Chapter 10
A SOFT SOUND WOKE Sam from her sleep.
She rolled onto her side, the sheets tangling around her legs. She cracked one eye open and stared
bleary-eyed at the clock on the nightstand. Still early. She snuggled deeper into her pillow and tugged the covers higher, tucking them under her chin.
Mm. She’d had the weirdest dream.
Trapped in an elevator with a demon. A demon partial to wearing pink. Sam snorted a laugh. Maybe she ought to start looking for a different allergy medication. This Benadryl was really messing with her head at night.
Sam chuckled again, more of the dream coming back to her in bits and pieces. A heist. A kitchen throwdown. Six wishes and she’d wasted the first on bread pudding. Now, that was the most unrealistic part of the dream. Never in a million years would she actually be so stupid as to—
Sam sat bolt upright.
Oh God.
It wasn’t a dream.
She had actually made a deal with a demon.
Okay, calm down. This was fine. She had six wishes, and she’d only made—
Four.
I wish that I was the woman of Hannah’s dreams, her perfect partner in all ways.
Great. So … where was Hannah?
For that matter, where was she ?
A bed, that much was obvious. A bedroom. White walls. Not padded. Thank God. Long, gauzy curtains covered a window to the right and—hold on.
This was her bedroom. The bedroom she’d shared with Hannah for the last two years.
Even if everything looked different, the floor plan was the same.
The decor was minimalist chic with clean lines, the furniture all new and Scandinavian modern in a neutral palette, white and gray and brown, everything made of wood and wool and glass.
A cream-colored piece of macramé art hung on the wall and a single pothos plant rested on the dresser, the green leaves giving the place its only pop of color.
All her pictures that had hung on the walls were gone, not a knickknack in sight, nothing but—
“Holy shit.”
Talk about a rock. No, a boulder . The emerald-cut diamond on her nightstand was massive. Three carats? Four, maybe? Bigger than anything Sam would ever have picked for herself, impractically large, but that didn’t matter.
There was a sparkly diamond on her night table that— yep, it fit her finger. Unless that suddenly meant something different, Sam was engaged.
Fantastic, but she was going to need a lot more than a ring before she got her hopes up this time. She’d been engaged to Hannah in her first wish and that hadn’t stopped her life from going belly-up in the blink of an eye.
She glanced at the clock again.
Six thirty a.m. Time to rise and shine. Nacho and Pumpkin needed to be fed soon, and Sam had a fiancée to find, and she couldn’t do any of it from the comfort of her bed.
Poking out from beneath the nightstand was a pair of plush shearling-lined slippers. Sam slipped her feet inside them and padded out of the room and into the kitchen.
“Hannah?” she called out. “You home?”
No answer. Not that she had expected one. Hannah was an early riser, out the door most mornings no later than six for either CorePower Yoga or GRIT BXNG class.
“Nacho! Pumpkin! Breakfast time!”
She opened the pantry door, and that was when it hit her.
Nacho and Pumpkin were probably still at the vet.
The day she’d proposed—or the day she’d proposed in real life—well, this was her real life now, too, wasn’t it?
The day Hannah had turned her down and ended their relationship, Sam had dropped Nacho and Pumpkin off for a routine teeth cleaning.
Poor baby Nacho was going to need a tooth removed, so the vet had said she’d like to monitor him overnight, and since Pumpkin didn’t do well without his brother, they’d both stay until the vet called the next day—today—for Sam to pick them up.
This was the first wish that had resulted in Sam waking up in her own apartment as opposed to snapping into consciousness at a fancy grand opening or hellish cooking competition, so the vet visit had completely slipped her mind until now.
Without hungry cats to feed, Sam set the coffeepot—new like everything else—to brew and padded back across the apartment to the bedroom. A phone was charging on her nightstand, the latest iPhone model. Pricey.
Settling in at the breakfast bar with a cup of coffee doctored up with Hannah’s favorite zero-sugar French vanilla coffee creamer—they were out of Sam’s favorite, hazelnut—Sam unlocked her fancy new phone with Face ID.
A picture of Hannah standing in the surf of a white sandy beach wearing an outrageously oversize sun hat smiled back at her from the home screen.
Sam’s first wish—not counting the bread pudding because, retroactive effectiveness clauses aside, the bread pudding shouldn’t have counted—had left her blindsided.
Her second wish, too. Daphne had dropped her into each …
universe, reality, whatever it was called, with only the wording of her wish to work off.
No context, no idea of where she was or what she was meant to be doing until someone told her, no nothing.
But not this time. This time, Sam had a phone. Sam had a phone, which meant she had the internet at her fingertips.
First order of business, find out where Hannah’s dream girl worked.
Sam typed her name into the search bar of LinkedIn. Six pages’ worth of Samantha Coopers and she was the top result.
Samantha Cooper
Executive Chef and Owner at Indulge Hospitality Group New York, New York, United States
10k followers, 500+ connections
Sam clicked on her picture and scrolled down the page.
Samantha Cooper is the executive chef turned owner of Indulge Hospitality, the New York-based group behind the highly acclaimed restaurants Glut (SoHo, Manhattan), Gorge (Miami), and Gratify (Nashville), along with the newly opened bar Gulp (Park Slope, Brooklyn).
Hailing from Grosse Tête in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, Chef Cooper moved to New York City at the tender age of twenty-two, where she almost instantly exploded on the culinary scene.
