12. Tilly
Chapter twelve
Tilly
“ D on’t make it weird, don’t make it weird, don’t make it weird,” I chant, standing outside the bakery with the paper plate filled with a chocolate pistachio cake and chai pinwheel cookies. With the key Archer made me, I came here to see if I could get a jump on taking measurements for my menu board. I didn’t expect him to still be here so late, but the light spilling from beneath the door shows me I was wrong.
I quietly peek around the corner. He’s hunched over the counter with his notebook in front of him. His brows are scrunched, a crease formed on the smooth skin of his forehead as he rubs the stupid poker chip he keeps with him in his other hand. I imagine he’s checking off his to-do list of things he needs to complete before he leaves.
The thought leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
“Hey.” I squeeze the rest of the way through the door.
Archer startles and slams the notebook shut like a kid caught reading a nudie magazine. His face flushes pink. “What are you doing here?”
I laugh and move closer to the counter. “I thought we went over this earlier.”
He rolls up the notebook and stuffs it into his back pocket along with the poker chip. “You know what I meant.”
“I do.” I lay the plate of treats down, and my charm bracelet scrapes across the countertop. Archer’s eyes flit to my wrist, and I catch his brief smile before he frowns and looks back up at me. “I made a new recipe I’m thinking about adding to the menu. I brought extra for you.”
He nods but doesn’t move to take one. I’m hurt, but not surprised. Apparently, eating my desserts would prevent him from entering heaven, and he’s quite worried about his soul. I snort at my inner thoughts, and he gives me a confused look.
“Are you worried I poisoned them?” I arch an eyebrow playfully, hoping to break the tension. “I promise you can’t taste the arsenic.”
He stifles a laugh and shakes his head like he can’t believe I just said that. When he still doesn’t speak, I go to his toolbox and pull out the measuring tape. “Fine, suit yourself. One of us has to get to work.”
In need of a pencil, I walk back and grab the one he keeps nestled on his ear, careful not to touch him. His eyes heat my back as I mark the wall exactly where I want the oversized chalkboard to be hung.
“What do you think about putting wallpaper behind this?” I turn around to find him with his hands propped on the side of the counter and his head hung. For a moment, I wonder if he fell asleep, but he moves his head from side to side before lifting it and piercing me with his stark green eyes.
Cement forms around my feet as he pushes off the counter and crouches down. Did I make him mad? It usually doesn’t take much, but nowadays every little thing seems to set him off. Papers shuffle together, and before I know it, he’s laying out colorful rolls of wallpaper, all with different designs.
“What’s all this?” I ask, cheeks stretching wide in delight.
He shrugs. “I knew you’d want some funky designs on the wall, so I picked up some rolls when I went to the store the other day.”
The tiny people controlling my brain clock in for the day, take an elevator down to my heart and pick up their chisels to start hacking away at the ice around it. The ice Archer put there by constantly freezing me out.
“That’s so...” Sweet. Worrisome. Surprising. I scan each roll before landing on a chevron design. Unable to find an appropriate word, I land on, “Thank you.”
He rubs the back of his neck, shrugging like it’s no big deal. “They were on clearance by the checkout register.”
He doesn’t meet my eyes when he says that, and there’s a tiny part in the back of my mind that imagines he actually spent time looking through different wallpapers he thought I’d like.
“Do you think this color will look okay?” I hold up the wallpaper.
He shrugs. “Anything you pick will be perfect.”
He walks to the far wall and starts measuring. Like a child, I follow. “What are you measuring for?” I ask.
I can tell I’m annoying him by his deep sigh, but for some reason it makes me happy to pluck his nerves.
“I assume you want a wall between the front of the house and the kitchen, correct?”
I nod before I realize he can’t see me. “Yes, that would be perfect.”
“Great, then I need you to get out of my hair so I can get finished.”
Defeated, I back up a few steps. “You don’t have to be such an asshole, you know. I’m getting excited about this place.”
He snorts. “Darlin’, you’ve never seen me as an asshole.”
