Taste Test (20 page)

I decide on the Chemistry of Cooking lab because it’s furthest away from the dorms, so I figure there will be less of a chance of having to share it with anyone. When I get there, the lights are off and the late-afternoon sky bathes everything in cool blue light. I flip on one switch, then another. The ceiling fixtures flicker and come to life.

I spend almost an hour working. I try different filet knives, different cuts of fish, different fillings, but I’ve always had trouble with food architecture. My salmon slices aren’t thick enough or my stuffing is lumpy and uneven. Instead of pin-wheels, my roulades look like flat tires filled with bread-crumb glue. Ick. I’m not even going to bother to try to fix these—I think this is one recipe I’m going to have to scrap.

I take my time cleaning off the equipment and packing up what’s left of my ingredients. There’s no reason to rush back to the dorm, anyway—I’m avoiding Christian and now Gigi’s probably avoiding me. Eventually, though, I force myself to heave my bags of stuff onto one shoulder. It’s not like I can stay here and sleep on a lab table.

Just as I’m walking toward the door, though, it flies open. I take a step back. When he sees me, Christian’s face screws up in a scowl.

“What are
you
doing here?”

“I just finished,” I mutter. I want to get out of this room, which suddenly feels like a closet.

“Well,” Christian says as he brushes past me, a reusable grocery bag in one hand, “good. I would prefer not to be disturbed while I work. Charles promised me I could have privacy in the lab.”

“Don’t you mean Dr. Anderson?” I raise an eyebrow. “I don’t think a professor with a Cirrus Prize in food physics is in the habit of letting students call him ‘Charles.’ “

“He’s a friend of my father’s.”

“Right. Of course he is.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” I shake my head and move toward the door. “Good luck with your recipes and stuff.”

“You know, I really don’t get you.”

I turn to see him leaning against one of the lab tables, his jaw clenched. I sigh, crossing my arms.

“What don’t you get?”

He rakes a hand through his hair. “I know that you and I haven’t always gotten along or whatever. But the other night—I mean, one minute you’re all over me and then you’re running out the door. I don’t know about you, but I can’t downshift that fast.”

“
I
was all over
you
?”

“Um, yeah—you were there, too, remember? Do you really need a play-by-play?”

“I never should have even
gone
there,” I mutter.

“Why not, Nora? God, can’t you just lighten up and have some fun? Be a team player?”

“We aren’t teammates, Christian,” I snap. “We aren’t friends. We aren’t … more than friends. We’re competitors. We’re supposed to be—professional.”

I move to leave again when I feel his hand on my arm. With some effort, he turns me around to look at him. I can feel my heart thump rhythmically and a familiar blast of energy courses through me. My body reacts to his touch with a mind of its own.

“You may hate my guts most of the time,” he says, looking down at me, “and I might think you’re a giant pain in the ass. But you and I both know that there’s something going on here—something worth trying out, at least once.”

And then he kisses me.

A good first kiss is everything people say it is.

No. It’s more than that.

For me, kissing Christian was like seeing the world through a whole new set of eyes. It was like I was there and I wasn’t there. My body was operating under its own steam as I tumbled headfirst into the whole experience. It was a free fall, a nosedive. It was bungee jumping with my lips.

So, I can’t explain why I pulled away.

And I really can’t explain why I slapped him.

Christian yelps, taking a few steps back. We’re both sort of panting and I’ve braced myself against the doorjamb. He rubs his jaw.

“What the hell, Nora?”

“I—sorry, it was a reflex.”

“A guy kisses you and your first reaction is to
hit
him?”

“Apparently.”

“Well, I guess that tells me everything I need to know.”

He reaches a hand out to me as though we’re meeting for the first time. Bewildered, I take it and he shakes it vigorously.

“Competitors it is. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Right,” I say, the word sounding sort of hollow to me. I feel a little light-headed. Something somewhere deep inside me is pushing hard against the words “nothing more.”

“Great,” Christian is saying. “Now get the hell out. I want to cook without giving away my secrets to the enemy.”

I give him a forced smile. “Uh, watch out for that one burner on the left, it flares up when you light it.”

I don’t look back at him as I hurry out the door and away from the lab, confused and nauseated.

When I get down the stairs and outside, I flop onto a bench and stare out into the darkness around me. My pulse is throbbing in my ears and my hands are still shaking. I touch my fingers to my mouth, and it’s as though my lips are filled with their own electrical charge. When I close my eyes, I can still feel his mouth, soft and warm, against mine. For a second, I wonder if I’ve burned my tongue, if that tingling sensation is actually pain. It’s sort of like fire, but sweet. It’s a desire I’ve never felt before—one that has nothing to do with cooking or winning and everything to do with Christian.

“Holy crap.”

I breathe the words, hoping there’s no one around to hear me. It takes a few more minutes before I’m finally able to struggle back across campus, the burden of the stuff I’m carrying now secondary to the emotions I’m grappling with.

When I get back to my room, I somehow manage to unlock
the door without dropping my load. I stumble inside and finally let the bags, boxes, and containers spill from my arms onto the round wooden table in the center of the room. Letting out a big sigh, I flip on the overhead light.

“Turn that off!”

I jump a foot as Joy sits straight up in her bed, or at least what used to be her bed, glaring at me.

“What the hell are
you
doing here?” I stare back at her, horrified.

I haven’t actually spent any time alone with Joy since Angela’s accident and our on-camera confrontation. I feel the familiar sensation of blood boiling below the surface of my skin.

“This is my room, too,” she sneers at me.

“Uh, since when?” I ask.

“Since I moved back in,” she says sweetly. “I just missed you
so
much, I had to come back!”

