Page 35 of Cooking Up My Comeback

For a second, I almost reach out to tuck it behind her ear. Almost. But something in her expression stops me—a wariness that reminds me we’re still figuring out what this is between us. Professional partnership. Personal interest. Both. Neither.

I take a step back instead, giving us both some breathing room.

“So what do you think?” I ask. “Could you see yourself working here?”

She looks around the space one more time, and I can practically see her imagining it filled with people, alive with conversation and the sound of sizzling pans.

“Maybe,” she says finally. “If we do this—and I’m not saying yes yet—but if we do this, I want to call it The Salty Pearl.”

“The Salty Pearl,” I repeat, testing the words. They feel right somehow. Coastal but not touristy. Personal but not precious.

“After my grandmother. Pearl.” Her voice softens. “She taught me everything I know about cooking. About making people feel welcome. This place... it should honor that legacy.”

And there it is. The moment I understand that this isn’t just about a business opportunity for her. She’s not just considering a job or a partnership. She’s thinking about building something that connects her past to her future.

“The Salty Pearl,” I say again. “I like it.”

We stand there for another moment, the weight of possibility hanging between us like something fragile.

“I should go,” she says finally. “Let you get back to your plumbing disaster.”

“Right. The pipe situation is getting personal at this point.”

She heads toward the door, then pauses. “Brett?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For this. For... seeing potential in me that I forgot was there.”

And then she’s gone, leaving me alone with the smell of sawdust and the growing certainty that I just watched my future walk out the door.

The problem is, I’m not sure if that future involves her saying yes to the partnership, or if it involves mefinally learning how to stay in one place long enough to find out what I’m actually building.

But for the first time in years, I want to stick around long enough to find out.

Even if—especially if—it scares the hell out of me.

NINE

AMBER

I’m standing in my kitchen at five-thirty in the morning, staring at Grandma’s tin like it might suddenly start dispensing life advice along with her famous biscuit recipe. The house is quiet except for the coffee maker gurgling to life and the distant sound of Mason talking to his stuffed dinosaurs about their “important mission to Mars.”

I’ve been awake since four, which is either a sign that I’m losing my mind or that my subconscious has finally made a decision my conscious brain has been too scared to acknowledge.

Yesterday, standing in that gutted shell of a building with Brett, watching him spread blueprints across a sawdust-covered table and ask me what I wanted—not what I thought was practical or safe, but what I actually wanted—the ground shifted under my feet.

When I told him I wanted to call it The Salty Pearl, and he didn’t laugh or suggest it was too sentimental, when he just said he liked it like my grandmother’s memory was worth honoring... that’s when I knew.

This isn’t just about a job. This isn’t even just about finally opening my own restaurant. This is about becoming the person I was always supposed to be, before fear and failed marriages and broken equipment convinced me to settle for surviving instead of thriving.

I pour coffee into my favorite mug—the chipped ceramic one withChaos Coordinatorin fading letters that Tally found at a thrift shop—and open the recipe tin. Grandma’s handwriting stares back at me from dozens of index cards, each one a small piece of the woman who taught me that food is love made visible.

“What would you do, Grandma?” I whisper to the quiet kitchen.

But I already know what she’d say. She’d tell me to stop overthinking and start doing. She’d remind me that the biggest risk is not taking any risk at all. She’d probably also tell me that Brett Walker has nice shoulders and I should pay attention to more than just his construction skills.

She was practical like that.