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“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “Okay. That’s…great.”
They stared at each other, lapsing into an awkward silence, until something clanged to the tile in the kitchen, and her mom yelled out, “I’m fine! Just dropped a beater!”
“Are you looking for donuts?” Mira asked him. “Cupcakes? Perhaps a brioche or two?”
“It’s…Chrissy. She wanted a—”
“Pauly! I can’t believe this town still doesn’t have a Starbucks!”
Mira clutched the counter with both hands as Paul’s wife breezed in through the door. With wavy strawberry-blond hair and a smile like a literal ray of sunshine, Chrissy was radiant in head-to-toe green satin. Paul, Mira thought, could not have picked a woman more precisely, perfectly, specifically, not her.
Chrissy gasped, her freshly French-manicured hand landing on her chest. “You must be Mira! I have heard so much about you!”
Mira, at that moment, wished she was a turtle. How lucky they were, always having a place to hide. “I’ve heard so much about you too,” she said, trying to sound believable, trying to beat back the bitterness turning her stomach. It wasn’t Chrissy’s fault Paul had broken her heart. “What can I get for you?”
“I’d give my right arm for a decent Americano,” Chrissy moaned, throwing said arm dramatically onto the counter. “Pauly promises me you have the best in town.”
“Does he?” Mira raised a brow. “What a kind thing to say,Pauly.”
Closing his eyes for a long, tight-jawed blink, he said, “Make mine a decaf, please.”
Why was he here? Why was he in her bakery complimenting her coffee? Their breakup had been terribly amicable in the way adult breakups were, like the most devastating business transaction—they’d even shaken hands. Maybe she should have, but she’d never held it against him that he’d left. He’d never taken a blood oath to help her care for her mom while her mind slowly deteriorated. They’d only been together for a year. Plus, his toes were freakishly long, and he snored.Whatever.
“Two Americanos, one decaf,” she assured him with a raised finger. “Coming right up.” When she turned around, scooping grinds into the portafilter, Chrissy asked, “Are you going to the wedding too?”
Grounds scattered like dark-roasted snow onto the counter. Shewasgoing to the wedding, but unlike Chrissy and Paul and probably everyone else on the guest list, she was going alone, solo, sans date. Unless you counted the cake.
She didn’t want this to be happening. She didn’t want to be this person—this sad, single, fifty-year-old woman about to tell her ex and his gorgeous wife that she’d be going stag to the biggest wedding Red Falls had seen in years.
But, she thought, clicking the portafilter into the machine a little too hard,what if I don’t have to be that person?
What if she did have a date lined up? But maybe he’d get sick? Maybe he’d come down with food poisoning so he couldn’t actually go to the wedding? Paul and Chrissy would both be gone in a couple of days. Nobody would have to know her date wasn’t real. No harm, no foul.
“I’m going to the wedding.” Her lie dripped faster than the espresso. “With…my boyfriend.” It felt wrong coming out of her mouth, but right and wrong were only mental constructs. Survival was what mattered here.
“You are?” Paul asked while she poured their drinks. “Who is he? When did you meet? How long have you been—”
“We, uh, met a few months ago.” She set their to-go cups on the counter, avoiding eye contact with either of them. “He’s great. You’d like him.”
“That’s… Wow.”
Wow? That was his response? Whywow? Why was itwow-worthy that she had a boyfriend, even if he wasn’t real? “It’s not that groundbreaking, Paul. People meet new people every day.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said in the calm, level way he said nearly everything. Like when he’d saidI don’t think this is working anymore.“I’m just happy for you.”
“Thanks?” she offered, not sure how else to respond.
Abruptly, he perked up, an idea lightbulb blinking into existence above his head. “We should sit together at the wedding.”
Her eyes popped at the jump-scare. “Oh, uh,” she hedged, trying to come up with some plausible excuse as to why that could never happen. “He doesn’t actually like…sitting.”Jesus Christ.
“Sweetie, I’m sure she’ll be too busy.” Chrissy moved in closer, clinging to Paul like moss to a tree. “You’re making the wedding cake, right, Mira?”
“I am. But after I set it up, I’ll just be a wedding guest too,” Mira said, for some inexplicable reason. Why wasn’t she using Chrissy’s question as the obvious slam-dunk out it was? “I think sitting together sounds great.” What were the words coming out of her mouth and why wouldn’t they stop? “It’ll be great to catch up.”
The real Mira, the reasonable, rational Mira, disconnected from her body, floating above the counter in baffled mortification as the bizarro Mira below her continued making plans for her perfect ex-boyfriend to meet her nonexistent new one.
“That’s great,” Paul said, and when he added “it’s a date,” her soul crashed back into her body, her heart pounding, her brain screamingWhat the fuck?
