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“You will submit,” Chef Alice Sullivan said mildly, pushing her knuckles into the recalcitrant ciabatta dough, “to my superior strength and intelligence.”

Across from her, her childhood friends—Nina Hashim and Opal Griffith—had just sat down to mugs of fair trade Assam tea at Sullivan’s kitchen island.

Though rain was on the horizon, the early evening sunlight filtered through the Douglas firs in her backyard, illuminating the trays of microgreens in the windowsills. (She grew all her restaurant’s microgreens in her house.)

“You know there’s this thing called a…” Nina flourished acrylic nails that had never touched bread dough.

“You don’t even know what it’s called.” Opal was the sous-chef in Sullivan’s restaurant, Mirepoix du Bois. “Nina’s right though. You’ll give yourself carpal tunnel. Use the mixer.”

Sullivan’s hands ached from kneading, but it was good to feel the stick and pull of the notoriously hard-to-work-with dough.

“The more we do by hand, the smaller our carbon footprint.” Bands of gluten stuck to her fingers. “I know you think you can control this relationship.”

“Is she talking to us?” Nina asked.

“She’s talking to the dough.” Opal pushed her bright red glasses up her nose with her index finger. “They have a complicated relationship.”

“Drink your tea.” Sullivan tried to flick a bit of dough at Nina’s designer tracksuit, but the dough held her like quicksand.

“The goddess always protects me from uncooked evil,” Nina quipped as she whipped her curly hair back and forth. Each ringlet seemed to have a life of its own.

It was the perfect Sunday evening in May.

Sullivan’s high-end eco-restaurant, where she worked alongside Opal, was closed Sunday through Tuesday, so her weekend had barely begun.

Two more full days of hiking and testing low-waste recipes in her own kitchen lay ahead of her.

Her best friends gathered at the kitchen island for tea before they moved on to drinks at Opal’s favorite bar and Sullivan wandered through the urban forest to the Oakwood Heights Neighborhood Association meeting.

Not exactly a wild party, but a nice chance to reconnect with some neighbors she hadn’t seen in a while.

Evening sunlight dappled the ciabatta dough.

Often she forgot that May was close to the solstice.

It was usually so rainy it felt like an extension of winter, but not tonight.

Tonight felt like the beginning of summer.

“Check this out.” Opal reached into her Portland She-Pack women’s rugby satchel. “A Black woman won the American Fare Award. Youngest woman and the first food truck owner.”

“Ooh, shit,” Nina said. “Sullivan’s conniption fit in three, two, one.” She counted down on her fingers.

Food trucks were nomadic salt bombs, crawling across the country leaving plastic forks and environmental apocalypse in their wake. Sullivan pointed it out every time she saw one.

“She’s gotta be a rock star to get past that wall of prime-rib-loving white guys on the award committee.” Opal flashed the magazine cover in Sullivan’s direction.

Sullivan glanced at it for the second the magazine deserved.

The cover photo featured a woman with a loose Afro standing in front of a food truck.

(It was the hair Opal wanted but never had the patience to grow.) Turquoise sunglasses shaded the woman’s eyes, picking up the specks of turquoise on her splash-patterned overalls.

She beamed, raising both hands to form a heart.

Why did this talented Black woman have to destroy the earth with microplastics?

And of all the talented Black chefs, why did American Fare pick a food truck owner?

“It’s offensive,” Sullivan said.

“Because you didn’t win?” Nina asked.

“Because they didn’t pick Chef Gregory Bruselle of Maple Savor or any of the Renaud sisters or Tyron Hisaki.”

Opal opened the magazine and pushed it across the island toward Sullivan.

“They’re all old school. Look at her,” Opal said, her pointer finger stabbing the page. “She’s drippin’ style. Look at those glasses.”

Sullivan looked for real this time.

Behind the glasses.

Beneath the Afro.

Sullivan stopped kneading. And for a moment her friends and the dough and the sunlit microgreens disappeared. Sullivan was standing in the practice kitchen at the Jean Paul Molineux School of Culinary Arts. A fire she’d almost forgotten surged in her lungs.

“Kia. Fucking. Jackson. You little brat.”

The American Fare Award. Kia had gotten there first. Sullivan shook her head.

“You know her?” Nina asked. The definitely gold, not gold-plated, rings on her fingers gleamed brighter with surprise.

“We went to school together.”

Opal picked up the magazine again. “She’s the one you kissed!” She pumped her fist as though she’d just scored a winning try on the rugby pitch.

