“I’m not the only one who thinks so,” he says to my back. I stop at the edge of the awning, the rain already soaking into the toes of my shoes. “She cries in the walk-in.”

I absolutely love it when men tell me things I already know.

“She’s always worried about her Instaspam.”

He knows exactly what social media platform he’s talking about, he just thinks he’s better than anyone with a profile.

“She can’t make a decision to save her life.”

“She made the decision to fire your ass,” I say, but only so I can hide the sinking feeling in my gut. My staff has lost confidence in their kitchen leader.

And so have I.

He shakes his head. “Whatever, Amy.”

“Goodbye, Chad.”

The restaurant seems even quieter since I ran out mere minutes ago. My head chef, Sophie, stands at the expo station. A lock of her auburn hair has fallen loose from the black bandanna around her head, and her face glows from the heat of the kitchen. The light makeup she wears to work has run, leaving her wide eyes with a smoky look. I nod to her and tell Maggie I’ll be back in a bit. I stomp—because it feels good despite being totally unprofessional—down the hall next to our open concept kitchen and the bathrooms and push through the door with a sign that reads Staff Only. I bypass the staff locker room and throw myself into a chair in my cramped office, kicking the door closed with my foot. I flip through my problems like my mom used to look for dinner inspiration in her Rolodex turned recipe book.

There are three unanswered texts from my brother on my phone but zero returned phone calls from my father.

After a year of success my dream restaurant is inexplicably tanking. We’re bleeding staff and customers.

Despite years of experience, I can’t find one surefire strategy to get more butts in seats.

There’s an unopened email in my inbox from the landlord and I know what it’s going to say. That I have three months to make up the rent owed, or we’re out.

And yet, like the losing end of a CW Network love triangle, the only thing I can think about is that lock of hair and how it stuck to Sophie’s lip, the way her hazel eyes only seem to get bigger and bigger when I walk toward her.

Sophie is my biggest problem of all.

Ever since I first watched her on the final episode of Pop-Up Kitchen, I’ve wanted to kiss Sophie Brunet. The idea of kissing her hooked me but watching her hold her own against the biggest asshole TV chef of our lifetime and a kitchen full of men made me want to take a chance on her. After watching the finale, I fell down a wormhole of past episodes, watching her skill and passion turned into easily consumable reality TV fodder. I scrolled through years’ worth of her Instagram grid until, stupidly, I felt like I knew her from the carefully curated snippets she gave followers, starting as a line cook at a five-star hotel in Montreal all the way to her job as a sous-chef at Table Hanover, her last job before she quit to join the cast of Pop-Up Kitchen.