“You could be a star.” My voice echoes down the hall. From the corner of my eye someone moves, freezes.

“Maybe I don’t want to be a star.” Her tears fall. I track each one because I’m the person that put them there. “Maybe the only Hollywood I wanted, was to be yours.”

My escape plan is unnecessary because Sophie moves quickly, pushing past me and running down the hall, past Maggie frozen in the doorway. She runs through the back doorway and is gone.

Chapter Twenty-One

Sophie

After Paul and I broke up I lost something. An indefinable something that made me a good chef. I spent my hours in the kitchen trying to play catch-up but always falling a little bit short.

That’s not what this feels like. After I left earlier today, I drove around for a while, until my face was so tight and my head ached from crying so hard I had to go home and shower. I changed and lay on my couch, Fifi purring on my chest, until the absolute last minute. Then I came here.

Amy has spent all her time in the office or at the hostess stand. Maggie has sent concerned glances my way every thirty seconds or so. I cook. When I’m cooking, it doesn’t feel so much like I’ve lost an unidentifiable thing, some spark that I can’t catch. As I chop and sauté, plate and garnish, nothing is lost. I know exactly what to do and how to do it, and I even get it out on time.

I just...don’t care. I haven’t lost something. I’ve lost everything. I’m numb.

“You okay, chef?” Jameela asks. I look over at her, suddenly aware of the knife in my hand, the mushrooms on my chopping board.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m fine.”

I am. I am fine. I’m fine with this. I’m fine with the way Amy’s hunched over that hostess stand like a dragon protecting a stash of gold. I’m fine with how she hasn’t looked me in the eye since I left. I don’t really feel anything at all. It’s kind of nice, after feeling too much, too strongly, too soon, for so long.

It’s nice to not have to care so much about this job, to not have to worry that I’m doing it well. It’s like going on a little brain vacation even though I’m here. At work. With the woman I love. And she dumped me. So I could take a job I don’t want.

Because if I had to feel that? Any of it. It would fucking suck.

“Chef?” Jameela asks again.

“Sorry.” I look over and smile, pick up my knife and start chopping the mushrooms left on the board. “Fine,” I say. “I’m fine.”

Jameela’s face falls along with her gaze. I follow it to my hands, my knife, my mushrooms. I must be really numb. Well and truly numb. Because my first thought is mushrooms don’t bleed. And then, so whose blood is that? And finally, oh it’s mine.