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One

A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness

—ELSA SCHIAPARELLI, FASHION DESIGNER

Slowly threading through the tables of the darkened restaurant, Nikki Caroing to cry, though the night’s last entree had been plated and served two hours before and the last patron escorted out the door thirty o For the final tireeting their partners as they were slid into their nightly resting place in the rack over the bar The kitchen’s enorh the dinner service were now clean, their steaer able to corkscrew the baby hairs that escaped her braids

Pausing beside a table, she tweaked a white linen napkin already folded in the signature Fle’s twist, ready for the next day’s dinner rush

The dinner rush Nikki wouldn’t be here to see, sweat over, or even swear about, as from now on a different sous-chef was responsible for the production of the restaurant’s elegant meals

Still, she wasn’t going to cry

After all, she’d been the one to turn in her resignation And she’d had plenty of ti the place where she’d worked since cooking school

Not to mention that she never cried—not since she was fourteen and her father told her at her irls didn’t do Don’t let anyone think you’re weak

At the locked door of the eather her things and head home, she keyed in the pass code and then pushed it open

“Surprise!”

Startled, Nikki took an instinctive step back and felt that fa alht for balance The small crowd in the rooed inside

Colleen, the youngest rinned at her “You didn’t think ere going to let you go quietly, did you?”

Nikki had really hoped so She didn’t kno

But slices of the pastry chef’s celebrated Chocolate Can’t Kill You cake were already set on a rolling cart beside charizzled Joe and his baby-faced sidekick, Carlos, passed out forks Colleen danced around with the chane

“To Nikki!” she finally said

And everyone there, from the bartender, to the waitstaff, to her favorite prep cook who must have made a return trip just for the occasion, echoed the words, their glasses held high The enthusiastic goodwill surprised Nikki all over again She’d inherited her keep-your-distance DNA froet too friendly with people, not even coworkers

In the convivial ath the next few ne she hoped would work like ibuprofen Then Colleen asked her about her future plans

“Do you have your next chef job lined up? You said you had prospects”

It took a moment for Nikki to clear her throat of her latest s and her sudden aardness “Not, uh those prospects”

“I have a friend—”

“What about—”

“Why not—”

The roo a polite s Fleayptian to a place that touted a Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine

That last gave her pause Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine What would that be, exactly? Reuben sandwiches?

After the cake and chane were consumed, the ishers walked her out to her car She was forced to s for the crowd she had two cos She’d never wanted pity, or worse, the inevitable questions: Why not see a surgeon? Surely so to happen

Once home, in the smallest rented condo Santa Monica had to offer, she called out, “Fish, I’ of frozen baby peas and a week’s worth of unopened h of relief, she perched on the recliner in the living roo a laoldfish bowl

Nikki switched on the light to cheer the early AM gloo, Fish?”