6. Lily
Lily
The Saturday morning farmers market was my weekly pilgrimage, a ritual as sacred as coffee and as necessary as breathing.
Armed with my reusable canvas bags and a mental list of everything I needed for the week—fresh herbs for the shop, apples for Olivia’s lunch boxes, and the good sourdough that sold out by ten—I wove through the cheerful chaos of vendors and early shoppers.
Our hayride “moment” had been dissected, analyzed, and discussed by half the town, thanks to June’s perfectly timed photography.
The image—blurry and poorly lit as it was—had taken on a life of its own on the Autumn Grove Community Facebook page.
Every time I ventured out, I caught knowing smiles and speculative glances.
The weight of maintaining our charade was starting to feel heavier with each public appearance.
I was examining a particularly perfect butternut squash when I spotted him.
Mario stood near the honey vendor’s stall, looking like a Formula One car that had been entered in a tractor pull.
He was wearing his usual uniform of jeans and a plain gray henley, but everything about his posture screamed discomfort.
His shoulders were hunched, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and he was studying a display of wildflower honey with the intense focus of someone trying to defuse a bomb.
The poor honey vendor, an elderly man named Frank who’d been coming to the market for twenty years, was clearly trying to make conversation.
I was too far away to hear the words, but I could see Frank’s animated gestures and Mario’s increasingly rigid posture.
Mario looked like he was calculating the exact number of steps to the nearest exit.
Oh no. My fake boyfriend was about to flee the scene, leaving Frank to wonder why the town’s newest heartthrob had just ghosted him over artisanal honey.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I found myself walking toward them, my canvas bag bumping against my hip with each step.
“Good morning, Frank,” I called out as I approached, my voice bright and deliberately cheerful. “How’s the harvest been this year?”
Frank’s weathered face broke into a relieved smile. “Lily! Wonderful to see you. Just telling your young man here about the wildflower blend. Best batch I’ve had in years.”
Mario’s eyes met mine over Frank’s head, and I saw a flicker of something that might have been gratitude. Or possibly a silent plea for rescue.
“Mario was just saying how he’s never tried locally sourced honey,” I improvised smoothly, moving to stand beside him. The lie rolled off my tongue with practiced ease—a skill I was developing at an alarming rate. “Weren’t you, sweetheart?”
The endearment felt strange in my mouth, like wearing someone else’s shoes. Mario’s eyebrows lifted slightly, but he nodded with the enthusiasm of someone agreeing to a root canal.
“Right,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “Local honey.”
“Oh, you’re in for a treat!” Frank beamed, clearly delighted to have a captive audience.
“This wildflower blend has notes of clover and basswood. Perfect for tea, or just eating straight from the jar. I use my grandmother’s recipe for the crystallization process.
Did you know local honey helps with allergies? ”
As Frank launched into what was clearly a well-practiced sales pitch, I felt Mario’s arm brush against mine.
It was a light contact, probably accidental, but my nervous system responded like someone had just jump-started my engine.
We were performing again, playing our parts for an audience of one elderly honey vendor.
But standing this close to him, breathing the same crisp morning air, felt dangerously real.
“We’ll take a jar,” I said, cutting through Frank’s detailed explanation of bee foraging patterns. “The wildflower blend sounds perfect.”
“Excellent choice!” Frank wrapped the jar carefully in brown paper. “That’ll be eight dollars.”
Mario reached for his wallet, but I was already handing Frank a ten. “My treat,” I said, shooting Mario a look that I hoped conveyed ‘we’ll settle this later.’
As Frank counted out my change, I became aware of a familiar sensation—the prickle of being watched.
I glanced around and immediately spotted the source.
June was stationed at the produce stand directly across from us, her phone held up in a position that could charitably be called “casual” but was definitely strategic.
Her expression was one of barely contained delight, like a nature documentarian who’d just captured footage of a unicorn.
My stomach dropped. Here we were, buying honey together like a real couple, and June was documenting it for posterity. Or more accurately, for the Autumn Grove Community Facebook page.
