants down to stragglers, and honey cakes disappearing one by one.
Nora spots me from behind the counter, and there it is again—that careful concern I’ve been getting all morning.
“Evie, honey—”
“Just meeting Maddie,” I cut her off.
“Okay, but if you need anything—”
“I’m good.” I escape before she can finish the sentence.
Maddie has claimed our usual table by the window, the one with the wobbly leg that she compensates for by wedging a folded napkin underneath without looking anymore.
Loose black waves fall past her shoulders today, effortless in a way that annoyed me in high school until I accepted it as a fixed law of the universe.
The silver-white underlayer peeks through where her hair has shifted forward.
A tower of whipped cream balances on top of something chocolatey in front of her, untouched, which means she’s been saving it for my arrival so she can drink and interrogate simultaneously.
“There she is.” Maddie beams, eyes dancing. “Brindlewood’s newest celebrity.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” She slides an iced vanilla latte across the table. “I got your drink ten minutes ago because I knew you’d be late.”
“I’m not late.”
“You’re later than usual, which for you is basically a crisis.” She settles back. “Sit. Spill. I want the real story before seventeen different people give me seventeen different versions.”
I pull out the chair and decide to rip the bandage off.
“A man appeared inside my locked cottage last night claiming to be a demon that my cat summoned through a novelty Ouija board.”
Maddie’s latte hovers three inches from her mouth.
“He said he couldn’t leave until I made a deal with him. The whole thing was deeply, profoundly batshit.”
She still hasn’t blinked.
“This morning, I woke up and thought about it with the benefit of daylight and a functioning prefrontal cortex, and came to the reasonable conclusion that I either encountered a very dedicated weirdo or experienced a temporary psychotic break brought on by exhaustion and poor life choices.” I pull the paper wrapper off the straw in one strip.
“Also, yes, before you ask, he was hot. Absurdly, obnoxiously hot. No, I didn’t ask for his number.
And this town turning an intruder into my secret boyfriend makes me want to relocate to the bottom of the ocean. ”
I jam the straw through the lid and take a sip. It’s so sweet it makes my eyes water.
Maddie’s jaw is still hanging open. Her whipped cream is starting to slide. She yanks my tote over the table and roots through it with zero regard for my personal property. A second later, the cinnamon roll container is unsealed and the biggest one is halfway in her mouth.
“That,” she says, chewing aggressively, “is not what I thought you were going to tell me.”
“Glad I could surprise you.”
“This obliterates every version I’ve been told today, and I’ve been told many.
” There’s a smudge of black eyeliner under her left eye that she either missed this morning or carried over from last night.
With Maddie, both feel equally plausible.
“Tommy at the gas station said the guy was your ex-boyfriend’s brother.
Mrs. Finch told two separate people he was a debt collector. ”
“Seriously?”
“She seemed very confident.”
The knot between my shoulders loosens by a fraction. Seeing the absurdity reflected back in Maddie’s face makes the whole thing shrink into something I can manage.
She finishes chewing and her left dimple fades. “But for real, are you okay?”
“I’m good.” I fidget with the straw wrapper, folding it into tiny triangles.
“Look, in the moment? It was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.
But today, sitting here, I can’t make any of it hold together.
Demons aren’t real. Cats don’t summon things.
And locked doors don’t just stop working. ”
“When you frame it that way . . .”
“Exactly.”
“So we’re going with weirdo?”
“Yup, and calling it weird but explainable.”
“Solid plan.” She nods firmly. “Of course, the other possibility is that you’re straight up going insane.” She tilts her head, considering. “I’ll be honest, that’s a genuine option with how you’ve been running yourself into the ground for months. Your brain probably just . . . glitched.”
My foot snaps forward and catches her right in the shin. She yelps.
“I didn’t invent an entire person, Madeline.”
“I’m just saying. You also once convinced yourself that a raccoon on your porch was a bear.”
“In my defense, it was dark, and the thing looked enormous.”
“It was four pounds.”
“It was aggressive.”
We stare at each other until we both crack. Maddie snorts first, which sets me off, and then we’re laughing with reckless volume that makes Nora glance over from the counter with her eyebrows raised.
This is what Maddie does. Takes whatever catastrophe I’m holding and compresses it until it fits in my pocket. She perfected the technique in the sandbox behind the community center, when Rebecca hurled a fistful of sand at my face because I touched a yellow shovel she’d abandoned.
I remember sitting there, grit in my eyelashes, too stunned to cry. And this girl I’d never spoken to marched over, planted herself between us, and told Rebecca that if she did it again, she’d eat her snack pack.
Rebecca burst into tears. Maddie sat down next to me, brushed sand off my shirt with her grubby little hands, and asked if I wanted to dig a hole to China.
And that was it. The origin of the most important friendship of my life.
She has no concept of boundaries where I’m concerned. Reads my texts over my shoulder. Steals food off my plate mid-sentence. She’ll ask me anything, say anything, and dig through every compartment of my world because, in her mind, her clearance is permanent and irrevocable.
