The Art of French Kissing

by Brianna Shrum

  “The group challenges will also be eliminated.”

  Now, I frown. Because what does that even leav—

  “You will be divided into teams of two,” she says. “Teams are already assigned and were drawn randomly; do not try to appeal the decision. I can assure you, you will be turned down. Both challenges per week will be completed with your teammate, and the first challenge begins in about four minutes. Are we clear?”

  Blood is rushing through my head, heart working hard to pump it all through my veins. There’s nothing to be nervous about, there’s nothing to be nervous about. I could get paired with Riya.

  “First team is Riya Khatri and Will Malik.” Riya actually squeals a little bit and Will’s smile is bright enough to light the kitchen on fire.

  My heart sinks a little further. Okay, well maybe Addie or Tess— “Addie Thomas and Andrew Olan.”

  Addie’s lips thin, but she throws her shoulders back and heads over to him. Godspeed. It goes like that until everyone I know is paired off—Tess and some girl from the other team I haven’t gotten to know very well. The girl Addie was flirting with and the tiny boy with the glasses. A couple other kids I’ve hung out with at meal time. And then that’s it.

  I make eye contact with him before Dr. Freeman says it, and I bet I look as exhausted and pissed as he does.

  “Reid Yamada and Carter Lane.”

  Of course.

  Of freaking course.

  I cross the kitchen to him, stand in his personal space. And accept my fate.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He doesn’t turn his head to look at me. He just glances down out of the corner of his eye.

  “Well,” he says.

  “Well,” I say.

  And that is all we say before the judge presents the challenge: it’s back to one of the original formats. Secret ingredient stuff. The box isn’t terrible, all things considered: onion, Panko, purple carrots, and Warheads. Like, those weird burn-your-taste-buds-off candies that no one eats unless they’ve been dared to see how long they can hold one in their mouth without puckering.

  I always won those contests as a kid. Always.

  I can do this.

  They give us thirty minutes.

  Thirty minutes will hardly be enough time to chisel through this rock wall between Reid and me so we can actually speak through it, but whatever; we will make do.

  “So,” I say.

  He turns to face me and says, “What are we gonna do with this?”

  I stare down at the box, partly to process what’s in it and partly just to avoid having to look at Reid. I grab the carrots and turn, because maybe we can just . . . get through this without having to talk to each other at all. I can slice some carrots and he can crust some meat in that Panko and we’ll just move around each other seamlessly and come up with a coherent dish.

  I go to take a step and Reid’s hand is around my wrist. Not hard. It’s a question he’s asking with his fingers.

  “Hey,” he says. His voice, on the other hand, is pretty sharp.

  “What?” I say.

  “You wanna tell me where you’re going with those?”

  “The sink, Reid,” I say. “Unless you have something against washing produce.”

  He narrows his eyes. “We should talk about what we’re gonna cook.”

  “I don’t see why we have to talk at all.”

  “Carter.”

  “What?”

  His nostrils flare and he drops my wrist. “I thought we’d kind of made some headway here.”

  I shrug. “Yeah, well. That was before you admitted to conducting psychological sabotage on me.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “What?” I say. “Is it that unreasonable that I’m pissed at you?”

  “No,’ he says. “It’s that unreasonable that we’ve wasted two entire minutes arguing when we should have been figuring out what our dish is gonna be, so are you gonna play or did you want to just fight for a while?”

  I swallow. Blink up at him.

  “I’ll wait,” he says. “I’m sure both of us will have plenty of time to come up with witty retorts we could have fired in this discussion while we’re flying home at the end of the week.”

  I blow out a frustrated breath. “Fine,” I say. “Fine.”

  “So what,” he says, “are you doing with those carrots?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” I say. “You’re so concerned with working together. I bet you have just a million ideas that are better than mine.”

  “Not a chance, cream puff. What’s your grand plan?”

