INT. SALT & SMOKE — EARLY MORNING, BEFORE OPENING

Morning settles into the kitchen in layers—low light, clean steel, the quiet before everything starts asking something of me. It’s the only time the place feels like it belongs entirely to my hands.

I’m at the pass, finishing a test plate I’ve already decided is either brilliant or a mistake. There’s no middle ground this early. Sauce dragged just so, garnish adjusted by instinct more than thought. Control, in small, precise gestures.

Behind me, Thomas sits on one of the stools like he’s immune to the hour, scrolling through his phone, only half in the room. I’m talking anyway—because I want to hear it out loud, because confidence sounds more convincing when it has an audience.

“I’m telling you,” I say, setting the plate down, studying it like it might argue back, “I could date someone for a month. Easy. More than two weeks is nothing.”

He doesn’t look up. Of course he doesn’t.

“You haven’t dated anyone for longer than three dates since the divorce announcement.” There’s a faint shift in my jaw at that. Not quite a flinch. Close enough.

“That’s different,” I say, too quickly. “I wasn’t trying.” That gets his attention.

I can feel it before I see it—the moment he decides this is worth engaging with. When he finally looks at me, there’s a curve to his mouth that means I’ve just made a mistake I won’t be allowed to take back.

“Okay,” he says. “Prove it.”

I glance over, half-expecting a punchline. There isn’t one. “Two weeks, minimum,” he continues, sliding his phone down like he's clearing space for something real. “A real relationship. Not a fling, not ‘we’re talking.’ He has to actually fall for you.”

There’s something almost surgical in the way he says it. Clean. Precise. Slightly dangerous.

I lean back against the counter, crossing my arms, because if this is a challenge, I know how to meet it.

“And what do I get when I win?”

His smile sharpens. “The walk-in cooler,” he says. “Brand new. Top of the line. The one you’ve been whining about for a year.” A beat. “On me.” That lands exactly where he intends it to.

I think about the current cooler—the unreliable hum, the way it runs too warm when it shouldn’t, the constant low-grade irritation of it. I think about control again. About fixing something that refuses to stay fixed. Then I look at him.

“Deal."

I hold out my hand before I can reconsider it. Flour still clings to my skin, a fine dusting of evidence that I’ve been here, doing the one thing I know how to do well. He takes it without hesitation, his grip firm, certain. “Don’t screw it up,” he says, almost lightly. Then, just as he lets go—“by being yourself too fast.”

I huff a quiet laugh, because that’s easier than asking what, exactly, that’s supposed to mean.

But the words linger longer than they should.

I look back at the plate in front of me, at the careful arrangement, the illusion of effortlessness.

Two weeks, I think.

Two weeks is nothing.

And yet, for the first time in a while, it doesn’t feel like a guarantee.