There isn’t a single wall between us. Maddie knocked them all down years ago, and I never bothered rebuilding—wouldn’t want to. The drafty, wide open floor plan of this friendship is the only layout that works.
We finally calm down. Maddie reaches across for another cinnamon roll, one thumb rubbing the scar on her opposite wrist that she got climbing the fence when we were twelve. “So . . . are you coming to the festival with me?”
“Hard pass.”
“Wrong answer. Try again.”
“Maddie, I set up every year. I’m plenty involved.”
“Exactly.” She gives me a mocking nod. “You arrange folding chairs at dawn, argue with the electrician about generator placement, and organize the vendor parking lot. Then, the second the bunting goes up and actual humans start arriving to enjoy themselves, you vanish. Poof. Gone. Like you were never there.”
“I have guests.”
“Your guests are at the festival, Evie.” She counts on her fingers. “Eating. Drinking. Playing ring toss. Buying overpriced pottery. Having the best day of their vacation. They are not wondering where you are. You know who’s at the inn? You. Alone. Probably ironing pillowcases.”
That’s annoyingly accurate.
Her teasing fades. “It’s been three years since you actually came with me. Remember how we used to eat terrible food, and you judged the pie contest entries with way too much passion? I miss it.”
“It’s not about the festival.”
“I know.” She sighs. “But it’s been two years since Jason dumped you at the top of the Ferris wheel. You can say his name without the building collapsing.”
“I’m aware.”
“My point is that you’ve let one mediocre man with commitment issues ruin fall for you.”
I want to argue, but she’s not wrong. At least about Jason.
That relationship died a quiet, unremarkable death, and I’ve been over it since roughly two weeks after it ended.
But the festival is unpredictable. Crowds shift, schedules change, nothing happens when it’s supposed to.
There’s no way to control every variable once the day gets moving.
“Couple of hours,” she says. “Just walk around with me. If it’s awful, we bail and go drink at The Rusty Nail.”
“Fine.”
“Wait, really?”
“Don’t push it.”
“Yes!” She slaps the table so hard our drinks jump. “This is the best news I’ve gotten all week.”
“That’s genuinely depressing.”
“I don’t care, I’m thrilled.” Her grin is impossible not to return. Despite my resistance to this plan, some of her excitement is rubbing off on me. “We’re going to have fun. Remember fun?”
“Vaguely.”
“Good enough.”
“How was work last night?” I ask because I need to talk about literally anything else.
“Brutal. Ten straight hours without sitting down.” She stretches her arms overhead, shoulders cracking. “And then Dad rolled in at nine to ‘check on things.’ Which, as you know, means hovering behind the bar, correcting everything I do.”
“What was it this time?”
“The usual greatest hits: my ice-to-liquor ratio was off, the music was too loud, and I should smile more at the regulars. As if Mike Dunham wants me to beam at him while I pour his fourth Bud Light.” She rolls her eyes.
“Oh, and he told a couple of tourists the menu was ‘still being worked on.’ It hasn’t changed in eleven years. ”
“He’ll come around.”
“When?” The question comes out clipped, and she presses her lips together before continuing.
“I’ve been running that bar for five years.
I do the books, the orders, the hiring, the firing, the health inspections, the broken toilet at two a.m. And he still tells people I’m ‘helping out,’ like this is a summer internship. ”
“He’s terrified of it becoming yours because then it’s not his anymore.”
“Exactly. And I get that. I do.” She stares at her drink. “I just wish he’d trust me enough to admit I’m already doing it.”
“You’re allowed to be frustrated.”
She’s quiet long enough to qualify as emotional processing before changing course.
“So anyway, different vibe. A really cute guy came into the bar last night.”
“Okay . . .”
“I think you’d like him.”
I glance up. “Maddie, I’m not interested in being set up.”
“I’m only telling you about someone interesting.” She’s trying to look innocent and failing. “He was adorable. Awkward, but in that endearing puppy way where you want to help him figure out how the world works.”
“That’s not a selling point.”
“It absolutely is.”
“Maddie, I really don’t—”
“He was tall, with very nice brown curls. And his eyes . . .” She tilts her head. “Pale violet-blue. I’ve never seen that color before.”
No.
My brain is still trying to deny it, but the rest of me has already hit abort mission.
“You’re looking a bit pale.” Maddie’s smile fades. “Are you going to be sick? I love you, but last time I held your hair you threw up on my wrist and—”
The door chimes.
Maddie’s hand shoots up, waving. “Milo! Hey!”
He freezes before shuffling toward us. My grip tightens around the cup until the plastic lid pops off, splashing coffee onto my wrist.
This can’t be happening.
Milo hovers at the edge of our table, worrying the hem of a brown jacket that hangs loosely from his shoulders.
Beneath it, a faded band logo stretches across his chest. The jeans sit awkwardly on his hips, cinched tight with a belt that’s been punched with an extra hole.
When he pushes his curls back from his forehead, his fingers tremble.
He looks straight at me, nervous, hopeful, and sorry all at once.
The universe hates me. That’s the only explanation.