With a dramatic huff, she flops back down and buries her head in the fluffy down pillows. I climb into my own bed, staring daggers at her back. I can’t imagine why she decided to move back on campus, unless she was forced to. Maybe the other judges or Benny or
someone
finally realized what was really going on with her and Prescott. One can only hope.

By the time we’re in wardrobe the next day, I hear her whining to someone from a nearby makeup station.

I pull on a pair of dark-blue boyfriend jeans and, as quietly as I can, slide my chair back until I can see Joy’s shiny black
hair twisted around a dozen hot rollers. A makeup artist is struggling to line her eyes while she blabs into her cell phone.

Her
phone
? How does she even
have
that?

“I know, Mommy,” Joy is saying, “I totally agree. And once I win this thing, I’ll be off to Paris and away from this godforsaken hole of a campus.”

Rolling my eyes, I turn back toward my mirror and zip up my jeans. Leave it to Joy to find a way around the rules. Shaking my head, I walk away as she begins ranting about something else.

We find out a few minutes before the challenge starts that a bunch of the network bigwigs decided to watch tonight’s filming. When the contestants walk into the arena, it’s as though we’re performing in front of a live studio audience—hardly a seat in the house is empty. On top of that, the kitchen itself has been totally revamped. Rather than the separate stations for each contestant, they’ve been combined into larger alcoves with room for two people.

“You ready?” I ask Gigi as she unties her knife roll and examines the blades. She gives me a half shrug.

“As I’ll ever be.”

I feel a cold, hard lump in my stomach. I forgot she was upset about what I’d said earlier.

“Hey, we’re cool, right?” I give her a hopeful smile.

She looks at me, then looks away. “Yeah, we’re cool.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she says quickly. “Listen, I was thinking we should try something Indian. Tandoori spices, some richer flavors. No one’s really tapped into that yet.”

“That’s a great idea!” I say, a little too enthusiastically.

Ms. Svincek takes the floor, clearing her throat into the microphone. The arena falls silent. I sneak a glance over at Christian. He’s standing next to Joy, arms crossed. There’s hardly a foot of space between them. The lump in my stomach grows colder.

“Welcome back,” Svincek begins. “I hope you are as excited to work in tandem with your colleagues as we are to witness your work.”

She pauses.

“We’ve had to make a slight change in the judging for this week. Chef Prescott will be unable to join us, so we are replacing him temporarily.”

I look over at Joy, but she’s staring at the floor. I wonder if this is why she is back in our room—did Prescott take off for good? Did they break up? Did someone discover what he was up to after all?

“Anyhow.” Svincek picks up her ever-present clipboard. “Tonight’s challenge will be judged by someone I think you will all be thrilled to meet.”

Her cheeks are a little pink and there’s a film of sweat on her upper lip.

“Rusty O’Neill, come on out!”

A tall, heavily tattooed man treads into the arena behind Madame Bouchon and Chef Mason, wearing biker boots and a leering smile. Rusty O’Neill had his heyday in the ’80s glamrock scene, but he’s come back with a vengeance with his reality dating show,
Rock Steady
. I can’t imagine he knows much about food unless it’s chili dogs and body shots.

“Hey there, guys.” He waves and takes his place next to Chef Mason.

“All right, now for the challenge.” Ms. Svincek beams at Rusty. “In honor of Mr. O’Neill’s talents and profession, each pair will be assigned one musical instrument. That instrument must inspire what dish you decide to cook tonight. There must be a clear vision that you can explain to the judges at Elimination Table and, of course, it should have that rock-star edge to it.”

Madame Bouchon is already making the rounds, handing one person in each station a small envelope. Gigi rips ours open and pulls out a card with a picture sketched in black and white. It’s a drum kit, complete with symbols and a cowbell. I point to the bell.

“Think that means we should make red meat?”

She elbows me and grins. “Nah, I’ve got a chicken dish that’s gonna knock their socks off.”

I feel a little bit better about things after that. Chef Mason sets the clock and has Rusty push the button for us to start. As the numbers begin to move, every twosome huddles close to strategize. We have an extra five minutes tacked on to our hour so that we can discuss what we want to cook. Gigi’s sketching out a chicken dish on a piece of paper. Over her head, I watch Joy and Christian. He has one hand on her shoulder and she’s laughing. I feel the distinct need to throw sharp objects in their direction.

Gigi and I ditch our Indian idea and decide instead on Chicken Napoleons—pounded chicken breasts cut into discs and pan-fried with a panko crust. We’re going to layer the
chicken with paper-thin chips made of crispy prosciutto, spinach, and Fontina cheese. The stacks will pile up at different heights to mimic a drum set.

Gigi starts searching for a meat mallet while I begin slicing cheese into coaster-sized pieces. I studiously look down at my hands and my knife, trying my damnedest not to watch Joy and Christian working. Any good chef will tell you that your partner in the kitchen is your right hand. It’s one of the most important relationships you can have. So the idea of the two of them creating food together ties me in knots.

I remind myself that I’m the one who walked away from him in the basement kitchen, that I’m the one who slapped him in the lab. It doesn’t make me feel any better—or any less jealous. Unable to resist any longer, I pretend to be checking the countdown clock and watch them from the corner of my eye. They’re furiously chopping separate ingredients with almost identical speed.

How adorable. I may gag.

Whatever it is, though, a knife isn’t enough for Joy. I feel a smug satisfaction as she crosses the room and pulls a food processor from a storage shelf.

Ha!
Amateur.

“So, tell me about what you’re making, ladies.”

I turn to find Lusty Rusty leaning casually against our station counter, swinging a knife held between two fingers. I force myself not to grab it out of his hand. Gigi, on the other hand, bats her eyes like a lunatic.

“Mr. O’Neill, it’s such a pleasure to meet you. I’m a
huge
fan!”