So this is it. This is how you fuck up your dream job. By serving the wrong ingredient to your boss, one of the best chefs on the west coast, an infamous perfectionist, before calling him an asshole to his face.

And now his narrow blue eyes are fixed on me like searchlights. That broad, handsome face that I suddenly, and all too late, recognize with full clarity. I’ve seen that face too many times to count, pointing at me from the covers of cookbooks or celebrity gossip magazines, or twisted with hellish anger as he chewed out chef trainees on TV—and now that same face is staring at me with judgmental amusement. I feel even more ridiculous and exposed for not realizing it was him, but that tailored suit and combed hair makes him look more like a laid back movie star than the sinewy-armed force of nature that spins and shouts around the kitchen on TV or escorts the hottest models and actresses all over L.A. on dates.

My heart sinks, my blood runs cold, and the realization that there’s no turning back now stretches the moment out to an eternity. Cole looks at me blankly, making it clear that it’s my move, so I do what I always do when the chips are down and I’ve made an idiot of myself: I turn my chin up, put my shoulders back, and stop giving a fuck.

“Well,” I say, pulling off my hairnet and letting my chin-length bob fall down around my face. “At least I can say I met the ‘great’ Cole Chambers.”

Before either Cole or Ryan can say anything else, I spin on my heel and march back toward the kitchen, already unbuttoning my chef whites. Striding through the plumes of steam, confused looks tossed at me by my fellow ex-colleagues, I grab my bag and take the rear exit like the building’s on fire.

For a moment, as I’m closing my car door and then reversing out into the street, I wonder if I’m being rash, running out like this. Then I remember the stories of how uncompromising Cole is, his insufferable attitude on TV, how many sacrifices and how few concessions he makes in search of great food. They say he fired somebody once for over-salting a whitefish filet, that he kicked out a customer who asked that his bouillabaisse come with the mussels de-shelled. There’s even a story that he ran seven miles in the rain so that he wouldn’t have to serve the wrong kind of apples in a tarte tatin.

I didn’t believe those stories, to be honest, but seeing him face-to-face, those keen eyes that sear through you like a cleaver, that hard, commanding face, those broad shoulders—it’s clear Cole is a guy who knows what he wants, and doesn’t settle for an inch less.

Besides, I’ve tasted failure too often now to mistake it.

Imagine the most exquisite, vibrant restaurant you can. Upscale, unique fittings built of reclaimed barnwoods, colorful works by local artists across the walls, gold embossed menus, a kitchen at the back just open enough to allow the rich aromas of seared meat and sautéed onions to fill the space. A restaurant that assaults your every sense with delights—touch, sight, smell. A rotating menu of seasonal ingredients and the freshest cuts. Hearty, savory soups where a handful of perfectly paired flavors fight for prominence in your mouth, peppercorn steaks that explode on your tongue, mint lamb chops so tender and aromatic you feel like you’re dreaming them.

Now imagine that restaurant’s elegant, frontier cabin design, sitting in the middle of nowhere at the end of a long, winding dirt road in Idaho. Just off a main road that has four drive-in fast food joints. Invisible for miles, so that even the locals wouldn’t find it unless they plugged the exact address into their GPS. Think about who would be naïve enough to put that restaurant there.

Well…me.

To be fair, it was the only location I could afford after spending so much on the restaurant itself. I figured people would pilgrimage there once word of how awesome the place was got out. But even the food critics couldn’t be bothered to come out and see it. We had a few loyal customers, since most people needed to visit only once before they became regulars, and my sister Ellie and her husband made sure to stop by at least twice a week with their friends and colleagues, but it still wasn’t enough to keep the business going. It didn’t help that I kept the food cheap, stubbornly trying to prove the point that good food didn’t have to be exclusively expensive, that for the price of a processed burger meal you could eat something twice as fresh, twice as healthy, and ten times tastier. Principles that strong can be hard to carry, though.

By the end of the second month there was so much food left over each day that even the staff didn’t want to take any more home. By the fourth I had to decide whether to pay the suppliers or the waiters. When the head and the sous chef told me they’d work for free if I told them I believed I could turn it around, I knew I couldn’t lie to them. We shut the place down the next day, and I felt like a part of me had been cut away, leaving behind just another woman in her mid-twenties with no job, bad credit, and the nagging thought that I might not be cut out for this business.

The whole thing left a scar that not even weeks of moping around started to heal. I had to couch surf at my sister’s while I figured my next move out, and the huge debt of my cooking education weighed on me like a bag of stones. I wasn’t helped by the fact that my boyfriend at the time, Nick, decided that a day after the closure was his cue to send me a break-up text. In hindsight, it was probably a blessing in disguise—it was clear Nick basically saw me as a meal ticket, and that what I thought was love was really just the comfort of having somebody around, though Nick couldn’t even provide that in the end.

It’s difficult not to define yourself by a failure that big. I started to wonder if maybe I really was just another average chef who needed a reality check. If maybe my ideals and ambitions should remain just ideals and ambitions. I remember seeing an ad for a fry cook at a cheap steak house and actually considering it, then crying my eyes out once I realized how desperate I’d gotten. I felt like my entire life plan had imploded, leaving me with nothing.

It was Tony who convinced me to move down to L.A. We’d met while studying under Guillhaume de Lacompte in France. As the only two Americans we clung to each other for support as the grumpy, pockmarked Frenchman ranted and criticized his students in what was more like a boot camp for nuclear war than a prestigious gourmet cooking course. During every lesson we’d approach the stations with the trepidation of a bomb defusal. We should have known it was going to be near-traumatic when Guillhaume’s first words to us were: ‘Food is not a matter of life and death. It is more important.’

