Page 20

It was the end of another night at Mirepoix, and Sullivan was in and out of the refrigerator rotating inventory, first in, first out. From across the line stations, Opal gave her a look.

“I know. I know,” Sullivan mumbled. “Blake?”

Blake dropped his phone on the stainless steel counter, then pushed it behind a stockpot, which did nothing to hide his guilt.

“Outside. We need to talk.” Tonight was the night Sullivan fired him. She really would do it this time.

Behind the restaurant, the Bois rested in darkness, the quiet interrupted by lugubrious howling.

Kia would probably think it was wolves… or werewolves.

Sullivan shook her head remembering the horror with which Kia had pronounced the word snakes , shivering as though one were crawling on her at that very moment.

Sullivan hadn’t laughed. It was a real fear. It had still been comically endearing.

Blake began apologizing before they’d had a chance to sit down on one of the outside dining tables.

“I know I shouldn’t have been on my phone.” Apologies poured out of him. “But people were talking shit about Mickey on Insta,” the boy pleaded.

Mickey was his pit bull mastiff mix, which was currently howling his loneliness from the back of Blake’s pickup.

“People were saying pit bulls are vicious and Mickey should be put down.”

Mickey was as vicious as a bag of cotton balls and about as smart.

Social media did this. Some jerk online took twenty seconds to bash pit bulls, and this kid would risk his job to defend the dumb bag of cotton balls.

He was lucky. Some jerk trolled his dog; Sullivan’s girlfriend had turned their life into a stage play.

Blake must have seen the look on her face, because his words came like a dam breaking.

“Are you firing me? Please don’t. I’ll be better.”

She had to fire him, but she didn’t have the energy tonight.

She’d been thinking about losing the Bois.

Living with Kia was fine right now. She’d expected Kia to be a presence, to leave glittery clothes on the bathroom floor and pools of corn syrup on the stove, but Kia was immaculately tidy, quiet, and often gone.

But eventually Kia would hire loggers, and the Bois would be decimated.

Trees turned into scrap lumber. Every time she thought about it, she wanted to cry.

“This is your last chance. Now take Mickey home before he pisses off the whole neighborhood.”

“Didn’t do it, did you?” Opal said when Sullivan returned to the kitchen for a final check.

Sullivan shook her head.

“Let me know if you want me to.” Opal was everyone’s loving coach, but like a good coach, she could do what had to be done.

“I have to do it. It’s my job.”

The walk home through the Bois would have made her feel better, except that walk was a funeral procession. There was the fir tree shaped like a tuning fork. There was the stand of holly planted by some past gardener. All gone in a year.

She sighed when she saw the lights on in the kitchen at home. She didn’t feel like making polite conversation. She considered sneaking in the back door, but she’d scare the shit out of Kia when Kia realized someone was in the house.

“I’m home,” Sullivan called out as she entered.

Kia stood at the stove in one of Sullivan’s aprons, her hair swooped up in a purple scarf, defying gravity with its height.

Two eggs sizzled on the stovetop griddle, their yolks shimmering wet like she’d cracked them the moment Sullivan put her key in the lock.

Kia turned to face her, arms at her sides, centered perfectly in front of the stove like a Wes Anderson film.

“I made you a breakfast sandwich.” Kia nervously twirled the spatula she was holding.

The smell of frying onions reminded Sullivan that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

Kia flipped the eggs, buttered some English muffins that had been grilling alongside them, delivered the eggs to the muffins, closed the sandwiches, and produced two nests of caramel-colored hash browns. All with one movement like fast culinary tai chi.

“You never ate when we were in school. You’d make all this great food and leave it for everyone else. And then you’d get a breakfast sandwich at Ravi’s Deli.” Kia must have sensed Sullivan’s dour mood. Kia’s words came out in a rush as fast as Blake’s apologies.

Kia pushed a plate across the kitchen island. The over easy eggs looked hopeful gazing up at Sullivan.

“That’s sweet, but I’ve had a long day. I’m just going to grab a protein bar.”

Sullivan got a box of cricket-flour protein bars out of the cupboard. Kia snatched the box away.

“I can’t let you eat these.”

“Insects are sustainable.”

“Crickets are fine.” Kia waved the box. “Deep-fry them, and they’re Cheetos of the land. But I tasted these, Sullivan, I can’t let you eat them. They taste like sad dirt.”

“I had a sad dirt kind of day.”