While working her way through the kitchen ranks at Glut, Chef Cooper captivated food enthusiasts everywhere with her mouthwatering recipes and signature irreverent sense of humor on Instagram and TikTok, swiftly making herself a household name.
A year later, Chef Cooper purchased Glut from previous owner émile Bouchard and transformed it into the successful operation that it is today.
Chef Cooper has received numerous accolades for her fine dining, including four stars from the New York Times , four James Beard Foundation Awards, and three Michelin stars.
Most recently, Chef Cooper announced her forthcoming book, Indulge: Culinary Secrets from Chef Samantha Cooper’s Kitchen .
Sam was … kind of a big deal. A really big deal. Micro- celebrity big deal.
Executive chef, owner of not one but three restaurants plus a bar, viral content creator, and writer.
When did Sam have time to sleep?
Sam was going to have trouble believing she was social media famous until she saw it. Exiting out of her browser, she opened TikTok, an app she’d formerly only installed when she’d started dating Hannah, so Sam could watch her content. She tapped on her profile and—holy shit.
One point two million followers.
An empty feeling opened up in the pit of her stomach.
Sam didn’t want to be perceived by 1.2 thousand people, let alone 1.2 million . Hell, some days she didn’t want to be perceived by anybody.
Bread pudding snafu notwithstanding, Sam wasn’t stupid.
She’d gone into this wish with open eyes, knowing that the Sam she’d be would not be the same Sam she’d been.
It was a virtual impossibility. Now, she would have preferred that the changes had not transformed her into some social media maven, someone who monetized putting their face out there for millions to gawk at, but …
she could handle this. In the grand scheme of it all, internet fame was a small price to pay for the woman of her dreams.
She’d have to watch her own videos, study up and figure out her schtick. But right now, she was still sleuthing, fact gathering.
Beneath her quite frankly absurd follower count was a brief bio.
Lover of Pastries, Prosecco, and @its_hannah_liu_to_u
Indulge Hospitality (@indulge_hospitality)—Glut, Gorge, Gratify, Gulp
She clicked through to Hannah’s account, and if Sam thought she had a lot of followers? She had nothing on Hannah’s 2.7 million.
Make life beautiful.
MUA turned beauty entrepreneur @luxe_liu_beauty Skincare launch coming 10/31
Business and PR: [email protected]
The first pinned video on Hannah’s page was about the upcoming product launch for her brand, Luxe Liu Beauty, but it was the second video that caught Sam’s eye. A proposal video that she couldn’t click on fast enough.
The video opened with a panoramic shot of Venice’s famous canals, gondolas gliding gracefully along shimmering blue-green water as “Young and Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey played softly and hauntingly in the background.
The video focused on a sun-dappled dock beside the famous Rialto Bridge.
Sam led Hannah, who looked gorgeous as ever in a long black slip dress, down the dock by the hand.
She pointed to the setting sun across the water, and when Hannah had her back turned, Sam crouched carefully down on one knee.
Hannah looked over her shoulder and gasped.
Sam couldn’t hear what either of them said, but Hannah nodded enthusiastically and held her left hand out so that Sam could slip the ring on her finger.
The video captured their embrace from several angles, then transitioned gracefully into a series of aesthetic shots of Hannah and Sam riding in a water taxi, sipping champagne, and staring into each other’s eyes across a table located right on the canal at Ai Barbacani.
It was beautiful. It was romantic. It was everything Hannah deserved.
Sam wished she could remember it.
But that was fine. They had a lifetime together to make new memories, memories they both would remember.
A notification flashed across the top of her screen.
Reminder: Wednesday, October 29, 7 p.m. Dinner @ Adora
She tapped on the reminder, hoping that expanding the notification might provide her with a few more details, like with whom she had plans.
Her Google Calendar app opened to a calendar that, by the looks of it, she shared with Hannah.
A couple’s calendar. No doubt Hannah’s doing.
Sam was definitely more of a jot it down on a sticky note or the back of an old receipt kind of girl.
A tell herself she would remember and inevitably forget until the very last moment person.
This would come in handy for a whole host of reasons.
Like now, Sam knew by looking at the color-coordinated blocks of time that Hannah had just left an aqua-cycling class—whatever that entailed—and in an hour was due to meet someone named Monique at Maman to discuss Luxe Liu Beauty’s upcoming pop-up in Chelsea.
Then she was meeting with friends for shopping followed by lunch at Kochi before she headed over to the East Side for a facial and massage at Dorothy’s Day Spa.
Except for dinner reservations at seven p.m., Sam’s schedule was oddly empty, her day apparently hers to do with as she pleased.
Unlike the day after tomorrow, when she’d be busy hopping around town, going from one meeting to another and taking Zoom calls in between.
Sam frowned. That didn’t leave a lot of time for, well, cooking .
Maybe … maybe she’d stop by Glut today. It was Wednesday. They started serving lunch at eleven thirty a.m., most of the kitchen arriving to begin prep three if not four hours ahead of opening, depending on what needed to be done at their stations and what the reservation list looked like.
Sam could stop for another coffee, one with creamer she actually liked, and grab a bagel or a croissant since the fridge here was tragically lean.
By the time she made it downtown, Melissa should be there, and Javier, too.
Sam could see the place for herself, get a look at how, if at all, it had changed under her ownership, and chat up the kitchen crew.
Find out anything she might need to know that wasn’t on TikTok or LinkedIn or blocked out on her calendar.