Page 94 of Fake it ’Til Fall

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.”