A/N: Thanks to everyone who's followed along with this fic & left such sweet comments! I hope you all enjoy this final chapter.

Happy spent the weekend upstate; she needed to get out of the city. She took her motorcycle up to Buffalo, rented a room at a cheap motel, and watched crappy TV movies for two days straight. She subsisted mostly on Ramen noodles and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches; if only those worshipping critics could see her now.

Sunday night, she rode home, enjoying the brisk April air of the countryside before she got swallowed up by the smog of the city. She might miss a few things about New York, but the air quality was not one of them.

On Monday morning, she got to work early, hoping to catch Walter before anyone else had arrived. She figured he'd be in a good mood; Paige had managed to convince Greatview Fisheries to continue selling to La Petite Table, which must've been a relief for the cantankerous restaurateur. But she found him in his office with his brow knit and his eyes narrowed angrily.

"Walter?" she asked. He looked up.

"Oh, good, you're here. Have you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"Toby quit."

"He did?"

"Yeah, Saturday morning. Of course he waited until right before the lunch rush."

"Did he say why?"

"He went on about it for about an hour. He kept mentioning kamikaze pilots, though I have no idea what that had to do with anything. Anyway, he told me over and over that I should make you head chef."

Happy perked up slightly. "He did?"

"Yeah. I told him that was ridiculous."

Happy bit her lip, trying to keep from looking too crestfallen. "Oh."

"I mean, if it were up to me, I'd put you up there in a second. But I only own half the restaurant, and our other investors… They only see the degrees, not the talent. Trust me, Happy, I've talked you up at every owners' meeting there is. They won't budge."

"Really?" Happy hadn't known that; she was suddenly overcome by a wave of gratitude for this odd, kind man sitting in front of her.

"Of course. You're the best chef in the country, Happy. No one's disputing that. I've even considered faking a degree for you, just to make the other owners more amiable, but that would be too risky. If I got caught, you'd be blackballed… I couldn't take the chance."

"Um." Happy's voice cracked; she cleared her throat. "Wow. Thanks, Walter."

He waved a hand nonchalantly. "Yeah, well. Now we're down a head chef. We'll start looking immediately, of course, but it'll probably be a few weeks until we find someone. With Louis, at least we had some time - Toby was just gone. Ugh, anyway. You can take the reins, right? Just until we get a replacement."

Happy smiled sadly. She couldn't quit, not now. Not after finding out all that Walter had done for her. "Sure. I'll just be in the kitchen if you need me."

"Thank you, Happy."

Happy turned and walked out of Walter's office, into the kitchen, blinking to keep from crying. The kitchen was empty. She went over to her work station to start cooking, but she paused. Sitting on top of her cutting board was the Creation Book.

Toby must have left it there before she quit. She shook her head, trying to dispel thoughts of him. She slid the Creation Book off her workstation and started working.

When the last dinner patrons had finally left and the restaurant was closing for the evening, Happy took the Creation Book and headed towards the head chef's office. On the way, she found Walter leaving his.

"Heading home, boss?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Any luck in the head chef hunt?"

"A few promising leads - turns out the culinary schools are just churning out cooks nowadays. A lot of them are fresh out of college, without any experience, but we're a bit desperate, so."

"I'm sure you'll find someone good. Hey, can I give you a suggestion?"

Walter eyed her somewhat suspiciously, but said, "Sure. Shoot."

"Make Paige the manager."

"The restaurant manager?"

"Yeah."

"But I'm the manager."

"Yeah, but you're also an owner, and we all know you're a better owner than you are a manager. Didn't she just get us back on Greatview Fisheries' delivery list?"

"Yes, as a favor to me. But she's such a great waitress."

"That doesn't mean she wouldn't be better at managing."

"She has no managerial experience."

"I didn't have any chef experience when you convinced Louis to let me be a line cook, and look how that turned out. Paige would be a great manager."

"But then what would I do?"

"Do what all the other owners do: sit back and let the money flow in. Come by and check up on us every once in awhile, if you like. But I bet Paige would run a tight ship. You could get a hobby - haven't you always talked about wanting to learn more about Soviet rockets or something?"

"Yes, the Soviet space program is certainly an interesting subject…"

"Just think it over. I think it would be a good thing."

He nodded at her. "Okay, Happy. I'll think about it. Goodnight."

When he left, she slipped into the head chef's office. The room was bare now, without any of Toby's paraphernalia cluttering it up. She'd spent so many evenings sitting at that little folding table that he'd pull out, laughing over dinner. She'd grown so accustomed to the things he'd hung over his desk - his degree, a few pictures from college, a print of one of Monet's Water Lilies. He called it its French name, Nymphéas, again with his impeccable accent. They'd talked about it over some pork chops served in a delicious shallot sauce. The wall looked naked now without it.

She sat down at the now-empty desk - the desk that would never be hers, no matter how hard she or Toby or Walter tried - and flipped open her Creation Book, planning on reading over the recipes sentimentally. She paused when, inside the front cover, she found a handwritten note.

