Page 76 of Fire and Icing

“I heard you say three!”

“We have to start from scratch now.”

“I never claimed to be a baker. That’s the whole reason I’m here.”

“Aaagh!”

Emberleigh glances at me. The only way I can describe what passes between us is to say we hold an entire conversation without uttering a word. It’s the kind of thing I do with my family all the time—people I’ve known my whole life. But her?She and I only met a little while ago. And yet we have an understanding between us that’s unexpected.

Eyes on the prize, Dustin. You’re here to help her win, not to win her over.

“Grab that cupcake tin,” she says, pointing to a rubbery thing with twelve cutouts for cupcakes.

“It’s a tin?” I ask, grabbing it.

“It’s made of silicone, but … yeah.”

“Okay …” I hand it over to her. “So we have cream that’s powder and tins made of rubber.”

“Stop.” She lets out a light, carefree laugh. It’s beautiful. “I’m sure you have confusing labels in your job too.”

“Probably.”

Her eyes are still crinkled in the corners. I did that. I put that lingering happiness in her heart and it’s etched on her face. I watch as she carefully distributes the batter into each cup of the “tin.”

She’s humming while she works. I feel like a voyeur, watching something intimate, intruding on her private world, stealing a glimpse behind the scenes. We may be here to compete in the public eye, but what’s happening right now feels personal. There’s a raw vulnerability in her expression the cameras could never capture.

She’s got half the cups filled when she looks at me and says, “You do the rest.”

“Me?”

“I believe in you. Just put the same amount as I did in each cup.”

I hold the bowl and scoop the batter like I’m playing a game of hot lava. Emberleigh watches me and then she gets to work on some other part of this project while I rinse the mixing bowl.

“Now, we’ll make the filling and then the frosting,” Emberleigh explains to me.

A memory comes floating up into my awareness: Mom baking in the kitchen. Maybe I was eight or nine. Dad was home. It could have been a weekend or one of his days off. He walked in and kissed her on the cheek. She asked him to hand her something and he stayed by her side, baking with her. She did the job, but he kept her company.

Emberleigh and I aren’t my parents.

We’re faking a connection so she can be here doing what she does best.

While the cupcakes bake, we make our filling and frosting. Emberleigh has me roll a rolling pin over a bag of graham crackers to make a crumb topping.

“Make the pieces uneven. I’m not going for perfect here.” She’s all focus.

“You want imperfection? I’ve got that down pat,” I tell her.

“Hardly,” she mutters, bending to check the cupcakes with a toothpick just like Mom always did.

The contest bell rings and we stop everything.

That can’t be the end of this round. We haven’t even filled or iced our cupcakes.

I glance up, the clock still says forty-five minutes remain.

“We’ve got a little surprise for you,” the host says. “None of you have started decorating your cupcakes yet. We’re going to start the countdown clocks again in a moment. And you will resume your preparation. Only, for the next forty-five minutes, the non-baking partner will be wearing a blindfold and the baker in your partnership will be directing the blindfolded partner to do all the decorating.”

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