  “I just . . .” Suddenly, I’m totally self-conscious. He’s looking at me like he expects something of me. Like he is completely confident I’m going to meet those expectations, and how is that so nerve-wracking?

  Except I don’t know. Suddenly, when it’s not just me in my head, running through possibilities with my own brain and my own food and my own stove, it’s terrifying. What if I’m wrong and it’s stupid and . . .

  Reid’s eyebrow slowly arches.

  I clear my throat and stand a little taller. Summon some bravado I do not feel. “I thought,” I say. Then I glance down at the kitchen floor. Blow out a breath. Make myself meet that stare of appraisal that’s almost trying to be reassuring. “I thought we could roast these carrots in a balsamic kind of thing. Maybe crush up some of the Warheads in that.”

  “Yeah, I like that,” he says, and it takes everything in me not to say, YOU DO? HOORAY like his approval matters so damn much.

  It doesn’t.

  He doesn’t.

  I just smile, a little. Allow myself a single tip of the mouth.

  “Why don’t you do the carrots, then?” he says. “I can do something with the Panko on beef. Fry them up and we can do a reduction over it, too.”

  I bristle, even though there’s no reason for me to. There’s literally nothing in his statement I can get offended by; it’s just that he’s already moving like it’s decided, and I am annoyed that he’s so confident. I’m annoyed that I feel like he’s basically in charge here and I’m the assistant. Even though I don’t think he would see it that way. I don’t think anyone but me would view it like that.

  But god, that’s how this feels. That’s how it’s felt every time I’ve stepped into this kitchen, clawing for something that probably won’t even be mine.

  Like I’m just . . . listening.

  It’s bullshit, I think. He asked me what I was going to do, not what I maybe wanted to do. He pushed me to tell him, to just decide right then and there, and then planned his own thing around mine. But when I get in my head, I can’t see through my own panic. I just—lord, I am being ridiculous.

  This whole room, judges at the front, and judgey people milling around and around, just makes me shrink.

  I’m annoyed at Reid. For no real reason except that he knows what he wants and he knows who he is and he knows what he’s going to do (not just what he wants to do, what he’s going to do) in any given situation, and it works. I’m annoyed, more than anything, that this is now suddenly going smoothly.

  Maybe I want to hate him.

  Maybe there’s just a weird comfort in wanting to strangle him, I don’t know.

  But I know that all this is really getting under my skin. I pull out a sharp knife and go at these carrots and I am irritated.

  I’m irritated!

  At what!

  I huff and Reid slides a glance at me.

  “You sure those are thin enough, there, sugar?” he says, and now I know exactly why I am irritated.

  “Do you want to come over here and do it, Yamada?”

  “Ooh, Yamada. Struck a nerve?”

  “Shut up and slice your beef or whatever you’re doing.”

  I glance over at him and he rolls his eyes. “I’m not saying you don’t know how to cut carrots, I was just trying to get a rise—”

  “Maybe it shouldn’t be beef.”

  I’m aware we’
re having this argument over everyone, and several of the judges are actually raising their eyebrows, but time is running low and god, I cannot stand this.

  “I’m already slicing beef,” he says.

  “You’ve sliced two pieces.”

  “Right, which is—”

  “I’m just saying we didn’t even consider anything else.”

  He clenches his teeth and drops the knife onto the butcher’s block. Grabs either side and says, “Would you like to go through an itemized list of every meat that exists, Carter? Right here, right now?”

  I groan and slice my carrots.

  “Chicken, beef, pork, fish—oh wait, do you want me to be specific?”

  “I’m just saying maybe we should have taken half a second—”

  “Lest you hadn’t noticed,” he says, and I can hear the irritation in his voice. It’s verging on anger, which probably matches mine, “that timer is ticking down, and everyone in here is already cooking.”

  “Well, lest you hadn’t noticed, we haven’t even talked about the vinaigrette and what’s going in it and neither of us has any idea as to whether it’ll go with both the carrots and the beef, especially considering the candy.”