“Want to talk about it?” Kia pushed the plate an inch closer to Sullivan.

Sullivan gave in. The cricket bars did taste like sad dirt.

“I have to fire someone.” Sullivan sat down and took a bite of the sandwich.

The yolk broke against the buttered muffin. The crunch of hash browns nodded to the russet in one direction and the potato chip in the other. The pendant light over the kitchen island cast a warm circle around them.

“What happened?”

“My intern prep cook. He’s on his phone all the time, posting on his dog’s social media. He’s had a tough life—he needs that job—but it’s a small staff. We have to be able to count on each other.”

This was the part where Kia told her about the importance of mentoring young chefs or not following a corporate model or how Kia would give a kid like that a food truck to run.

“Sometimes you have to fire people, and when you do, you’re going to be kind. You always are.” Kia looked sincere. “You didn’t leave me lying in the mud. You saved my ass so many times in school.”

Sullivan took another bite. The sandwich tasted exactly like the ones she’d bought at Ravi’s Deli back in New York.

For a moment, she was walking out of the practice kitchen into the darkness of February or bright threads of daylight in June.

Sunlight filtering through the flyers on the window of the deli.

Still grinning about some comment she and Kia had riffed on all night.

“What would you do?” Sullivan asked.

“I never work with anyone long enough to have to fire them, but I think I’d take his phone, tell him to delete the dog’s profile, and, if that didn’t work, fire his ass.”

Sullivan’s own laugh surprised her.

“What about supporting young professionals?”

“Young professionals stay the fuck off their phone when they have the opportunity to work with one of the best chefs in the country.”

Sullivan hid her smile behind another bite of her sandwich.

“Jackson, you’re slipping. What about your point six percent?”

Kia arched her back, the tower of her hair in its purple scarf lifting regally.

“I said one of the best chefs.”

And Sullivan remembered one of the things she had always appreciated about Kia: Kia could tease her, gloat, and talk shit, and it never made Sullivan feel small. Smack talk was something they did together, not something Kia did to her.

Days passed quietly and then it was Sunday morning, the day before their court date.

Tomorrow, Nina would clear everything up.

The case would be dismissed. Kia and Sullivan wouldn’t be a team anymore.

It’d be back to Kia the developer and Sullivan the small-business owner.

Even though they’d been friendly to each other, Sullivan would expect Kia to move out.

The thought swirled around Kia’s mind as she sat at the kitchen island trying to focus on her fans’ messages.

Deja and her AI social media program responded to comments, driving up engagement.

But Kia wanted to write back to as many personal messages as possible.

People shared their stories, their memories, their family recipes, and sometimes their grief.

I watch your reels when I’m in the hospital with my kiddo.

We cooked your Snickers potato pie at my gran’s funeral.

She couldn’t let AI reply with a generic Hope you’re doing well.

So she sat at the island in Sullivan’s microgreen-filled kitchen, her laptop and her special coffee in front of her, typing and typing.

Her neck ached and it was barely ten a.m. (Sullivan was still asleep, which was a charming surprise.

Kia expected her to be an up-at-six kind of person.) Kia sat back and stretched.

A confetti of early sunlight sparkled through the trees and the greens, casting dancing points of light on the blond wood cabinets.

Two colorful Turkish-cotton dish towels adorned the oven door.

After tomorrow, she might never sit here again.

Kia was wearing tight jeans and a Kia Gourmazing T-shirt, but the kitchen invited fluffy robes and slippers.

It felt like a home, like Old Girl and her father’s yacht except immovable and old.

Sullivan’s family had owned this house for generations.

Nicks in the hardwood could have been made by kids who’d grown up, lived their lives, and passed before Kia’s father had been born.

It’d be nice to live in a place like this with friends she saw every day.

“Morning.” A sleepy voice broke Kia out of her reverie. “What are you doing up?”

“It’s after ten.”

“How did that happen?” Sullivan sat down on an island stool across from Kia. She tugged at the cuffs of her pajama top (a subtle tan plaid, like Burberry without the red stripes).

Kia hopped up and turned the water boiler on for another pour-over. Without thinking, she put her hand on Sullivan’s shoulder.

“Don’t wake up too fast. You’ll hurt yourself.”

Sullivan rolled her eyes.

“How long have you been up?”

“Since five.”

“That’s obscene.” Sullivan laid her head on her crossed arms as though preparing to go back to sleep.