Returning to the US, while I spent a year preparing the most ambitious culinary industry failure in Idaho’s history, Tony worked in L.A. at some of the hottest restaurants, switching between them and working his way up the ladder with the mercenary aptitude of a gun for hire.

“Listen,” he had told me over the phone, just days after the shutdown of my restaurant back home, “come down to Los Angeles. Chefs can’t walk ten steps here without being offered a job. Pay off your debts, make use of those God-given talents you’ve got, and then figure out what you wanna do with the rest of your life.”

“I dunno, Tony…”

“What are you afraid of? Getting a tan? Working with the best chefs in all the nicest places? Serving food to celebrities and actors and singers? The great tips? The gorgeous men? You’re right, it does sound scary.”

“Ugh. Men are the last thing on my mind right now. Like…the very last thing on the list of things I want.”

“I get it. You’re a country girl—hate the city. You wanna spin across the meadows like Julie Andrews every morning—and one day you will, I’m sure. But if you wanna make something of yourself, you’ve got to go to the city, and L.A. is the one to be in right now.”

His words had tumbled through my mind for days afterward, leaving a bitter aftertaste that I could only cleanse by admitting they were probably true. Finally I realized I had nothing left to lose but the little bit of pride I still clung to like a comforter. So I packed up some clothes, books, and all my anxieties and then left my dusty hometown for good. But as I drove down to L.A., I felt more like I was leaving all my dreams behind unrealized than heading toward them anew. Struggling and just about managing to suppress the feeling that I was heading for another personal disaster, that L.A. would chew me up and spit me out.

Karma decided to start cashing itself in when I arrived though. Within days I found a great apartment with an awesome fitness instructor roommate named Asha, Tony had me taking on open shifts at the sushi place he worked at, and after just a couple of months I landed an interview at the hottest place in the city: Knife. I didn’t expect to get it, being one of the most inexperienced of the candidates, but it turned out to be more of a cooking test than a formal interview, and I got the job. Martin—the manager who was looking after the place while Knife’s owner set up his new spot in Las Vegas—said it wasn’t even close.

That was just over a week ago, and things couldn’t have gone much better…until about twenty minutes ago when I decided to fuck it all up because I didn’t ask anyone in the kitchen if we had any plain thyme. So here it is. Smacking me in the face. Rock bottom. Now I’m pushing open the door to my apartment, struggling not to cry in case I find I can’t stop.

Asha’s sitting on the couch watching TV, her long, powerful legs propped up on the coffee table. She turns moon-like brown eyes in my direction as I enter, and with the kind of perception that only someone who genuinely cares can show, asks, “Is something wrong? It’s not even ten. I thought you were finishing after midnight tonight?”

“So did I,” I say, letting myself slump onto the loveseat beside her.

She keeps those eyes fixed on me, and I know she wants the whole story. Asha used to be an MMA fighter, so she’s good at staring people down.

“Spill it.”

I take a deep breath. “I just fucked up the job at Knife. Royally.”

“What?” Asha cries, pulling her legs from the table and facing me directly, toned muscles twisting in my direction. “How? Everything was going so great.”

I rub my eyes and sigh deeply as I replay the scene in my mind.

“I used a slightly different ingredient for the potatoes than what’s listed on the menu. It was the first time I’ve ever done that, and ninety-nine point nine percent of people wouldn’t have even been able to tell the difference…so—of course—the plate was going out to the one guy who could.”

“Who?”

“Cole Chambers. The owner. My boss.”

Asha breathes in through her teeth, and puts a hand on my arm. I can tell she’s already thinking of how to soften the blow.

“So…he fired you? Just like that? I mean I know he’s supposed to be a jerk, but—”

“I didn’t give him the chance. Once he started yelling, I walked out.”

“Willow…” Asha says, shaking her head.

“What was I supposed to do?” I say, frustration and anger at myself seeping into my defensive tone. “Just stand there and let myself be embarrassed?”

“Come on now,” Asha says, her tone gentle but firm. “You shouldn’t have just walked out like that. He might not have fired you.”

“No, he would have,” I say, shaking my head adamantly. “It’s not like I haven’t seen him fire somebody before. I recognized the look on his face. He was pissed, and he wasn’t giving me any second chances. I was just saving my pride.”

Asha sighs and tilts her head in disappointment, braids falling over her shoulder.

“Would he really fire you over that? One ingredient out of dozens, out of a hundred dishes? You could have explained it was a mistake, that it won’t happen again. Surely he would understand that.”

“No, you don’t get it. Cole’s whole thing is that he’s precise, meticulous. His recipes are like paintings, every brushstroke matters. For me to just throw something else in there—”

I stop myself to drop my head in my hands, my own stupidity sounding even more ridiculous when I’m forced to articulate it out loud. Asha reaches out and rubs my back.

“Whatever,” she says, in a voice as soft and soothing as aloe. “It’ll be okay. Los Angeles is full of restaurants.”

“And all of them are a step down from Knife,” I say. “It’s not like I can just coast much longer. I’m still paying off my debts, and I’m not even sure I’ve made rent this month.”

“Leave all that for the morning,” Asha says, standing up with a sudden burst of vitality, enthusiastic defiance in her voice. “Look, the night’s still young. Let’s go get a couple of drinks—maybe a few too many. My first class isn’t until tomorrow afternoon. We’ll get dressed up, we could dance a little,” she says, swaying her hips, “and I guarantee you it’ll all seem much less like the end of the world when you wake up with a hangover.”

I look up at her, forcing a smile to show how much I appreciate it.

“Thanks, but…I don’t really feel like going out. All I wanna do right now is make a gigantic batch of the sugariest, chocolateyest, meltiest fudge brownies and eat myself into a sugar coma.”

Asha raises an eyebrow mischievously as she considers it, and I can almost hear her stomach growl.

“Well. That works for me.”