“Anyway, Nate isn’t the only possibility in town. Did you hear there’s a new restaurant opening up across from the library? A guy Lucy and I went to school with is a chef. Graham Barton. He’s coming back to town.”
“Graham?” I repeated, blood draining from my face. “Barton?”
Cara looked up from her macaron. “Yeah, have you met him? I don’t remember. Everyone is talking about it. I’m surprised you haven’t heard.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Okay, umm. Yeah.”
Graham was my ex. And it was a secret.
At one point in my life, I had wanted to be a chef. I even attended culinary school. But that ended when my relationship with Graham did. Then I moved to Honeybrook Hollow and took up the Coffee Cabin owning, barista life.
I opened my mouth to tell Cara—felt the words rise, press against my teeth, ready to spill out now that they were finally acknowledged even inside my own head.He wasn’t just someone I dated. He was someone who mattered. He was someone who hurt me.But the explanation snagged somewhere in my chest, tangled up with everything I’d never said out loud. Because telling her wouldn’t just mean admitting who Graham was to me. It would mean admitting who I’d been with him. The version of myself that learned to speak more quietly. To want less. To stop talking about food like it mattered, like it could be a future, instead of a hobby that took up too much space. He hadn’t told me outright to shrink—but somehow, over time, my ambition dulled, my joy in cooking dimmed, until I almost believed it had been silly to dream in the first place. Saying his name out loud felt like handing over that version of myself too, the one who’d let someone take something she loved and convince her it was indulgent, unnecessary, embarrassing. I closed my mouth instead. Some things still felt too raw to give away. Like if I said it out loud, I’d have to admit how deeply he’d gotten in—and how hard I’d worked to build myself back without anyone watching.
The words didn’t come. It felt too pathetic—like admitting I’d let someone take away the part of me that once definedme. They knew I’d gone through a breakup, just not with whom.
Memories flashed through my mind. How he used to call me “kiddo” in public and “unambitious” in private. How he’d sampled every meal I made with a smug smirk and a comment like,“Not bad. But not ready for prime time.”
He was the reason I stopped cooking. I’d loved it once. I had dreams of opening my own place, or maybe writing a cookbook, or starting a YouTube cooking channel. I wanted to create dishes that made people feel something nostalgic, or homey, or comforting. But after Graham, the kitchen became another place where I got things wrong.
I was the sous chef to his head chef. His employee. His protégé. His hero-worshipping ex-girlfriend. His dirty little secret. No one knew what truly happened between us when I worked for him. That was the way he wanted it. And I had agreed to everything—the secrets, the sneaking around, the lies. He was older—in every way that mattered: age, experience, status. At first, he made me feel seen, but it quickly turned into making me feel small.
I knew he was from Honeybrook Hollow, but I foolishly never put the pieces together and realized he was the same age as Cara and Lucy. God, I was so stupid, of course they knew him.
“He’s coming back to town?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “To stay?”
Cara nodded. “Yeah, and apparently the food’s going to be amazing. He trained in Paris or something.” I knew he did. He talked about it all the time. I couldn’t even count on both hands all the times he’d start a sentence with“When I was in Paris…”Ugh.
“Yeah, I mean, yeah,” I mumbled, for lack of something better to say. “That’s great.”
“And just saying, Nate won’t be the only possibility in town anymore. Like, finding someone to date in a small town can be a real problem sometimes.” She gestured to herself with a thumb. “Exhibit A, am I right? I say go for it, keep your options open.”
“Absolutely not.” The words came out too fast, too sharp.
Cara blinked at me.
I tried to backpedal. “I mean—he’s not my type.” Which was technically true. I didn’t date men who once told me I wastoo emotionalabout crème brûléeanymore.
“Okay. I’ll quit trying to fix you up,” she said as she studied my face. “Maybe you’re not ready to get back out there. Do you want to talk about your breakup? It’s been over a year. It might help to get it out, you know, talk it through. Keeping things bottled up inside is never a good idea?—”
“I’m sorry I snapped at you.” I swallowed hard. “I’m gonna go feed the espresso machine before it goes on strike.”
Cara blinked. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I grabbed a bag of beans and got to work. “Totally fine.”
Eventually, she left with a hug and a promise to text me later, and I closed up the Coffee Cabin by myself. The last car in the drive-thru had ordered two mochas—one decaf, one full throttle—and a dozen cake pops—typical Thursday.
By the time I was ready to close up, the sky had turned lavender-gray, and the lights of my grandparents’ inn, The Honeybrook—named after the town, of course—twinkled across the parking lot. Every time I visited here as a kid, I cried when it was time to go home. I would have given anything to stay with my grandparents instead of my father, who was more focused on networking events than being a parent, and my mother, who treated my emotions like mildly inconvenient side effects to having a daughter.
After shutting off the espresso machine, I finished cleaning up silently, letting the hum of the refrigerator fill the empty shop. The place always felt different after closing—quieter, lonelier, but it also felt safe in a way that made me linger. I counted the cash drawer twice, just to distract myself, then slipped into my jacket and braved the cold.
My old Volkswagen Beetle wheezed to life like a tired asthmatic bumblebee, but it got me home. My townhouse wasn’t much—small, a little drafty, mildly run down—but it was mine, and that was all that mattered to me.
My stomach twisted into knots as I drove.
I hadn’t seen Graham since the day I walked out of his downtown Portland condo and left behind the last recipe I ever created.
He used to say I had a “natural touch” in the kitchen, that my food “tasted like memories.” But then he’d follow it with a sneer or a backhanded compliment. By the end, I couldn’t tell whether he hated my cooking or just hated that I loved something besides him.