“I beg to differ.” I lean against the counter, trying not to let the many times he’s pushed me away with his words bubble back to the surface. Agitation rises in my chest, making my skin itch as I lock the memories away behind a mental door. “The man I knew in college never treated me like I was scum beneath his shoes. ”
His measuring tape thuds to the ground, and he throws his head back, hands tensed at his sides. “Can we not do this right now?”
“No!” I yell, slamming my hands onto the counter. “I’m sick of it, Arch.”
“Here we go.”
The inhale I take is fueled with fire. “I’ve had enough of the side eyes and cutting remarks to last me a lifetime. If I’ve done something to you then be a man and tell me instead of having a shitty attitude all the time and treating me like a pariah. We used to be friends. Jessie would…” I struggle to get the words out. “Would want us to be in each other’s lives. What the hell happened?”
Archer picks up the measuring tape and stomps back to his toolbox. Slamming the lid closed, he takes it and starts moving toward the door.
“You’re leaving?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yup.” His reply is short and delivered with a sharpness that cuts through me.
“Fine,” I yell. “No one asked for your help anyway.”
Faster than I thought humanly possible, Archer is back in my space, so close the mint on his breath burns my nose. His throat bobs and sweat slides down into his shirt when he leans closer.
“Someone did ask for my help,” he grits out. “And that man was your husband.”
The muscle jumping in his jaw makes me think he’s holding back his emotions, and the ache in my throat becomes more prominent.
“So you honor him by treating his wife like trash,” I seethe. “Got it. Duly noted. Jessie was the only person who mattered to you, and now that he’s gone, you can’t wait to get away from me.”
He blinks like he’s clearing away a haze. “No, Til. ”
“Forget it.” Tears prickle my eyes, and I turn away from him, chest painful and tight. “I’ll find someone else to finish the work.”
A hand lands on my arm, the touch achingly soft. The small dose of what I’ve been missing floods my system and steals my breath. It’s quickly pushed away as anger and hurt simmer beneath my skin. I yank my arm out of his grasp and wipe away the tears I can’t stop from falling. “Don’t touch me.”
“Tilly, that’s not what I—” Archer’s voice is strained, but I don’t let that deter me from my retreat. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like that.”
“Just go.” I walk toward the bathroom, a thread at my back pulling taut as if this moment isn’t finished. Anger, bitterness, and something like yearning swell behind my ribcage. I shouldn’t want him to stay, to try to make up for all the things he’s said and the ways he’s made me feel, but there’s a part of me that does.
With the closed door, I finally break down and allow the conflicting emotions to overwhelm me as I scrub at my arm, trying to remove his touch. Tears run down my face, mixing with snot and sadness as I lean against the stall and wait to hear the telltale sign of Archer’s departure. If I want my bakery to succeed, I’ll have to find a new carpenter or learn how to do it myself.
***
A loud scraping noise jolts me to awareness. Through heavy lidded eyes, I scan my surroundings and a cloud of confusion forms. Bright light spills into the room from the opened door, and like cogs shifting, my mind wakes up to the fact that I’m on the bakery floor, covered with strips of wallpaper.
“Did you sleep here?” Archer sets a thermos and his toolbox on the bay windowsill .
I swipe my arm across my mouth and catch the sliver of drool left from my chaotic dreams. My bones crack as I rise from the floor and roll up the wallpaper, careful to not bend it.
“Tilly?” Archer asks, a hint of worry to his voice.
Emotion I thought I beat down last night bubbles back to the surface, and the ache in my chest flares again. I ignore him and place the rolls underneath the makeshift table as he moves around the room.
My gaze follows him as he takes in all the work I did last night: the top half of the wall now covered in blue chevron paper, the tape along the walls where the wainscoting panels will go, the bookshelf that gave me gray hair overnight.
Archer’s wearing a tight, green shirt that hugs his toned biceps and pants that look entirely too good around his ass. He stands in front of an admittedly poor excuse for a bookshelf with his hands on his hips and my stomach flips. Like a string cut from a marionette, his head falls.
Shame rushes up my spine and curls around my collar.
