by Kim Barnouin
Huh. Angel was getting quite the temper.
The next morning I was at my friend Alexander’s house, helping him bake the one hundred cupcakes he’d volunteered to make for the fund-raiser for the middle school of his “little brother.” If you looked up good guy in the dictionary, you’d find a picture and description of Alexander Orr. Every week he hung out with twelve-year-old Jesse, an only child with divorced parents, went to all the kid’s school events that his mother (his dad was out of the picture) couldn’t attend because of work. And Alexander, who was pretty danged cute, was a great chef.
Baking bored him, so maybe he did need my help today. But I was pretty sure he’d just needed an excuse to call me. Before the competition for the Times article, we’d call or text a few times a week. Lately: zilch. We both wanted to win, which meant suckish things for the other.
Alexander poured apple-cider vinegar into the bowl of soy milk on his kitchen counter while I got to work on the flour, chocolate, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Forget this tiptoeing around each other crap. Alexander and I were real friends. We could handle competition.
“My rustic-vegetable potpie is missing something,” I said. “I’m thinking of offering it as a special for the Times reporter, and it’ll definitely go on my Outpost menu, but something’s wrong with the crust. I made a mistake somewhere in the sauté or in the baking time. I can’t figure it out. There’s a chewiness that shouldn’t be there.”
“The Outpost? What’s that? And of course I’ll help you with potpie.”
I dropped my measuring spoon. “I didn’t tell you about the Outpost?” How could I not have told Alexander?
He gave the batter a taste and then added a drop of vanilla. “Well, I think you’ve been keeping your distance from me.”
“Actually, it’s you who’s been keeping your distance from me.”
“Yeah, it’s both of us. I hate that. This can’t come between us, Clem. Okay?”
I nodded. “No way.” It couldn’t and wouldn’t. Alexander and I had been through a lot together already. We could deal with this.
As I told him about the Outpost, all my plans for it, how juiced my dad was to be chef, I could hear how right it was, how doable, how passionate I was about it. Why couldn’t Zach? Why couldn’t he just say, Of course you’ll make it work.
“Zach doesn’t think it’s sustainable,” I said, mixing my batter. “And that I’ll stretch myself so thin everything will fall to crap.”
“You’re too awesome for that. You’re smart, ambitious, efficient, and know how to make things happen. It’s a bloody brilliant idea, Clem. Farm-to-table right at the organic farm? In a gorgeous red barn? You’ll get a ton of publicity, draw on your great reputation and your dad’s, and the place will be packed every night, just like the No Crap Café.”
Before I could stop myself my arms were wrapped around him in a fierce hug. I looked up at him, into those warm brown eyes, and for a split second I wanted to kiss him. On the lips, not the cheek. He’d said everything I wanted Zach to say, everything I wanted Zach to believe.
But Alexander wasn’t Zach. I’d fallen in love with Zach because of who he was. His dull concerns about the Outpost weren’t off the wall; he was being corporately conservative. He was coming from a business perspective. Alexander was coming from a vegan chef’s perspective.
I pulled back. “Thanks for saying all that.”
“It’s all true.” He reached for my hand.
I gave him a smile and slipped away that hand to remove my batter from the mixer. “If Emil finds out you’re helping the enemy, he’ll have your head,” I said to change the subject.
Alexander handed me five cupcake tins and liners and got started lining his own five. “I’m not scared of Emil Jones. You’re my friend, Clem. Friends help each other out. Like you’re doing for me right now.”
As I placed the little colored wrappers in the tins, I wondered what life would be like if I’d gone for Alexander instead of Zach. Alexander and I were a perfect match on paper—both vegans, both giving the finger to unnecessary chemicals and other crap that clogged people’s hearts, pores, and brains. We were both chefs, both got seriously excited over new sauté pans and good knives. We understood each other. He was goodness personified too, mentoring a tween, volunteering at the kid’s school, bringing homemade soup and dinners to his grandmother, who’d followed him to the United States and was madly in love with Southern California.
