“We can argue in the car, but you need stitches now and I’m not wasting another second for your hand to get more fucked up.”

She pushes me through the back hallway door, stops outside the staff room to find my coat and throw it over my shoulders, ducks into the office to grab her own coat and keys.

“I want Jameela to take me,” I say. “Or Maggie.”

“You know they can’t. They have to stay here and run the kitchen and the floor.” She opens the back door and holds up her key fob. From outside, her car beeps, the lights flashing through the doorway.

My arm throbs, from hand to shoulder the muscles ache from keeping it elevated. Without Amy to put pressure on the wound, blood streams through the cloth. A deep, teeth gritting kind of pain pumping with my pulse. It hurts enough that I do as she says, walking out into the snow in my practical indoor work shoes, letting her open the passenger door for me and do up my seat belt.

“Why would you do this?” she says, as she jams her keys into the ignition. The engine squeals and she throws the car into reverse, maneuvering out of the cramped parking spot like she’s a Formula 1 racer.

“You think I did this on purpose?” I use the dashboard as a prop to hold my arm up, pressing my other hand against the wound hard enough to make me see stars, then backing off a little.

“I think you weren’t paying attention and you put yourself in danger.” She makes a wide turn onto the street, driving entirely too fast for the amount of snow coming down.

“Slow down,” I snap. “And why do you think that is? What could have possibly been preoccupying me?”

“I don’t like seeing you hurt,” she says, clenching her jaw. Her skin looks washed-out and pale, especially in the headlights of oncoming cars, the greens and reds of the traffic lights.

“And why do you care?” I ask again. My heart pounds too hard for someone with an open wound, but this pathetic part of me wants to hear it. I want to hear her say she cares because she loves me, too.

Amy glances at me and back at the road, once, twice. At some point my blood has landed on her, smeared against her cheek. The cuff of my jacket is soggy and cold. She can probably read the desperation on my face because in the span of a few short breaths her face changes from panicked to neutral, numb.

“Because you’re my head chef. I need your hands.”

The hand in question throbs again but then so does my chest. “No, you don’t.” My hurt at her words sounds angrier than I actually feel. I’m not angry at all. I’m sad and slowly going numb again. Numbness in my hand—which can’t be good—and in my head and in my heart. “If you needed these hands you wouldn’t have told me to take that job. You would have heard me when I said I wanted to stay and fight for this place. Our place.”