by Nicole Falls
“You mean the senior prom king to your prom queen Deandre Walters? Nah…never heard of him,” I joked.
Tesha rolled her eyes, “Cute. That’s the same shit, Travie said, by the way, even more of a reason that proves the two of you being together is kismet. Speaking of kismet, that brings us back to Dre and me…this opportunity, pairing you and Trav together is lowkey kismet working in my life as well, giving me a shot at a second chance with Dre. So, like…do an old homegirl a solid and let love win or something, Isobel.”
“Wait…what happened with you two? I thought for sure you would be married with two point five kids and a dog and the white picket fence and everything by now,” I asked, curious to know what could have ever broken up a couple as rock solid as Tesh and Dre had seemed to be.
She and I weren’t particularly close during high school, but we were definitely friendly. We didn’t run in the same circles back then, but she was always pleasant when our paths crossed. We even had a few classes together and partnered on group projects, one of the most memorable being an English class project that involved us turning the story of Macbeth into a seventies style blaxploitation film.
“If you go out there and do a retake of that first reveal and also say you’re in it to win it, I’ll tell you that story. But if you’re still dead set against progressing forward, then I guess you’ll never know,” Tesh shrugged, a slight grin on her face, “I’ll give you a couple of moments of quiet contemplation and then we’ll see you out there for your decision?”
After Tesha left my room, I pondered my options here. I would be stupid to leave money on the table essentially if I withdrew from the competition without even giving myself a chance, but I definitely did not want to have to rely on Travis Coleman for the possibility of victory. Something about having my fate in his hands just didn’t sit well with me. However, I grabbed a scrap of paper and made a quick pro/con list, anyway. Trying to see if the decision I eventually came to was sound. The pro/con list never let me down and usually cemented my choices made, this time, however? The damn thing didn’t underscore my decision to withdraw from the competition. When it all shook out, there were more reasons for me to get over myself and work with Travis than there were for me to sit and stew in my disdain.
When I emerged into my living room, the conversation that was happening between everyone in the room came to a screeching halt. My best guess would be that they were trying to figure out an alternative if I’d come out on some bullshit, but fortunately for them…
“First of all, I’d like to apologize to everyone. I…acted out of character,” I started and heard a snort that came from Travis’ direction that I chose to ignore, “I was just…caught off guard and, if it’s not too much, can we just try all of that again?”
It was after giving that weak speech that I looked around the room at everyone who had descended upon my condo. Beyond Gam, Tesha, and Travis, there were two cameramen whose names I didn’t know, Deandre, and a couple of other folks who I assumed were a part of the production staff. Deandre stepped forward, nodding at me before gathering the camera guys and production folks together in a quick huddle to revise this original game plan.
“So…Isobel, Travis?” Deandre started, “We’ve decided that we kind of like the whole enemies coming together to reach a common goal thing that you guys have working here. Do you think you can keep that up for the entirety of production? Because people eat that shit up at home, honestly. Instead of trying to recreate a fake introduction where you two pretend to be surprised to see one another with barely concealed contempt, I think we should play up that ‘I’d love to throw hot grits on you’ energy that Isobel was giving when she opened the door to see TC. We’ll do a couple of interviews with you both separately to get the backstory on your friction. What do you guys think?”
“I think that the less time we have to spend in each other’s presence before it’s contractually necessary is the better,” Travis spoke up immediately.
I rolled my eyes at my body’s initial reaction to his velvety smooth, low, rumbling voice. Those few words spoken had me squirming in place, trying to remain looking unaffected by his piercing gaze that accompanied them. His face was pulled into a scowl, which immediately changed my reaction to him from mild lust to wild annoyance.
“Agreed, so if y’all don’t need us to record anything together today, don’t let the doorknob hit you where the good Lord split you, Coleman,” I sassed, moving my hands in a shooing motion.
He didn’t reply verbally, leveling me with a look that if his eyes were lasers, would have definitely killed me. I rolled my eyes and turned to Gam instead. She shook her head at both of our antics, chuckling slightly.
“Travis?” she called out, walking over to where he and Tesha were huddled together, “It was nice meeting you sweetheart, and despite my rude granddaughter’s actions, I’m looking forward to you all bringing home the W. Isn’t that what you young people say nowadays?
Travis blushed slightly at my grandmother’s words, his face splitting open with a grin before he could control it.
“Thank you, Miss Betty. I want you to know that I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure we bring you home that trophy,” he replied, warmly, “Dre, we can record whatever you need from me at my place. Tesh, let’s ride.”
With those words, Travis left without a second glance or a word of goodbye to me. What a jerk, I thought to myself. Clearly, he was just as rude and entitled as he was back in the day.
“No, baby girl he wasn’t a jerk, but you surely were acting like a jerkette,” Gam mused.
“I said that out loud?” I asked, a hint of chagrin lacing my tone.
“Mmmhmm. Surely did, lil rudeness. Now get yourself over here and sit down so these nice people can get the footage they need and be on their way. You’ve derailed them long enough with your nonsense,” Gam clucked.
-4-
“You know it’s not too late for me to get Dre to call Trell to do this shit, right?” I grumbled to my laughing cousin.
“Yes it is, Trav, you’ve already signed and returned contracts, filmed your introductory package and…” Tesh gestured around the trailer in which we were currently sitting, “Nigga we on set already! So…it is too late.”
