Page 12 of For Butter or Worse
“I came early so I could lay things out for you before the vultures arrive.” He straightened in the chair and pulled on the ends of his jacket before looking back at her. “Your manager and agent are going to want you to go back to the show. It’s a moneymaker for them. Your lawyer is going to inform you that the photos taken yesterday were legal to use and we can’t remove them—that’s true. And he’s also going to tell you that you have to re-sign with the show soon, or you’re officially out.”
“And what are you going to tell me?” She raised her eyebrows. A whole team of people weighing in on her career decisions took some getting used to. It was their job to voice concerns—like having her own inner monologue amplified times ten.Quitting the show was the biggest mistake of your life. The fans are right about you being #NastyNina. Leo thinks you’re obsessed with him now...
“I was going to ask what you want from all this.” Tom’s expression was neutral, which was annoying. Out of all of her people’s opinions, she needed his the most. Mainly because he was the only one who told her the honest truth, not the sugarcoated, dipped-in-chocolate one her agent liked to serve up.
“I want to be taken seriously again.” Her voice was so low she barely recognized it, but she was expressing her deepest, truest desire. Being on the show had caused her reputation to crumble instead of soar. She’d been left in the oven too long and burned to a blackened crisp. “This show was supposed to give me a platform, and now people just think I’m a joke. That’s not what I want for my life.”
She’d wanted to be a chef that little girls could look up to—a role model. Empowering other women was where she wanted to be, because she’d never seen a woman with the career she now had when she was coming up in the industry. And after landing a spot on the show, she thought she could be that person for aspiring chefs.
And, maybe more importantly, her brand was different from other female chefs who flourished on TV. She wasn’t like Giada or the Barefoot Contessa, with slick, oceanfront homes that made wealthy people feel seen. Or Rachael Ray, who made meals in fifteen minutes using canned ingredients. Nina wanted to show that food could be an experience. The same way that she and her mom used to cook together. All her childhood memories were tied in to their tiny kitchen. Nina could just as easily pull up the smell of her mother blending flour and rosemary in the mixer as she could breathe.
Through cooking, feelings and emotions could be expressed in complex ways. How many male chefs had been able to show the art of food on TV? She didn’t see the same for women. Female chefs were expected to be nurturing and wholesome—two things Nina definitely wasn’t. She’d thought that hostingThe Next Cooking Champ!might lead to her own cooking show—where she could control the content, the message and her image—but she felt so far from that dream that she wasn’t sure there was any way back.
“Have you had enough caffeine to hear my honest opinion?” Tom bent forward, elbows on his knees. “Fake it ’til you make it. You need to stay relevant if you ever want to get the one-woman show you’ve been working toward. You’re a celebrity chef, so people will come to the restaurant to see you, but they won’t do that if you’re a has-been. Leaving the show the way you did definitely got people intrigued. You have their attention, especially after yesterday with Leo. You want a second chance? You have to stay in the public eye, at least for now. Use this moment to your advantage, because if you just disappear off the face of the earth then so will your chance to actually alter how people see you. No one will care that you’ve changed if they have no idea it’s happening.”
“I’ve already quit the show. I can’t go back.” She just couldn’t imagine how doing the same thing—struggling to stay sane with Leo—would help to change anything. A large cloud blocked out the sun and turned the porch cool. She pulled her sweater tighter around her arms.
“I wasn’t talking about the show.” He smirked. “I was talking about you dating Leo.”
“We’re not dating, and we didn’t kiss. He nearly broke my nose...” Ugh, could her final encounter with him have been any more awkward? Sometimes she felt like the universe intentionally put her in situations where she’d look bad in front of Leo. If so, the score was Universe one million, Nina zero.
Tom allowed an extra beat of silence as he grinned knowingly. “Fine, you’re not, but it sure did look like it, and that’s all that matters. People were afraid of you when you were the mean, terrifying judge who made people cry.”
“I didn’t make people cry.”Not on purpose, anyway.Nina whacked his shoulder. Which was surprisingly toned. That was the problem with some LA people: they worked out too much and didn’t eat enough.
“People are sexist assholes and don’t believe women are allowed to be tough. I don’t make the rules! But now they think you and Leo have been dating this whole time. It gives every moment together onscreen a totally different meaning. You should see some of the articles and tweets about you. People have totally forgotten they hated you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be making me feel better?” Nina asked defensively.
Tom turned his phone screen to face her. “My assistant put together a deck of the top tweets and headlines in the last twelve hours. Look at these.”
Could Leo O’Donnell Be Taming the Nina Shrew?
Opposites Attract? Leo O’Donnell and Nina Lyon Spotted Making Out
Did Nina Lyon Quit TV to Save Her Relationship with Leo O’Donnell?
“I never liked Nina before, but I definitely ship this pairing.”—@NxtCookChmpFan
“Yessssss I’ve been waiting for this moment since I started reading the Nina/Leo fanfic”
—@Nina4President
“Is that a rolling pin in Leo’s pocket? Lol”
—@FoodPornOrBust
Nina sighed out what seemed like every last breath she had in her body, feeling as deflated as a cake that had failed to rise. If she stepped back a bit, she could see that Tom was presenting her with ingredients for a recipe: an increase in approval from the fans, needing to get her career back on track...and Leo. She just wasn’t sure how they all would blend together.
“You should try to make things work with him,” Tom said, cutting through her confusion.
“Tom, you cannot be serious. You’re mypublicist, which is French for ‘find a way to fix this.’” She was kidding, but also absolutely not kidding.
“I don’t speak French.” He stared her down. Took a sip of his cappuccino. Then leaned back in the chair. Okay, so he definitely wasnotjoking about the Leo idea.
“You can’t be telling me that trying to ‘make things work with Leo’ would actually help my career.”
“You and Leo can both get good press out of this,” Tom said. “He’s a well-liked hunk of man meat, and the fans want to see you two together—it’s that simple. Being with him will keep you in the public eye, with a platform, and buy time to focus on the food and your own goals. And for Leo, being near you elevates the status of his chain of restaurants. That’s why he signed on for the show in the first place. He’s looking for legitimacy, you need a comeback—it’s a win-win.”
