"Promise?"
I look at her. Flour in her hair. Exhaustion in her eyes. Smile playing at the corner of her mouth.
"Promise."
The tweet appears while I'm elbow-deep in the grease trap.
Maya's voice barrels through the kitchen. "Rogan. You need to see this."
"Can it wait? I'm literally scraping congealed fat out of a pipe."
"No." Her tone makes me look up. She's holding her phone like it might bite her. "It can't wait."
I dry my hands on a towel, cross to where she's standing. Ivy looks up from the walk-in where she's been organizing tomorrow's deliveries.
The phone screen glows accusatory.
@FoodieWanderer: Pine Hollow Bistro = amateur hour. Broken oven, deafening music, cold bread served like it's intentional. Avoid. 1/5 stars.
Below it, three retweets already. Five likes.
"Who the hell is FoodieWanderer?" I ask, scrolling through their profile. Twenty thousand followers. Recent posts from restaurants across the state, most of them tagged with critic-adjacent language and professional food photography.
"Influencer," Maya says. "Big one. She was at table nine. The blonde with the camera."
I remember her. Photographed every dish. Sent one back because the plating wasn't symmetrical. Left without saying a word.
"This is bad," Maya continues. "She's got reach. If this spreads?—"
"It won't." I'm already moving, brain shifting into damage control mode. "Where's my phone?"
"What are you going to do?" Ivy asks, emerging from the walk-in with a crate of carrots balanced on her hip.
"Fix it."
"You can't fix a review that's already posted."
"Watch me."
I find my phone, open the bistro's barely-used social media account. The profile picture is still my aunt's hand-drawn logo. Twelve followers. No posts.
Perfect blank canvas.
I start typing.
Hi @FoodieWanderer! You're right, tonight was chaos. Oven died at 5:43pm. We pivoted everything to stovetop. The bread? Yeah, that was desperate improvisation. But here's the thing about small-town cooking?—
I pause. Look up at Ivy, who's watching me with cautious curiosity.
"What would you say? About why tonight mattered even though it was a disaster?"
She sets the carrots down. "I wouldn't engage with a negative review on social media."
"That's not what I asked."
She tucks hair behind her ear. Thinks. "I'd say... that perfection is easy when you have resources. Adapting with whatyou have, feeding your neighbors even when everything goes wrong, that takes actual skill."
"That's good. Can I use it?"