Happy, I'm sure you've heard by now that I quit. I tried and tried and tried to get Walter to make you head chef, but he just talked in circles about the investors and the other owners and whoever else… I'm sorry. I know you probably want nothing to do with me, but could you meet me at my apartment? I'll be there all day.

At the bottom of the page, Toby signed his name. She was still slightly mad at him for the interview, but after he had quit for her, the least she could do was say goodbye.

His building was nice, Happy mused as she stood outside his door, waiting for him to answer her knock. The lobby was decorated with expensive-looking leather furniture, and there was a cheerful doorman. It reminded Happy how much more head chefs make than sous chefs - she had no doorman; her lobby had nothing but two faded cloth couches.

Toby answered the door in a Johnson and Wales tee shirt and a pair of dirty sweatpants. His stubble was longer than normal.

"Hey," he said. "I didn't think you'd come."

"I just saw your note - can I come in?"

He stepped aside, allowing her to enter. "Sure, sure."

His apartment was spacious but sparsely decorated, and he had these awful curtains with palm trees on them. Evidently, he wasn't into interior design.

"So, I guess I should say thank you," she said.

He shook his head. "No, no, that's not why I called you here. I have something to show you."

He disappeared behind a door, which Happy guessed went to his bedroom, and then reemerged a second later, holding some photographs. He handed them to Happy. "Look at these."

She shuffled through the stack. The pictures were of a nice empty building somewhere. Hardwood floors, nice natural lighting - it immediately struck Happy as a good place to have a restaurant.

"Why are you showing me this?" she asked when she'd seen all the pictures.

"This building - well, let me start at the beginning. I had an uncle; he was my mom's second cousin. I only met him once or twice. He passed away three months ago, right after I started working here. He lived in LA, and he owned a couple of buildings out there. This was one of them. When he died, he left the buildings to me - I guess he didn't have any closer relatives to leave them to."

"Okay…" Happy thought she knew where this was going, but she'd taught herself to not hope for things like this.

"So now I own this building out in LA, and it would be perfect for a restaurant. And I just happen to know someone who would make the perfect head chef."

Happy knew she should be elated, but it all sounded too good - her mind immediately tried to poke holes in the plan.

"Wait, you've had this building for three months? And you're just now thinking of turning it into a restaurant?"

"Yeah. Look, when I first heard that my uncle had passed, I'd just started at La Petite Table. I was in way over my head and I couldn't process anything. I basically forgot about the buildings, until April came and I realized I had to pay taxes on them. Then, of course I started thinking about what I could do with them. I put a few up on the market, and one or two actually sold - and I always told myself that, if I ever came into money like that, I would start my own restaurant. And then we had that conversation on Friday, after you stood me up - so I was thinking I would quit, move out there, and tell Walter to hire you as head chef here. But when I went to talk to him about it… God, he was just so stubborn. Going on and on about degrees and culinary training and everything… And then he started talking about the other investors, and I just knew it would never happen. And then it just dawned on me."

"What dawned on you?"

"That I'm not head chef material. Before I came here, I worked as sous chef at Pablo's in Midtown, and I was good at it. Then I got my big break, coming here, and I realized I wasn't cut out for it. I can come up with some recipes every now and then, sure, but when a whole team of people is looking to me to lead them… I can't do that. But you can, Happy. The head chef here before I came - what was his name?"

"Louis?"

"Louis, right. He was an old-timer. He probably hadn't made up a new dish since Clinton was impeached; all he did was run around yelling at people. You carried this place on your shoulders, Happy. And I'm saying all this as a roundabout way of asking: will you be my head chef?"

Happy stood there, stunned. Off all ways this conversation could have gone, this was not what she was expecting.

"I… I mean…" she stuttered.

"Now, we'd have to move to LA. Have you ever been?"

Words escaped her; she shook her head.

"I haven't, either, and I've heard the traffic sucks. But it's a fresh start - that's what you said you wanted, right? I'm sure all the food critics out there have heard of Happy Quinn, so we wouldn't be starting from nothing. But we could build a restaurant together. We could call it whatever we wanted - and no French. Nothing pretentious."

Happy finally recovered enough to get some words out: "Well, we sure as hell aren't going to call it Amy's."

Toby grinned. "If it was up to me, we'd call it Happy's. But I thought you might prefer something less narcissistic. So…" He disappeared into that door again, and came out with a big wooden sign, almost as tall as Happy. On the front, it read "The Monkey Wrench" in bold, black letters.

"Mind you," Toby continued, "I had this idea on Friday night, and it is now Monday, and I already have this sign. So, first of all, I have major talent at sweet-talking the people at the sign-making shop. And second of all, I'm all in, Happy. What do you say?"

Happy smiled. "Yes. Let's do it."

Toby whooped - like, actually whooped, as if they were at a football game. Then, he set the sign down a took a step towards her, before pausing.

"Wait, since I'm technically your boss now - again - would it be sexual harassment if I kissed you?"

"Maybe. But it would be up-and-up adjacent if I kissed you, right?"

He nodded, smiling widely.

And so she did. In the poorly-decorated apartment, in a building with a nice lobby and a friendly doorman, in a city they would both soon move out of, she kissed her new boss.