“Ready to get culinarily destroyed?” he asks with a cockysmile. Annoying as it is, I much prefer this attitude to that of the Benny of yesterday who offered to go easy on me. It almost feels like our conversation in the pantry never happened. Which is a relief, of course.
I shake my head, narrowing my eyes and crossing my arms again in my best attempt at looking intimidating in my pale pink apron and today’s shirt, which is printed with tiny French bulldogs. “Not a chance.”
He matches my stance and glare, but there’s still a teasing glint in his eyes. “Game on, Camden.”
For our first showdown video, Aiden is brought in as a host to explain the new format of the show, what Benny and I are “competing” for, and how the challenges will go down. It’s clear someone somewhere is looking out for me when Aiden tells us that, for our first challenge, Benny and I must each make our own variety of homemade ice cream. I’ve made ice cream a million times in Mamaw’s kitchen, big batches that my brothers and cousins and me devoured sitting on Mamaw and Papaw’s porch in the summertime. It’s one of the things I feel most comfortable making on my own.
We have access to whatever we want from the FoF fridges and pantries for flavoring or toppings, so I go with a fancy Swiss chocolate for the base with plans to infuse it with pureed mint. It’s a glorified mint chocolate chip, but it feels like I’m taking a huge risk. Benny gets quite the kick out of teasing me about putting leaves in my ice cream, even though I show him repeatedlythat the mint is not in leaf form by the time I’m mixing it with the chocolate.
Filming goes into a second day since we have to let our batters chill overnight, and the trash talk does not slow down. I don’t respond to most of his texts between Thursday night and Friday, because I’m too keyed up about this first battle. On Friday, each of us let our batters run through the ice cream makers and then chill them for a few minutes in the blast freezer so they harden quickly, then we sample our own and each other’s before bringing in the judges.
My mint chocolate is delicious—and not at all leafy. Benny has made a mixed-berries-and-cream concoction that is, I hate to admit upon tasting it, next level. Nia, Seb, and Lily are brought in as the blind taste testers, and while they stress that both ice creams are excellent, two out of three prefer Benny’s.
He takes an obnoxious bow as the whole group—including me, grudgingly—gives him a round of applause. I try not to let my annoyance show until filming wraps up and most people disperse from the kitchen, at which point I take it out on a sticky spot on the counter where some batter spilled.
“I think you got it all.” Benny’s voice is so close behind me that I nearly jump out of my shoes. “Keep scrubbing that hard and you’ll wear a hole through the counter.”
“Keep minding your own business if you don’t want me to wear a hole through your head, mister.”
He laughs as he leans against the counter beside me, onemuscular forearm making its way into my line of sight. “I’m not even sure what that means, but you’re cute when you’re grumpy. Relax, Reese’s Pieces. It’s still early in the season and we’re only oh-and-one. Not that anyone’s keeping score.”
I grit my teeth but say no more, and soon enough he gets the picture and makes himself scarce. He’s joking around, but I’m already all too aware of the score, picturing it in bold letters and neon lights:
Benny—1, Reese—0.
I spend most of the weekend hunkered down over my sketch pad and tablet, hoping to have someAmateur Hourlogo designs and a few other illustrations, in the style of what I used to do for my food column in the school paper, to show Margie by Monday. After much pestering and reassurances that it will be strictly platonic, I agree to join Benny on Saturday night for what he’s advertised as a “quick” dinner at Dick’s Drive-In, but we end up talking and laughing over burgers and milkshakes for a couple of hours. I’m annoyed at myself for having a good time, and for forgetting about work for a while, despite my best intentions.
But come Monday, it’s back to business. I email Margie first thing when I get to my desk, even though I haven’t seen her around the office yet, asking whether we can meet to talk about my designs. I haven’t decided if it’ll seem like I’m trying too hardif I show my boss this work I wasn’t explicitly asked to do, but she’s got to see what I’m capable of. Her response comes within five minutes.
R—
Sure, let’s go for coffee this afternoon, 2pm. Bring your designs.
Thx,
M
My eyebrows lift in surprise. A coffee outing is more than I expected, but I’m happy to accept. And nervous as hell. I spend most of the day half-heartedly tending to the social media likes and replies while worrying my bottom lip between my teeth and braiding and unbraiding my hair over and over again. I know I look like a mess by the time I gather my laptop and my bag and meet Margie by her desk, but seeing the exceptionally frizzy state of her own braid helps put me at ease.
She leads the way to a coffee shop I haven’t been to a few blocks from the office and offers to buy me a drink when we get there. I can’t decide whether it would be worse manners to turn her down or to let her buy me something; somehow Mama’s teaching never prepared me for this situation. I end up asking for a glass of water—still an order, but it doesn’t cost anything.
Either I’ve found the best of both worlds or made myself look like even more of a head case.
When Margie sits at the window-side table I’ve selected, she wastes no time, jumping right in before she’s even set her coffee mug down. “So, what have you got for me?”
“Oh!” I squeak in surprise, even though this was the whole point of our outing. I scramble to pull my computer out and open it up between us on the table, tapping in my passcode to reveal the handful of windows I have at the ready. “I can start with theAmateur Hourlogo designs. You mentioned wanting to have something to put on the UltiMedia home page, so I put together a few options that I hope look consistent with the other series’ logos but also represent the, uh,vibeof our show. I have mock-ups ready of what they could look like as banners at the bottom of our video thumbnails, title screens for the beginning of each episode, things like that. So to start, I have these three….”
I click around until the three designs are pulled up on the same screen, turning the laptop so it faces Margie as she blows steam off her mug. Her eyes narrow as she leans in to study the designs, and I do everything in my power not to bite my bottom lip clean off while I await her reaction. Her face is unreadable. After a minute or two, she looks back up at me.
“These are excellent,” she says, and while there’s only a hint of a grin in her expression, I feel like she’s giving me a standing ovation. “I like the one in the middle best, with the colors and nods to key elements of theAmateur Hourbrand, but I’ll put it out to the team and see if there are better arguments for theothers. Send me all the mock-ups you have for those, if you will. What’s next?”
Oh.Oh.Was that…it? Was it really that easy? She likes them and wants to use one of them, just like that? Trying to hide my utter shock, I blink a couple of times and nod, turning the computer back my way.
“O-okay, well, I’m so happy to hear that. Thank you. I’ll absolutely send them your way, and let me know if you need anything more from me on, uh, that front. The next thing I wanted to show you is kind of out of the blue, not something you’ve asked me to work on, so I totally understand if these aren’t anything you can use, but I was just pulling from some of my experience—you might have seen the samples in my portfolio from my food column in my high school paper, and, um—”
“Reese,” Margie says coolly, and my eyes snap up to meet hers. “There’s no need to be so nervous. You’re doing a great job. I’m happy to look at whatever ideas you want to show me.”
I take a sip of my free water and swallow heavily. “Right. Got it. No nerves! Thank you. So, I did some illustrations.”