“Did you do this by yourself?” he asks.
I bite my cheek to stop from saying what I really want to say, which is that I don’t trust anyone else to bring Jessie’s vision—our vision—of the bakery to life.
When I don’t respond, Archer moves in front of me. “Tilda.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say.
“Tilda St. James, look at me.”
His use of my full name sends a chill down my spine and lights a fire in my bones. Lightning zips through my veins at his gravelly voice. My shoulders rise, but the embarrassment keeps my head down.
Soft knuckles push against my chin, sending zaps of electricity down my throat.
“Til.” Archer pins me with a look I’ve never seen on his face before .
Pain.
“What?” I rip my chin away and wipe the touch from my skin with the sleeve of my dusty shirt.
Three times he’s touched me, and three times my body has reacted in a way I don’t want it to. I still haven’t figured out why his touch affects me differently than others, why it makes me feel the opposite of pity and grief. Maybe it’s because he and Jessie were alike in so many ways my mind is tricking itself into thinking it’s my husband’s touch.
Arousal isn’t the emotion my body has been conditioned to feel when it’s around Archer. It’s used to hurt, to always being on defense for whatever words or looks he’s going to sling my way, but it also remembers the smiles and camaraderie of those early college years.
“You did a good job.” He leans down to meet my eyes with a smile on his face.
Blinking away the tears, I look up at him, confused by the proud look in his eyes. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. I bet that was the first shelf you’ve ever put together, right?”
I gnaw on my bottom lip, forcing myself to keep eye contact instead of looking at my shoes. “Yeah, it’s terrible.”
He walks over to it and knocks on the side. It wobbles, and Archer shrugs like it’s no big deal. Like if I put mugs inside it, they wouldn’t topple to the ground or knock a patron on their head, effectively landing me with worse luck than I’ve been dealt.
“It needs a few more screws, but it’s good.” He walks over to the toolbox and pulls out a cordless drill and screws. “Come help me.”
Uneasy, I trudge over to the other side of the wonky shelf.
He shows me where to place my hands. “Let’s move it closer to the wall and I’ll screw it in. ”
My eyes catch on the cords of his biceps tensing as he lifts the side. I tear my eyes away, confused by the weird flip inside my stomach. The moment we lift, the boards shift, slamming onto one another before the entire thing caves and comes apart.
Nervous laughter bubbles out of me. “See what I mean?”
Archer tries to stop himself from laughing, but he doesn’t succeed. His laugh is loud, hearty, but it’s cut off before I have a chance to really enjoy it, almost like he hasn’t laughed in so long that he’s truly surprised by the sound.
“Probably a manufacturer’s defect.” He gives me a half-smile, rubbing the back of his neck as he kicks around the boards.
“More like a user error.”
“Come on, Til.” He reaches out for me but must think better of it because he pulls his arm back as quick as he offered it.
He doesn’t know my body now craves the same touch he’s denying me. A touch I shouldn’t want from my husband’s best friend. It’s a headspin I’ve yet to understand, no matter how many times my therapist tells me it’s normal, that I can crave touch yet feel disgusted by the thought of it too.
I haven’t so much as batted an eye at anyone except Henry Cavill in his Witcher get-up, so why is Archer the first person I’ve wanted to touch me?
My therapist urged me to try cuddle parties, which are popular in the grief community for those with touch starvation, but I couldn’t go. Laying down with someone for a certain amount of time just to curb the skin hunger didn’t sound fun to me. If I couldn’t even deal with familiar touch, how would I respond to a stranger holding me without bursting into tears ?
I blow out a breath and rub my arms for comfort. “Yeah, maybe the screws they sent weren’t long enough.”
“That’s the spirit,” he says, neatly piling all the boards onto one another. “Now let’s get this shelf back together.”
I nod but can’t find the motivation to start again. Spending all night split between missing Jessie and wishing it was us doing this together and watching how-to videos zapped every ounce of energy. What happens when we inevitably butt heads again? Will we be able to play nice? Or is our deadline going to come quicker than we’re able to hash out the issues between us?