Plus, he was incredibly cute with a great body, all tall and lankily muscular, with wavy sandy-brown hair and sharp brown eyes. I knew he was a hot guy. But every time the two of us had kissed? Like kissing my brother.
Still, since Alexander’s parents were in England, I wouldn’t have the future mother-in-law from KillMeNowVille breathing down my neck.
“Monday, before work?” Alexander asked.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
He smiled that hangdog smile that said he wished there were an us, that I’d chosen him instead of Zach.
The cupcakes cooling and two of them inhaled, we took Alexander’s dogs, Lizzie and Brit, for a walk. Alexander filled me in on the woman he was dating, a carnivore like Zach, who was finding Alexander preachy even though he never said a word to anyone about going vegan. It just wasn’t his way to get in someone’s face the way some other people did . . . such as myself.
“The other night, we were out at a pizza joint, and I ordered a pizza, hold the cheese, and she got all offended. ‘It’s just cheese,’ she said. ‘It’s not like the cow died for it.’ ”
I rolled my eyes. “What did you say?”
“I tried to explain in a very reasonable and polite way about dairy cows and why they’re mysteriously full of milk all the time and how we’re the only species who drinks and eats another species’ mother’s milk, and then I got into some of the environmental issues, and she got up and walked out.”
I tried not to smile. “Not a lost cause, though. If I’m marrying Zach Jeffries, there’s hope for vegan-and-carnivore love.”
“Well, I’ll call her later. We’ll see.”
Brit and Lizzie started barking at a dog walker and his pack of at least ten dogs, so we walked back to Alexander’s house and I helped him package up the hundred cupcakes. I’d missed hanging out with Alexander and wanted to just stay and talk, but Keira was having a final test run of her lasagna at the restaurant and I’d promised to be there and watch every step. She’d planned to have Eat Me on in the background, turned up loud, so she could get used to Joe’s screaming in her face as she cooked.
The minute I walked out the door of Alexander’s house, I wanted to be back in there. With all that support. All that Team Clementine. All that . . . tension.
What the hell did that mean?
21
It was so weird being in the audience of Eat Me. When I was last in this studio, I was onstage, whipping up my $25,000 eggplant Parmesan. Sara, my trusty assistant, was furiously chopping vegetables and handing me utensils, yelling at Joe to suck it. Now I was in row two, sitting next to Zach, who was texting back and forth with his second-in-command. Did this man ever stop working?
Did I?
Would Alexander Orr be texting at his stepsister’s debut on a national TV show? No, he would not.
All night, I’d flopped around my bed so much that Sara had come into my room to ask if I was being attacked by sharks in a dream or something. Every time I’d tried to think about Zach and how I was going to handle our problems, Alexander’s cute face would float into my mind.
Romanticizing, I knew. If I were in a relationship with Alexander, we’d have problems of our own. Not Zach-like problems, though.
Note to self: Go back over numbers six and eight of Jocelyn’s list. What do you expect married life to really be like? Are you expecting him to change once you’re married?
Would Zach be texting his second-in-command during our ceremony? Okay, fine, of course he wou
ldn’t. But at the reception? Yeah, probably. Would I be wondering how things were going at the restaurant? Wouldn’t my entire staff be at my wedding, anyway? I’d have to close up shop on a Saturday night.
Luckily, the show’s taping had been moved to Monday when the restaurant was closed, so we were all here to scream our asses off for Keira and Gunnar. Alanna, the McMann twins, Matteo and his even-more-gorgeous-than-Nadia-the-model girlfriend, and all my waitstaff and busboys.
“Joe Steak, Joe Steak, Joe Steak,” a loudmouth in the row behind us started chanting, trying to get the audience riled up with him.
Dominique, on Zach’s other side, kept glancing around with a horrified expression, as though she expected someone to jump her any minute. Her husband sat beside her with his arms crossed against his chest, his expression glowering. Keira looked a lot like her dad, Paul Huffington, except Keira was a smiler, and her father hadn’t cracked one since Dominique had introduced us.
Sir Paul leaned forward and shot me the stink-eye.
Nice. Did Keira’s parents have any faith in her?
