Tell Me Not to Love You novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Four A.M.

Garrick turns up at the bakery before dawn and asks again with a new reason, and Blythe makes a scene in front of the morning queue; he leaves her a midnight meeting at the boathouse.

At four the next morning the bakery was warm and dark and smelled like rye.

I was folding dough on the steel table with my sleeves shoved to the elbow when the bell over the front door rang.

The shop did not open until six.

I had locked that door myself.

"The owner gave me a key," Garrick said from the doorway. "He said anyone who wants bread that badly should be allowed to stand there."

He wore a plain grey sweater and no coat, and he looked like he hadn't slept.

"You told a room full of people you weren't engaged," I said, not looking up. "In front of my mother."

"Yes."

"Without saying why."

"I didn't say your name," he said. "I decided that was yours to say or not."

I pressed the heel of my hand into the dough harder than it needed.

"It was a decent thing to do," I admitted. "It doesn't help me."

He walked around the end of the counter and stopped a careful arm's length from the table.

"What does help you?"

"Not being talked about."

"Then I'll buy one loaf of bread like a stranger," he said, "and I'll go."

I pulled a seeded loaf off the cooling rack and put it in a paper bag without wrapping it.

He paid with a ten and didn't wait for change.

"I'm asking you to dinner," he said.

"No."

"Because I haven't eaten a meal in two years with someone who wanted nothing from me."

"That is a very sad sentence."

"It's the new reason," he said. "The old one was that I like how you argue."

I almost laughed, and I hated that I almost did.

"Here is what I want," I said.

"You don't come to the gatehouse. You don't talk to my mother about me. You don't use your name to get me anything."

"Done."

"And you don't ask me in front of people."

"Done."

"Is there anything else you'll agree to without a fight?"

"Not much," he said. "I'm a pushover. It's my worst quality."

"You're very persistent for a pushover."

"I'm obedient," he said, "and persistent. They're different."

He put the loaf under his arm and went out into the dark, and the bell rang behind him.

By seven the line stretched to the door.

I was at the counter in a clean apron, bagging croissants for the school-run mothers.

Three women came in on a gust of cold air.

Blythe was in the middle, in white, with a friend on each side holding their phones loosely at hip height.

The line went quiet.

"Good morning," Blythe said, bright as a bell. "Twelve of the almond croissants, please."

I boxed them.

She watched my hands.

"I'm just curious," she said, loud enough for the back of the shop. "Which one of you is sleeping with my fiance?"

Someone in line set down their coffee.

"I don't know what you mean," I said.

"He left the house at three forty.

His car sat on Deerpath for forty minutes. This is the only thing open on Deerpath at that hour."

She looked around, enjoying herself.

"So someone behind this counter is a very early riser."

A woman in a quilted vest stepped out of the line.

"Honey, that's Solveig. She makes the bread you're about to eat."

"I'm sure she's wonderful," Blythe said. "I'm sure she's wonderful at everything."

"Nobody in this shop is sleeping with a man who told his own breakfast room he isn't engaged," I said evenly.

"Nine dollars a dozen, and I need you to pay for them."

Her friends giggled.

Blythe pulled a hundred out of her wallet and laid it flat beside the box.

"Keep it, sweetie. For the help."

I slid it back across the counter with two fingers.

"Tips go in the jar."

The owner had come out from the back, wiping his hands on a towel, his face as flat as a plate.

"Ma'am," he said, "you're welcome to order or leave."

Blythe looked at the line, and at the phones that had come up around the room.

For one second the sweet came off her face, and I saw what was underneath.

Then she put the hundred in the tip jar herself and took the box.

"I do hope your mother's roof holds," she said, almost kindly, and walked out with a friend on each arm.

I wiped the counter with a hand I could not make steady.

When I moved the loaf rack, I found a folded slip of paper under it.

I had not put it there.

The handwriting was square and quick.

Midnight. The boathouse. Tell me no louder.

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