And now here he was.
Offering it to me like it wasn’t the most intimate thing anyone had done for me in over a decade. I stared down at the crust, suddenly unsure if I wanted to laugh, cry, or crawl under the bar and scream into a towel.
The jukebox hummed in the background, softly looping through its endless playlist of ‘80s classics. The front of the bar was clean. All I had left to do was my weekly inventory. Everything was still. Quiet.
But inside me, everything was shifting.
He’d bakedthepie. His dad’s pie.For me.
He remembered. All of it.
And he didn’t bring it up like it was some clever trick or romantic ploy. He just set it down in front of me like it was obvious. Like feeding me comfort, and history was just what you did when your best friend needed a reminder of who they were.
I curled my fingers around the edge of the bar and took a slow breath. I didn’t know what this thing between us was yet. Not really. But I knew what that pie meant.
It meant he saw me.
It meant he remembered me—not just who I’d become after the divorce or the version of me that yelled at margarita machines and ran on coffee and stress—but the girl I used to be. The one who ate apple pie in his dad’s kitchen and told herself she wasn’t falling for her best friend, even back then.
And maybe that girl never really stopped.
Maybe she kept her feelings shoved into the back of her heart because she wouldn’t dare risk losing her very best friend, not after losing her dad. Not after losing Eli, then getting him back, then losing him again, then marrying his stupid ass. And especially, not after losing her belief that she could ever hold onto anything worth having.
I wouldn’t say it out loud. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But as I stood there in my empty bar, heart doing an offbeat drum solo in my chest and the taste of cinnamon still on my tongue, I let myself whisper it just once inside my head:
He brought me his dad’s pie.
That wasn’t nothing, it was everything.
Back to reality. I cleaned up my plate, boxed the pie back up, grabbed my laptop, and got to work. I used to dread inventory. Not because it was hard, but because it was always done in silence. Alone. After hours. I’d pace from shelf to shelf, counting liquor bottles and dry goods while trying not to let the empty space feel like a metaphor for my life.
Tonight was different.
Tonight, Hunter was here, sleeves rolled up, kneeling in front of my industrial freezer like some kind of off-duty, blue-collar romance novel cover model. And I was going from the front of the bar to the back, counting bottles of liquor and pretending I wasn’t distracted by the way his forearms flexed when he used a socket wrench.
Every so often, he’d mutter something under his breath—something about a stripped screw or a faulty something or other—and I’d make a noncommittal sound to disguise the way I was definitelynotimagining what it would be like to kiss him while he was covered in grease and nonjudgmental competence.
My head was a battlefield. One half screamingNope. Too soon. Absolutely not.The other whispering,but what if...
“I’m adding ‘professional freezer whisperer’ to my resume,” Hunter called out.
“You’re gonna need your own section on the town attractions website,” I called back. “Right next to the Honeybrook Inn and Larry the Llama from Lucy’s books.”
“Don’t forget local pie hero. Maybe I should enter the Harvest Festival baking competition.”
I snorted. “Modest, too.”
The door creaked, and I heard him walk into the main bar, wiping his hands on a rag. I didn’t turn around immediately. I crouched to count the backup cases of tonic water and told myself to focus. My pen hovered over the order sheet. “Huh,” I muttered.
“What?” he asked. “Something wrong?”
“We’re missing two bottles of Jameson. Jasper signed for them last week. Or at least that’s what my supplier emailed me.”
“Does the supplier ever mess up?”
“No. Not so far, anyway. I’ll figure it out. Never mind.”
When I stood, Hunter was leaning against the bar, his dark sweatshirt sleeves pushed to his elbows, wiping his hands on a rag.
