Page 59 of How To Not Need You

“You’re a man.”

“I’m an honorary woman today.”

Harper laughs. The sound fills the half-finished bakery. Alexander squeezes her shoulder once, says something too low for the rest of us to catch, and then he’s heading for the door with a laugh of his own, stepping carefully around the drop cloths like a man who understands that some battles are not worth fighting.

The door closes behind him.

Natalie moves between tasks with energy. She stops beside the coffee machine, she runs a hand over the plastic wrapping, fingers tracing the shape of it through the cover, and her smile is small and private. “Matthew would’ve loved this. He’s obsessed with anything that has too many buttons. His coffee maker at home looks like it belongs in a spaceship. I swear he reads the manual for fun.”

Freya's drill stops. Just for a second, before it starts again.

Nobody says anything.

Natalie blinks, then points Harper's brush back towards the ceiling.

“You missed a spot.”

And just like that, we're moving again.

Freya finishes another bracket and moves on to the next without ceremony. Elsie intercepts a paint drip inches from the drop cloth and mutters “got it” under her breath with quiet triumph. Harper’s brush finds a better angle. The line along the ceiling starts to look like it might actually belong there.

I watch them from behind my roller. These women with their paint-streaked hair and their mismatched tools and their absolute refusal to let Natalie build this alone. This is what friendship looks like when nobody’s watching. Not the kind you post about. The kind that shows up on a Saturday morning with a power drill and a damp cloth and the willingness to get paint in places that will never come clean.

It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s exactly what this bakery needs.

I dip my roller and go back to the wall. The yellow spreads under the brush, covering the grey one stroke at a time. Behind me, someone laughs. Someone else argues about shelf placement. The drill whines. The bell above the door stays quiet. For now, this room belongs only to us.

And somewhere between the sawdust and the sugar smell and the sound of Natalie telling Luca to put the paintbrush down for the love of God, I realise I’m smiling at a wall and I don’t stop.

Natalie decided that the far wall needed a second coat, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her it absolutely did not. Natalie talks while she paints. The kind of easy, unfiltered chatter that comes from someone who’s comfortable enough to let her thoughts wander without editing them first.

She reloads her roller, drags it against the tray, and says, “Matthew and I painted his house when he bought it. He always said I painted too quickly. He’d go back over everything I did.”

The words come out fond. The way you’d mention a friend who’s just stepped out for coffee. “Drove me insane. I’d finish a wall and turn around and he’d be there with a brush, fixing edges I didn’t think needed fixing.”

Nobody responds. My roller keeps moving. Harper’s brush traces the ceiling trim. Elsie wipes a spot near the baseboard that was already clean.

Luca stares at the wall for a moment, one hand on his hip as he studies the fresh coat of yellow paint.

"You sure about this colour?" he asks. "It's very cheerful."

Natalie glances over her shoulder, with her roller still moving. "I love it."

"I'm just saying, once it's dry it'll be bright."

"That's the point."

Luca shrugs dramatically. "As long as you don't blind people."

She smiles and turns back to the wall. I turn back to my wall and almost jump as she starts to talk again.

"Matthew hates yellow, actually." I turn to her and see that her roller has paused and she looks sadder than she did a minute ago. "He says it reminds him of caution tape." She laughs softly. "I told him that's exactly the vibe I wanted. Warning: contains sugar."

“I actually like it,” Harper says.

Natalie smiles. “Me too.”

Harper’s brush has stopped moving too. She’s staring at the trim like it contains the answer to a question she hasn’t asked. Elsie finds something critically important to wipe near the electrical outlet. Luca, for once, says nothing.