The producer and her assistant came out from the side door to explain how the show would work and to point out the cue cards they’d use to prompt shout-outs and clapping. When the producer said we shouldn’t hold back, we should feel free to shout out whatever we wanted—but no swear words—both Huffingtons leaned forward and shot me the death stare.
“Is damn okay?” a guy asked from the row in front of me. “What about dickhead?”
“Damn is welcome, dickhead is not,” the producer said. “Just remember, folks, if you wouldn’t use the swear word with your aunt Gertrude, don’t use it here. Otherwise, don’t hold back. Being obnoxious won’t get you bleeped!”
“Obnoxious, obnoxious, obnoxious!” chanted the audience.
The Huffingtons both shook their heads in utter disgust and sat ramrod straight.
The lights dimmed and Joe “Steak” Johansson came onstage to thunderous applause. He gave his spiel and spit out the rules: nineteen audience members would be randomly selected as judges to taste-test both dishes without knowing whose was whose. If Keira won, she—and the charity of her choice—would collect twenty-five thousand smackers each. If Joe won, twenty-five thousand would go to the charity of his choice.
“And now,” Joe said, “a smokin’-hot woman who needs no introduction!” I thought about his responses to number seven on Jocelyn’s list, all the good reasons he loved her. I went from hating the sight of him to . . . liking the dude.
“Sara! Sara! Sara!” the audience chanted.
Sara came out from backstage in a cute sundress and red Chucks, waving and smiling. She scanned the audience and finally found me, giving me a little wave.
“D’oh!” Joe yelled. “Did you catch that, folks? My lovely fiancée is waving at someone in the audience. Her roommate—a former challenger of mine who narrowly beat me. You might remember the skinny vegan who managed to make the panel of judges vote for her because they felt bad that she eats nothing but plants all day. Well, our challenger is a trainee at her plant restaurant. Learning to cook plants!”
Okay, I might love that he adored Sara, but my intense dislike of him was back.
Sara put her hands on her hips. “Who ate vegan last night? This guy.” she said, jabbing her elbow in Joe’s direction. “I made him a primavera pasta with roasted veggies and he gobbled it up and asked for seconds. All vegan.”
“Low blow, Joe!” the audience shouted, the standard chant when he was called on something.
“She tricked me!” Joe called out. “She told me there was steak in it and turned the lights real low. I was bimboozled!”
“Bimboozled!” the audience chanted back, hooting with laughter.
I chanced a glance at the Huffingtons, who looked absolutely horrified.
“Would you like to meet my challenger?” Joe said. “This chick with a bad dye job thinks she can make a better lasagna than me. And check this out—her lasagna? No ground beef. No sausage. No ricotta cheese.” He snorted. “I even think she’ll be using wheat noodles. Ewww!”
“Ewww!” the audience chanted back. “Eww. Eww. Eww!”
“Okay, challenger, come on out. Folks, meet Kei-rah-rah Huffington!”
Keira, in white, skinny jeans, shiny red ballet flats, and a chef’s jacket, her hair in a low ponytail, came dashing out, waving her arms above her head. “It’s Keira,” she said, making a comical face at Joe and at the audience. “Keir-a.”
“I’ve already forgotten it,” Joe called out. “Now let’s meet her assistant, some hipster dude with another bad dye job and skinny jeans.” Joe rolled his eyes and snorted. “Here he is, Gunnar GunnaLose Fitch!”
“We’re gonna beat your trash-talking ass!” Gunnar shouted, jogging out and throwing his hands up in the air like Rocky Balboa.
“Yeah, we are,” Keira shouted, nodding her head at the audience to get them on her side. She wasn’t doing a half-bad job so far.
“LOL, guys,” Joe bellowed. “This skinny thing with the messed-up hair thinks she can make a lasagna better than I can?”
“The messed-up hair is called ombré,” Keira said. “Get with the times. Oh, and the eighties called. They want back that hideous, loud Hawaiian shirt.”
“That’s all you got?” Joe shook his head. “Sad, om-head. Very sad.”
“Ommmm! Ommmm!” the audience chanted.
“This isn’t gonna be pretty,” I whispered to Zach.
