Sweaty, nervous, forgetful. I’ve been like this all week. Every spare moment my mind wanders back to stand in our kitchen, chest to chest with Amy. It’s why I’ve kept myself so busy, perfecting my plant-based poutine, preparing our audition for Cook for Camilla. I’ve even booked extra sessions with Natalie; there’s not a single muscle in my body that isn’t sore right now.

The casting call for Paul’s new show was a relatively simple form, not unlike the one I filled out two years ago for Pop-Up Kitchen, still buzzing at midnight from a busy dinner service. Straightforward questions like name of business, location, type of cuisine, number of seats. The call asked for photos, video, and a link to our website, so I spent an early afternoon playing with lighting and angles, trying to find the best ways to make Amy & May’s shine from my phone’s camera. Most importantly the call asked for an explanation of why we wanted to be on the show and it’s not like I can say, because we think it will help us make more money. At least not in such a direct way. But at least it was a great distraction from Amy’s peachy shampoo.

Every night for the past week, I’ve fallen asleep dissecting that smell, the exhaustion in my body and brain never heavy enough to pull me under in peace.

I can’t decide if I want to buy a bottle for myself or press my face into her collarbone again, if the smell is only that good because it’s attached to her.

“Right. You see...”

“I’m sorry.” He grimaces at the interruption. He slides his hand across the table but stops short of touching me. “Soph, are you okay? You seem a little...”

“A little what?”

“Not yourself.”

I laugh, flex my fingers around my mug. There are inches between us, but the gulf is insurmountable. Paul’s eyes are unreadable. My stomach sinks low into my yoga leggings. What if he thinks I’m here to...for...reconciliation?

“You have a new show,” I say.

He tips his head to the side. From one blink to the next, his face changes, his eyes shuttered.

I think I’m going to be sick. Oh god. He did think I was here to reconcile. I take a deep breath, staring at a fake knot in the fake wood table.

“Maybe the producers haven’t told you yet, but when Amy found out... She owns—”

He nods. “Your restaurant. I remember.”

Paul counseled me through the decision to accept her offer. Ultimately it was him who got me to sign on. He’d talked up how exciting it would be to be able to build my own menu, to start from scratch. How after Pop-Up Kitchen it would be my opportunity to spread my wings and show the culinary community my range.

Paul wanted me to counter Amy’s job offer with a proposal that included a cut of the restaurant. That’s how he got his start: he bought a small percentage of a viable business, then more and more until he was majority owner. I couldn’t afford it then, and he’d offered to help, but I wanted the first stakes I had in a business to be mine. Completely mine, but before this, before we started to tank, before I started to suck, it was a little pipe dream of mine, to own my own restaurant one day.