  “Oh my god,” he says.

  “What?”

  “I’m slicing this beef!”

  “FINE,” I say. “The beef is fine but we need to communicate on this reduction or vinaigrette or whatever it is before we wreck everything.”

  “Obviously.”

  I almost nick my fingertip, I’m moving so fast cutting these carrots, and I’m not paying the attention I should because I’m paying too much attention to being mad at Reid. Again. When I absolutely swore I was done with all of that. I’m a little embarrassed about it, to be honest. Because Will and Riya are doing fine. Even freaking Andrew and Addie seem to be cooperating, and we have twenty-one minutes left, and it’s looking most likely that I will be serving up a nice fried plate of Reid’s actual throat to the judges; this is not professional.

  I wonder if they’ll dock points for us acting like jerks to each other.

  If they even can.

  I don’t know.

  I don’t know.

  What I do know is that these carrots are, indeed, thin enough, and that he isn’t any better at this than me.

  At least, I tell that to myself over and over and over.

  When I’m finished with the carrots, I head over to the butcher’s block that Reid is occupying and just leave them in a bowl.

  His beef is done and he’s mixing up some Panko and egg and spices to coat it.

  “Do you want me to start on the reduction?” I say.

  He’s stirring so fast that I can see the muscles in his forearms flexing, veins popping. I struggle with the whole swallowing thing. Reid is unbearable half the time, but he’s hot all the time.

  I probably look like a frazzled, sweaty, cotton candy head.

  He says, “Hmm?” just whipping that Panko mix around again and again and again. His jaw is clenched and he’s stirring a lot more enthusiastically than he needs to, I think, so he’s probably still mad.

  Whatever.

  All we need to do is get through this; we don’t need to make it to the other side as best friends.

  You don’t need to like each other to cook together.

  “Should I get started,” I say, “on the reduction?”

  Reid glances up from the bowl. Swallows. He cuts a look at the carrots and says, “Yeah, just—just go for it.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “We’re short on time; whatever. I trust you. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  Okay, so We Need To Do This As A Team Reid is no longer interested in cooperation either. Fine by me.

  I head to the stoves, right beside Will, to work on melting these stupid Warheads, and Reid hits up a different one a few feet from me to fry up his beef medallions.

  My pulse slows just having a divide between us.

  Will is working on something that I think looks like chicken. Maybe pork. It’s ridiculous that I can’t tell but the cut is weird, whatever it is, and a lot of stuff looks kind of similar when it’s raw. He says, “You, uh, doing okay over there?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not gonna go all Sweeney Todd on loverboy?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it but there’s a lot of knives around here.”

  He snorts. “Try to refrain from murder in the kitchen. At the very least, no jugular hits. If you get blood in this masterpiece, I will be very put out.”

  I smirk. “Okay, I’ll give it a shot, but no promises.”

  Riya brushes past Will, and he glances up from his skillet, just for a half second, just enough for me to see his eyes flick toward her.

  I dig my teeth into my lip, smile, and think about that for a moment. A little mental reset.

  Then I focus.

  The Warheads melt down surprisingly easily after I crush them, which is nice, but damn, sour blue raspberry is it a difficult flavor to work with.

  Reid says, “You done on that yet?”

  “No.”

  “Let me help.”

  “How. You wanna stir?”

  “No, I want to get it done; we have less than ten minutes.”

  I say, “Listen—”

  But he’s already over here, tasting some of the stuff off a spoon.

  “Dude this is terrible,” he says, and before I can say, “I HAVEN’T STIRRED SINCE I ADDED SALT, REID,” he tosses a handful of salt in.

  “SHIT,” I yell.

  We are rewarded with a very sharp look from a judge, but come on. Like I’m the only one dropping four-letter words in this kitchen.

  “That needed salt and you know it,” he says.

  “Yeah which is why I added some, Reid.”

