You’re too hard on her, Meg said in my head.

“Amy is the pretty one,” I said. “Very talented. She’s doing an internship with Louis Vuitton.”

Not that I was jealous. I could have gone to Europe. I’d come to New York to become a writer instead.

But Amy had never had to make that choice. It seemed my baby sister had it all, the glamorous travel and the fabulous career.

Fine. Maybe I was a little jealous.

“Your sister is the pretty one,” Chef said in an odd voice.

“Well, yeah.”

The eyebrows rose. “And what are you?”

My brain froze. Was he implying . . . Did he think I was pretty? I reached up and tightened my ponytail. “I’m the . . .” Smart one, I almost said, out of habit. Except, look at me. I wasn’t anywhere close to the five-year plan I’d made my senior year of college. My time was running out, and all I had to show for it was a half-baked collection of random reviews, recipes, and rejection letters. My graduate school project—“consisting of a substantial piece of writing,” a collection of coming-of-age stories set in Bunyan—had been judged adequate to receive my degree but ultimately too “immature” to merit special praise or attention. I’d been let go from my newspaper job. Did New York need another food blog? No. Everything was happening on Instagram now anyway. Pictures, rather than words. But writing was all I knew how to do. Writing and cooking. And I wasn’t that great a cook.

“I’m the one who talks too much,” I said.

He put back his head and laughed. He had a great laugh. Against the darkness of his heavy stubble, his teeth looked very white. His throat was smooth and strong.

Yep. I was definitely feeling some feelings. Me. For my at-least-a-decade-older-than-me divorced boss. Not smart at all.

He held my gaze, that little smile tugging his mouth. My heart beat faster. Maybe . . . Was it possible that he felt something, too? Maybe with a little encouragement, he would ask me . . . What? To breakfast. For a drink after work. For sex.

His lips were moving, forming actual words, but my blood was pounding so hard I didn’t hear them.

“What?” I asked.

“Why did you move to New York?” he repeated patiently.

I got a fellowship at NYU, I almost blurted. And then I was a lifestyle reporter. It wasn’t exactly a secret. I’d listed my former employment on my job application. But Chef had probably never called my editor for a reference, maybe never even read my résumé. In the kitchen hierarchy, I wasn’t that important. I shrugged. “You know what they say. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”

“There are other places for a chef to get training.”

There were other places to be a writer, too. But after I was downsized, moving away felt like giving up. Felt like failure.

“You’re here,” I pointed out.