“I want to see.” Nina snatched the magazine out of Opal’s hands. Her voluminous mane of wavy hair swirled around her as she turned to look at Sullivan.

“The woman you kissed in front of the whole auditorium.” Nina nodded. “The one who beat you by point six percent.”

“Didn’t you say she was the best chef you’d worked with? I’m offended, by the way,” Opal said, not looking at all offended. “Kia was the one who got away.” She gave Nina a knowing look. “Sullivan had feelings for her.”

“Not like that.” Sullivan missed the look in Kia’s eyes when Kia realized Sullivan’s coq au vin beat hers hands down.

She missed Kia’s gloating grin when Kia’s mille-feuille had a million more feuilles than Sullivan’s.

Their competition had made Sullivan want to be better than Kia at everything Kia was great at.

But she hadn’t had those kind of feelings for her. “And it was one kiss.”

A lie.

She’d never told Nina and Opal about kissing in the practice kitchen after graduation or why, no matter how much she changed her dessert menu, she always featured the Golden Crisp Experience.

It was such a Mirepoix staple now, she’d almost forgotten that she first prepared it to tease Kia for her inexplicable love of the Rice Krispies treat.

Those kisses didn’t fit the story Sullivan told herself—and then told her friends—about that night.

The way she’d told the story, they’d competed, came in first and second, kissed once, and went their separate ways.

They’d had thousands of hours in the kitchen to figure out if they had romantic feelings for each other, and they didn’t.

They’d just been riding high on the night’s excitement.

It was a special night, but Sullivan was heading to Japan.

Kia was about to set off in a food truck.

(What a shame.) So Sullivan left the story at we kissed once .

She’d dropped the night of kissing and cooking out of the story when she told it to Opal and Nina.

Adding it later made it feel too momentous.

God, if Opal knew Sullivan and Kia had kissed more than once, she’d drag Sullivan to the American Fare Awards and ask Kia out for her. If she had to, Opal would send Kia a postcard reading Will you go out with my friend. Check this box. Yes No

“I respected her cooking, so I kissed her.”

Opal raised a naturally arched eyebrow. “As one does.”

Kia would be close to thirty now. Funny to think that twenty-year-old prodigy was a grown woman. If the magazine was any indicator, she still dressed like a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air rerun. And it was still cute.

Opal pushed her bright red glasses up again and read from the article. “ Kia Jackson, who goes by Kia Gourmazing— ”

“Gourmazing?” Sullivan rolled her eyes.

“—made her mark on the street food scene with the tursnicken, a take on the classic turducken. Instead of the usual turkey-duck-chicken combination, Jackson stuffs Snickers bars inside a whole chicken, inserts that into a turkey, and deep-fries. ‘It can be hard to find turkeys large enough,’ Jackson says, ‘but if I can’t find one through my regular vendors, there’s always a local farmer who can hook me up.

That’s a beautiful thing about America. We go big.

’ Jackson made her mark on the social media scene, jumping onto the newest social media platform U-Spin, and making it her own.

‘I love Insta and the classics,’ Jackson says, ‘but U-Spin is my new love.’”

“You should reach out,” Opal said, closing the magazine.

“Sullivan won’t eat at a food truck. She’s not going to date a food truck owner,” Nina said.

“I said reach out! Not date! Why do you think I’m always trying to set her up?” Opal’s freckles rearranged themselves to spell the word innocence .

“You’ve tried to set Sullivan up with every woman on your rugby team. And you said she has feelings for Kia.”

“ Had feelings,” Opal said.

“I did not have ‘feelings.’” Sullivan put feelings in air quotes.

“I didn’t try to hook her up with Megan,” Opal said to Nina, ignoring Sullivan. “Megan has a girlfriend.”

“Okay, you tried to set her up with the other four hundred women on your team,” Nina countered.

“Fifteen plus alternates,” Opal said firmly. “But you could rekindle your old flame if you wanted to.” Opal adjusted her glasses. “You own Mirepoix. You could get a ticket to the award ceremony.”

“They’d probably let you give a speech,” Nina added.

“You were friends,” Opal said. “It’d be nice.”

“It’d be weird.” Sullivan sank her knuckles into the dough.

“Or DM her and say, Congrats on American Fare ,” Opal suggested.

“You know I’m not on social media.”

Opal’s face softened. “You’ve got to get out there, buddy.”

“Just because Aubrey ate up your life with her stupid Instagram feed,” Nina added, “doesn’t mean you need to get off social media forever. Insta will always take you back.”