“Thank you, Frank,” I said quickly, tucking the honey into my bag. “We should get going. Lots of errands to run.”
I took Mario’s arm—a gesture that was half performance, half self-preservation—and steered him away from the honey stand. His arm was solid and warm under my touch, and he moved with the cautious precision of someone who’d just been handed a live grenade.
“You looked like you were about to bolt,” I murmured as we walked, trying to keep my voice light.
“I was considering it,” he admitted, his voice low. “That man knows more about bees than I do about... anything.”
Despite everything, I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. “Frank’s harmless. He’s just passionate about his bees.”
“Everyone here is passionate about something,” Mario observed, his gaze sweeping over the vendors and shoppers like he was analyzing a particularly challenging race track. “It’s overwhelming.”
We paused at Sarah’s vegetable stand, where I selected carrots with the practiced eye of someone who’d been cooking for a picky seven-year-old for years. Mario stood beside me, a silent, somewhat brooding presence, occasionally nodding when Sarah asked if we were enjoying the beautiful weather.
“Two pounds of apples,” I requested, pointing to a display of Honeycrisps. “The good ones, for lunch boxes.”
“Of course, dear,” Sarah said, her knowing smile making my cheeks warm. “And how are you two settling in? The whole town’s been talking about what a lovely couple you make.”
My hand stilled on a particularly perfect apple. “Oh, we’re... We’re taking things slowly,” I managed, my voice climbing an octave.
“Smart approach,” Sarah nodded approvingly as she weighed the apples. “Though between you and me, anyone with eyes can see you’re smitten. The way you two look at each other... reminds me of my Harold when we were courting.”
I risked a glance at Mario, whose expression had shifted into what I was beginning to recognize as his ‘deer in headlights meeting a semi-truck’ look. The comparison to Harold—who Sarah had been married to for forty-seven years—felt both flattering and absolutely terrifying.
“That’s very sweet,” I squeaked, accepting the bag of apples and hoping my face wasn’t as red as the Honeycrisps.
As we moved away from Sarah’s stand, I caught another glimpse of June, who had migrated to a better vantage point near the cider stand.
Her phone was still prominently displayed, and she was chatting animatedly with two other women I recognized from church.
The sight made my chest tighten with familiar anxiety.
“We’re being watched,” I said quietly, adjusting my grip on my market bags.
Mario’s gaze swept the crowd with the systematic precision of someone checking mirrors before a lane change. “The woman with the phone?”
“June. She’s basically the town’s unofficial social media correspondent. Anything she posts gets shared, commented on, and analyzed by half of Autumn Grove.” I tried to keep my voice light, but I could hear the strain in it. “We should probably... I don’t know, look more couple-y?”
The words felt ridiculous the moment they left my mouth. How do you manufacture couple-ness? How do you perform intimacy with someone you’re actively trying not to have feelings for?
Mario was quiet for a moment, his expression thoughtful. Then, without warning, he stopped walking. We were near the edge of the market, by the old oak tree where someone had set up a small table selling kettle corn. The scent of caramelized sugar and salt filled the air.
“What are you—” I started to ask, but he was already moving.
He approached the kettle corn stand with the same careful attention he’d probably once used to calculate pit stop strategies. After what seemed like an unnecessarily lengthy consultation with the teenage vendor about sugar-to-salt ratios, he returned with a warm paper bag.
“You mentioned you like this,” he said, offering me the bag with the awkward formality of someone presenting a peace treaty.
I stared at him, momentarily thrown. He’d remembered that? From some casual comment I’d made a week ago? The gesture was small, almost insignificant, but it felt enormous. Like he’d been paying attention in ways I hadn’t expected.
“Thank you,” I said, accepting the bag. Our fingers brushed as I took it, and my brain momentarily short-circuited. “You didn’t have to?—”
“Try some,” he said, cutting off my protest with the determination of someone who’d committed to a course of action and intended to see it through.
I reached into the bag and pulled out a piece of the sweet, salty confection. It was still warm, and it melted on my tongue with that perfect combination of sugar and corn that always reminded me of childhood fairs and simpler times. Without thinking, I smiled—a real, unguarded smile.
