Page 31 of The Autumn We Fell in Love

Brie

Icheck the clock — forty-five minutes left. Just enough to get my sourdough bread fully cooled and my quick pickles brined.

If I felt confident before, I’m over-the-moon now. Because I know — I’ve got this in the bag.

My fondue is gently bubbling in its electric pot and smells so freaking good. In addition, I’ve got an array of sides almost fully assembled: fresh cherry tomatoes and tart Granny Smith apple slices, roasted baby potatoes and broccoli that I’m keeping hot in the oven’s warming drawer, and crisp slices of bacon, plus the pickles and the bread that I’ll cube once it’s cool.

Yeah, I’ve been busy, making damn good use of my time in this competition. And it hasn’t even been that weird cooking under the intense gaze of the live audience and the television crew.

I step back and survey my creations. I’d be proud to serve this to guests or paying customers, and I feel just as good about presenting it to Saffron and Basil to be judged.

I think they’re going to love it.

Hell, it’s hard formeto resist dipping a juicy slice of bacon into my fondue and savoring it. A chef’s harshest critic is herself, so I know that I’ve nailed my entry.

Glancing around the room, I see my competitors in various states of disarray. Nobody seems to be managing their time as well as I have. There are a lot of sweat-beaded foreheads as the cooks race to get their cheese sauces ready in time.

Placing my hands on my cook station to steady myself, I draw a deep breath and dare to steal a look across the room at my number one enemy. You know, the enemy I’d just as soon kiss as crush via my contest victory.

Colby’s working fast, but he doesn’t seem as stressed as the rest of the contest participants.

In fact, he seems to be spending a lot of time looking over at me.

When he sees that I’m checking him out, he gives me a half-smile that I could eat right up. He raises his eyebrows as if to ask,Are you okay?Like he cares about my sauce more than his.

My insides turn to jelly.

Because damn, I want him so badly.

Maybe yesterday I really did get things wrong —seethings wrong.

I’ve never wanted so badly to be wrong. Not once in my entire life.

I wish I could throw down my apron and run across the room to hurl myself into Colby’s arms.

But I can’t. All I can do is keep cooking. So I turn back to my burbling fondue.

I must not have realized how close I was to the electric pot.

Looking back on this moment later, I try to imagine all the ways I could have done things differently.

Something to avert disaster. But I can never come up with a damn thing.

As I turn to check on my quick pickles, I knock against the electric pot with an elbow. It teeters to one side, cheese sauce sloshing over its sides and coating the counter. Unheeding of how I could be burned, I reach for the thing to steady it, to save my prize-winning sauce.

It’s true what they say about reality suddenly moving in slow motion during high-stress times. It totally happens, and yeah, it’s cliché — but it’s only cliché because it’s so brutally accurate.

It happens to me now.

I reach out for the scorching pot with both hands, ready to endure the burns I will certainly raise on my tender palms and fingers. Better to go home with bandaged hands than with empty ones.

Stumbling, I miss.

As my fingers close on thin air, I have all the time in the world to watch as my fondue pot seems for one exhilarating second like it might settle, only to fully topple in a glorious fountain of flying cheese.

There’s fondue everywhere. And the electric pot doesn’t just stop at being overturned. No, it keeps tumbling to the floor, taking the food processor with it.

Somehow the pot survives its fall. The food processor’s bowl, however, cracks and shatters into angry plastic shards when it hits the floor.

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