“Go, Keira,” Zach yelled. So sweet, my man.
“Go home, you mean,” Joe called back to chants from the audience. “Go home. Go home. Go home! And that skinny Gunnar-lose dude with you!”
“Gunnar rules!” Alanna screamed at the top of her lungs, and I had to smile. Those two were definitely involved.
Two screens on either side of the audience allowed us to watch Keira and Joe cook. Gunnar sliced and chopped away, shouting back at Joe whenever Joe tried to frazzle him and Keira. She’d remembered to add the garlic only after the onions were tender. She added the pinch of agave nectar. She didn’t overknead the dough for the lasagna noodles.
So far, so good.
The more Joe tried to heckle her, the more she ignored him, focusing on layering the lasagna, letting Gunnar shout back zingers. He was pretty good at it; quelle surprise.
Fifty-five minutes later, a bell rang. “Five-minute warning!” Sara called out. “Chefs, begin plating!”
The producer called out a random name from the audience: “Zach Jeffries, please stand up and state five numbers between one and fifty.”
Zach picked his numbers, as did four other audience members. Since Zach was selected as one of the people to choose numbers, I knew it wasn’t rigged. The people with those nineteen numbers were then called by name to be the judges.
“Okay, time to judge!” Joe shouted. “Who made the better lasagna? Me, who eats lasagna for breakfast half the week? Or the couple with the bad dye jobs and fake meat and cheese?” Joe mock shivered. “Don’t those two look like they could use some iron in their blood? Eat a steak, peeps,” he said to Keira and Gunnar.
“I could bench-press you,” Keira shouted back.
“You couldn’t bench-press a tomato, vegan trainee!”
“Trainee! Trainee!” the audience chanted.
The voting began and I held my breath and squeezed Zach’s hand.
By the second to last vote, it was a tie. Good for ratings, I guess, but we were dying. Whoever got it would win the $25,000.
“What’s it gonna be, chickadoodle,” he said to the woman, who picked up her fork and tried a bite of both again.
“No contest,” she said. “The winner is . . . plate number one!”
“Noooo!” Joe yelped, mock-stabbing himself through the heart. “That’s the vegan trainee’s lasagna!”
I jumped up. I couldn’t help it. “Yeah. Hellz yeah. Oh hellz yeah.”
“Joe blow blew it!” the audience shouted. “Vegan, vegan, vegan!”
Keira jumped in Gunnar’s arms and he spun her around.
“Oh, God, don’t tell me they’re dating,” her father muttered.
“They’re not,” Alanna said assuredly. Which meant that she and Gunnar were.
“This is for you, Violet!” Gunnar said into the camera. “This is for my baby girl!” That baby girl would have been in the audience, but no one under eighteen was permitted because of all the trash-talking, not unlike my own, and the occasional bouts of violence that broke out in the audience.
“She’s not expected to split the money with that man, is she?” Dominique said. “Though I hope so because she wouldn’t have the money she needs for school.”
Ha—Dominique was sooo hypocritical! I had no doubt Gunnar was talking about the experience of being on the show, his daughter’s favorite. He did it for Violet—and as a favor to Keira. But it just figured Dominique would suddenly give a fig about the money and Keira’s plans for it.
“Mom, seriously?” Zach said to her. “Can’t you be proud of her? She made something happen for herself for a very good cause.”
Dominique gave Zach the most condescending look I’d ever seen. “Oh, Zachary. Just once, please stop rooting for the underdog.”
“That’ll always hold you back,” Keira’s dad said to Zach.
That was absurd since Zach was a wunderkind CEO. He smiled at me and shook his head.
Keira came running over and grabbed me into a hug. “I owe everything to you, Clementine. For giving me a chance in the first place. For helping me out. You rock.”
Dominique glared at me.
In the parking lot, as Zach and I headed to his car, Dominique came storming over.
“You knew how I felt,” she said to me through gritted teeth. “You actually influenced her against my wishes.”
“Dominique, come on. Keira won! She showed such moxie. She found a way to earn the money to pay for her education, her future. The future she wants.”
