CHAPTER ONE
The truck died at mile marker 47, which Ivy chose to take as a sign that the universe had a sense of humor.
Her third-hand, pink-painted food truck coasted to the gravel shoulder. The engine gave one last wheeze of protest before going silent. She sat for a moment with both hands on the wheel, looking at the flat stretch of two-lane highway ahead of her. Cornfields on the left. Wheat fields on the right. And cows, endless spots of grazing cows.
On the dashboard, the oil light was on. Ivy had absolutely known the oil light was on. She had looked at it twice since Evansville and decided it was a personality trait rather than an emergency.
She picked up her phone. There was exactly one correct response to this situation, and that was to document it. She pulled up the vlog app and flipped her camera into selfie mode.
"Good morning, hungry people. It is approximately — "she checked the clock on the dash — "nine forty-seven a.m. on what was supposed to be the triumphant homecoming Chapter of my life, and Sugar & Spite has broken down on Highway 41, approximately — " she glanced at the marker — "three milesoutside of my hometown of Valor. The truck that I have put six months, half of my savings account, and frankly a significant portion of my self-worth into has chosen this morning to throw a tantrum."
She turned the camera to show the dashboard, the orange oil light glowing serenely.
"That's the oil light. I know what that means. Well." She turned the camera back to herself. "I know that means bad news. The good news is — " she swung her door open and climbed out, keeping the camera rolling, walking around to pop the hood — "I am a woman with a roadside assistance app, a can-do attitude, and — " she propped the hood open and pointed the camera at the engine, which looked like every engine she had ever seen, which was to say: unknowable — "absolutely no idea what I'm looking for."
She heard the truck before she saw it. A dark pickup slowed as it came alongside her. She lifted a hand. The truck kept moving.
She dropped the hand. Put a fist on her hip.
The truck's brake lights came on.
It reversed.
The driver's side window was already down. The man looking out at her was broad-shouldered, wearing a worn canvas hat pushed back on his head, and frowning at the phone in her hand the way a person might frown at a small animal they suspected of biting. She could see a jaw that looked like it had been installed primarily for structural purposes, and the kind of forearms that come from actual work rather than a gym membership. He was, objectively, the most handsome man she'd seen in at least two years.
He was also clearly annoyed.
"Hi," she said.
He looked at her pink food truck. Then the propped hood. Then back at her.
"Oil light," she offered.
He climbed out without a word. He walked to the front of the truck, leaned over the engine, and pulled the dipstick with one practiced motion. He examined it. He set it back. He looked at her with an expression that communicated disappointment in the general state of automotive maintenance.
He went back to his truck, pulled a quart of oil from somewhere behind the seat like a man who simply traveled with engine oil as a matter of course, and returned.
Ivy discreetly filmed his hands while he worked. There was something extremely economical about how he moved, like every gesture had been edited down to its essential version and the rest discarded. He filled the oil. He recapped it. He closed the hood.
"Try it," he said. First words. Low voice, flat affect, the accent of someone who hadn't grown up here.
Ivy got in and turned the key. The engine caught on the first try, running smooth and completely unbothered, as if it had simply needed an audience to malfunction in front of. When she climbed back out, he was already moving toward his truck.
"Thank you," she called. "Seriously. You just — thank you, I was…"
He raised a hand without turning around. Got into his truck. Pulled back onto the highway.
She stood there with her phone still running, filming his tailgate until his truck rounded a curve and disappeared. And then she stood there for another five seconds, looking at the empty road.
"Okay," she said to the camera, to the cornfields, to the general universe. "If this were the beginning of a romcom, I'd say that was the meet-cute. Total grumpy sunshine vibes. But I'mnot here to fall in love, people. I'm here to bake my little heart out."
She titled the clipA Grumpy Farmer Saved My Life And Didn't Say Hiand posted it. By the time she'd parked in the lot behind the Valor Community Center to check in for the Farmers & Food Truck Rally, the view count was already at four thousand and climbing.
Valor looked the way it always had. The square had the same three-story brick buildings. The diner hadn’t changed, and no doubt still had a picture of her as a baby and her parents hanging on the wall, but she had no memories of ever eating there. The hardware store still had a wooden porch. There was a new coffee shop and a mural on the side of the old feed store that hadn't been there before. And a new bookshop with a pretty window display that included a live cat napping in the window.
She'd left Valor at eighteen with the energy of a person discarding a sweater that had never fit. She'd applied to every culinary program and food writing internship within eight hundred miles. And spent the subsequent decade in various states ofalmost-having-it. Chicago for three years. A stint in Nashville because of Devon. Back to Chicago. She had launched the blog in a New York City studio apartment she couldn't afford, writing about a single girl eating alone in a city, which had turned out to be extremely relatable content.
Then Devon had offered her what looked like the next step — a contributing position atPlate, his magazine, her work folded neatly into his platform — and she had almost done it, had stood at the exact edge of doing it, and had understood something at the last moment. That the price of the step was becoming a supporting character in someone else's story. That she'd been working toward Devon's version of her success, not her own.