“Good?” he asked, and there was something in his voice that made me look up at him.
He was watching me with an intensity that made my breath catch. Not the careful, strategic attention of our public performances, but something softer. Something that looked dangerously like genuine interest in my happiness.
“Very good,” I managed to say, though my throat felt tight.
A piece of kettle corn had broken off and stuck to the corner of my mouth. I started to reach up to brush it away, but Mario was faster. His thumb touched the corner of my lips, a gentle, brief contact that sent my thoughts scattering like leaves in a windstorm.
“You had a...” he said, his voice rough.
The world seemed to slow. The sounds of the market—the ABBA song the band was belting out, the chatter of vendors, the laughter of children—all faded into a distant hum.
There was only this: his thumb against my skin, the startled look in his dark eyes, the way the morning light caught the stubble on his jaw.
It was nothing. A simple gesture. The kind of thing couples did without thinking.
Except we weren’t a couple. We were business partners in the world’s most ridiculous scheme.
So why did it feel like someone had just revved my engine?
He pulled his hand away as if he’d been burned, his expression shuttering back into careful neutrality. But I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw tightened like someone grinding gears.
“We should keep moving,” he said, his voice flat.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. I tucked the kettle corn into one of my bags, my hands shaking slightly.
We continued our circuit of the market in relative silence, stopping at the bread vendor and the flower stand where I chatted with my competitor with professional courtesy.
Through it all, I was hyperaware of Mario beside me, of the careful space he maintained between us, of the way he nodded politely when spoken to but volunteered nothing.
Every interaction felt like a poorly rehearsed play.
At the cheese stand, I laughed too loudly at something completely unfunny.
Mario attempted to put his arm around my shoulders and somehow managed to knock over a display of artisanal crackers.
We both dove to catch them, resulting in an awkward tangle of limbs that probably looked more like a wrestling match than a romantic moment.
“Sorry,” he muttered, steadying me as we both straightened up.
“No problem,” I chirped, my voice unnaturally bright. “Happens all the time!”
It absolutely did not happen all the time. I had never knocked over crackers in my life.
By the time we’d made our way back to the parking area, I was exhausted.
Not from the shopping, but from the constant performance.
From maintaining the perfect balance of couple-like behavior without crossing any actual lines.
From pretending that the touch of his thumb against my lips hadn’t affected me at all.
“Thank you,” I said as we reached my car. “For... helping. With the honey vendor situation.”
“Thank you for the rescue,” he replied. “I owe you one.”
We stood there for a moment, the autumn sun warming our faces, neither of us seeming to know how to end this strange, charged encounter. Finally, Mario cleared his throat.
“I should go,” he said. “Ben’s expecting me for some project involving power tools.”
“Right. Of course.” I fumbled for my keys, desperate to escape before I said or did something irreversibly stupid. “I’ll see you... around.”
“See you around,” he echoed.
It wasn’t until I was home, groceries spread across my kitchen counter, that my phone buzzed. A notification from the Autumn Grove Community Facebook page. I opened it—and my stomach dropped.
June’s latest post.
The photo caught the exact moment Mario wiped the kettle corn from my lips. The angle was flattering, the light golden, and somehow she’d managed to crop out the cracker catastrophe entirely. We looked... happy. Like a real couple sharing a sweet, private moment.
The caption: “Spotted these two lovebirds at the farmers market! Sweeter by the day! #AutumnGroveLove #SweetAsHoney #CoupleGoals”
Forty-three likes. Twelve comments. My mother’s row of heart-eye emojis. Ben’s “GET A ROOM .”
I stared at the screen, my chest tight.
It should have been funny. Harmless. Just another post in the endless stream of small-town social media. But what unsettled me most wasn’t the gossip or the comments.
It was that, in that frozen frame, we didn’t look like actors fumbling through a performance.
We looked real.
And, worse, in that moment under the oak tree, despite all the awkwardness and cracker-related disasters, it had felt real.
That was the part I couldn’t afford to admit. Not even to myself.