  “But—”

  “Taste it!” I say, and I hold up the new sauce.

  “Oh no,” he says immediately. “Oh shit, oh shit.”

  “Maybe you should listen, Reid.”

  “Maybe this isn’t the time, Lane.”

  I let out a muffled scream and say, “UGH NO, I forgot to put the carrots in.”

  “They’re already in. We can let them finish with the sauce on them.”

  “Thank you,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “What the hell are we gonna do about this sauce?”

  “That you screwed up?”

  “YES, CARTER, GOD.”

  I scramble for some sugar to balance it, and he reaches for some habanero powder; maybe the spicy will work with the salt and the sweet and the balsamic we have going. I have no idea.

  I think I dirty about four hundred spoons testing it in various underwhelming stages.

  Time ticks down, second by second, and by the end, we are both huddled over the same skillet, desperate for it to just . . . be tolerable. All we can hope for is tolerable.

  I add another sprinkle of the habanero.

  “What . . . what do you think?” I say. I stick my finger in my mouth and I’m not stoked about it, but I don’t think there’s anything else to be done.

  Reid tastes it. “Dammit. It’s . . . it’s fine. It’ll have to be fine.”

  We mix it with the mostly roasted carrots and opt not to drizzle it over the Panko beef with tiny bits of onion in the crust. We just set the beef on top of the carrot mixture when it comes out, and drizzle the plate with the sauce.

  Shit.

  I’m so nervous when the judging begins that I am sweating everywhere, and it’s not because of the heat in the kitchen.

  I can barely hear them as they go, team by team, down the line. They have varying degrees of compliments and criticisms—with more strong reactions one way or the other to the Warhead stuff. Riya and Will’s, of course, is magical. Because everyone can see it but them, and they are like this Disney prince and princess of a team. Addie’s is killer, too. The other few teams are fine, but the reactions buzz in my ears—all I can pick out are positive and negati
ve tones. At least one or two of them get decidedly negative.

  When they get to us, they decide that the beef is cooked well, the carrots are lovely, and the vinaigrette/reduction/Warhead crap/WHATEVER IT IS is . . . weird. It’s just . . . weird.

  Weird is not an adjective that makes me feel good.

  Weird clearly has Reid on-edge because his hands are actually shaking as we leave, his teeth grinding together. He’s always like the picture of arrogance, so now I’m even more nervous than I was. Which is saying something.

  We don’t speak when we get back to the dorm.

  Fine.

  Good.

  I don’t want to speak to him.

  He is definitely not the reason I keep checking my phone until I fall asleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I wake up to a text, but not from Reid.

  And it’s fine.

  Of course it’s fine. Literally why wouldn’t it be fine?

  It’s my sister.

  Jillian: HAVE YOU WON YET, BUG

  Carter: NOPE

  Jillian: Well get on it I miss you and also no one can cook

  Carter: YOU get on it. I have confidence in your ability to turn on an oven

  Jillian: UGH

  Jillian: Well. I love you bb. Kick absolute ass.

  Carter: <3 <3 <3

  I don’t say: Well Jill I’m fine I think I’m fine but there’s this guy I can’t stop thinking about, and I think teaming up is going to kill us both and also the longer I stay here, the more I think I got here on a fluke. I’ll be home any effing minute ok?

  Because I don’t want her to know that I’m panicking. That it’s gotten to the point that every time I walk into that kitchen, it feels like a sentencing, not a gift.

  I pick at my pilling shirt as I walk around outside in the heat and make my brain just slow. Take a second.

  I want five minutes free of panicking. And wondering how a girl who’s used nothing but clearance pans and on-sale cheap meat and . . . shit, basically, to cook with, who’s never taken extra classes outside home-ec because, SURPRISE, even saying unaffordable is like ha. Hahaha. Understatement, meet my mouth.

  But being here, where I am now, feels impossible. And the closer I get to the end, the more impossible it feels.