The Rival Baker Shared My Oven, So the Whole Town Watched Us Pretend to Hate Each Other novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Curtain
Pauline had said no tips, but she had said nothing at all about insults.
On Tuesday morning we hung the checkered tablecloth back across the Back Room.
I took the steel table, and he took the bench.
Nothing passed over that cloth for two days but Tab 12.
"Your honey is shy," said Soren, from the other side.
"Is that a tip?"
"It's an observation. It's hiding in the rhubarb."
I added a spoonful of honey.
"Your crumb is a fraud," I said.
"That's slander."
"It's a fraud at the corners."
There was a long, offended silence, and then the sound of a knife trimming dough.
By Wednesday afternoon we had insulted each other into two much better kringles.
At two o'clock I heard a spoon stop moving.
"Vinter?"
"Do not come around the cloth."
"What happened?"
"I have made a pickle," he said, in a hollow voice.
I came around the cloth.
He sat on the bench holding a bowl of orange peel, cherries and bitters.
He held it out in front of him.
He had slept four hours in three days.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Rival Baker Shared My Oven, So the Whole Town Watched Us Pretend to Hate Each Other are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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