I hadn’t slept well the night before. I never slept well my first night in a strange city in hotel beds. It was something of which my cousin was acutely aware, but ignored as she continued to tease me in advance of our first real day of filming Bake Off. I’d yet to see Isobel since arriving at the studio lot, but we hadn’t seen anyone beyond Dre since arriving. Considering the way that he spent most of his time in my trailer, grinning and skinning in Tesha’s face, I’m thinking that visit was more personal than it was business. I was to report to set in just a few minutes, and I just wasn’t in the mood for anything that came along with filming today. But, Travis Coleman never let anyone see him at less than his best, so I shook it off, finished my coffee, and left Tesh watching some silly talk show as I reported for duty.
“Aw naw, who let Clutch in here? I’m about to pull out right now!” I heard the moment I stepped onto set.
That loud, boisterous gravelly tone was instantly recognizable as I whipped my head around to find my former teammate Jon Coltraine—same name as the famed jazz saxophonist with a slight distinction in the spelling of the first and last names because his parents had a sick sense of humor. Traine, as he was known in the league because of the way he mowed niggas down at a locomotive speed on the field, came up on my left side, immediately pulling me into a one-armed embrace as he laughed before pushing back.
“Man, if I knew that they were calling in a ringer, I woulda never said yes to this shit. This is an unfair disadvantage, my guy. Guard!” Traine called out.
“Cut it out, bruh.” I said, chuckling and waving him off, “We’re all on equal ground here, man. Hell, I’ve seen some of the most advanced bakers taken out by amateurs time and time again on this show. But I ain’t know yo
u had a golden mitt, bruh.”
“Man, when the contestant from your hometown is your little sister, and they ask you to pair up with her, saying no isn’t even an option. Otherwise, it makes for a very interesting time around the Christmas goose on Christmas Eve.”
I laughed at Traine, of course, his family really ate a damn goose on Christmas, it only made sense.
“Wait…which one of your sisters is here—Billie or Ella?” I was hoping he said the former because the latter had a puppy dog crush on me when we were in the league and followed me around like a moth to a flame when I accompanied Traine home a few times on bye weeks.
“Stand down. It’s Willy,” Traine laughed, “Ella wouldn’t be caught dead getting her hands dirty doing anything, you know better, bruh. Who’s your partner? Somebody you know?”
“Unfortunately,” I started, but before I could go into that a bit further, the producer appeared asking us to go stand behind our cooking stations so that they could get a few establishing shots of the teams in the kitchen for the opening credits of Bake Off.
“We’ll rap later, man,” I said, dapping up Traine before heading over to the station adorned with Coleman and Knight.
Seeing another familiar face put me a bit more at ease, but that was quickly evaporated when I approached my station where Isobel stood scowling in my direction.
“Knight,” I acknowledged with a head nod.
“Coleman,” she mocked, mimicking my greeting with an eye roll.
“Look, I know they asked you to play it up for the cameras or whatever, but ain’t no red lights ablaze yet, sweetheart, so you can tone it down a little,” I said, which earned me another eye roll.
I blew a kiss in Isobel’s direction, which caused her to shoot me the double dagger salute with her middle fingers.
“Real mature, Belly,” I cracked.
“What did you just call me?” Isobel gritted out; eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring with barely concealed contempt.
“Belly…that’s what Gram calls you, right?”
“It’s Gam…and only she has that privilege. You may call me Isobel or Knight, or not at all preferably,” Isobel snapped.
“All right bakers, we’re actually going to film our first episode today, so I hope you guys are ready,” Deandre called out, clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention.
He introduced us to the host of the program; some goofy dude named Thad I recognized from Savor’s midday cooking show who did double duty with this gig as well. We were also introduced to the panel of judges, which included some of the network’s established stars and my personal favorite person on all of Savor Network, Charlene “Charlie” Graham, one half of Charlie and Nix, the network’s flagship cooking show.
“Goddamn, she’s even finer in person,” I muttered under my breath, or so I thought.
“She’s also hella married to a man finer than you,” Isobel laughed.
“So you think I’m fine?” I shot back, unmarred by her attempt to take me down a peg.
“I…you…what? No! Absolutely not,” she sputtered, her deep brown skin blushing—just barely visible.
“It’s okay to admit you want me, sweetheart, that’s what all of this contempt is, right? Barely concealed desire? Just say the word, and we can release some tension together,” I crooned, leaning closer to lower the tenor of my voice so that she only heard the last half of that proposition.
“In your dreams!” Isobel whispered fiercely before turning her attention back to the production staff who were going over some last minute details before we would begin taping episode one.
Each episode consisted of two rounds of baking. The pre-heat round was a quicker, less labor-intensive baking task. The winner of this round would be given an advantage to be used in the later main heat. For this first episode, they were soft balling us in the pre-heat, in my opinion. We had to create two types of cookies in forty-five minutes—one must be a sandwich cookie. The simplest way for us to get this task done without being in each other’s way too much was to split the duties right down the middle.
“Alright, so I can do a simple sugar cookie, in one of two ways—holiday spiced up with nutmeg, cinnamon, ground cloves, Chinese five spice—you know all of the typical holiday spices, or I can go with a fall flavor explosion—doing a cranberry orange sugar cookie, if you wanna do the sandwich cookie?” I said as soon as the host informed us that our baking time had started.
“Typical, Coleman—of course, you want to take the easier task. Yeah…fine…whatever, I’ll do the sandwich cookie then. Which one of your little sugar cookies are you going to do so I can make a cookie with a complementary flavor?”
Taking a quick look at the buzzing around us, it seemed like everyone was going the holiday spice route, so I opted to do the cran-orange combination instead. Isobel decided to make a ginger molasses sandwich cookie with an orange cream cheese filling. After establishing our game plan, we both took off across the kitchen—me toward the dry ingredient wall and Isobel toward the refrigerator. She would be grabbing all of the cold ingredients we needed while I was tasked with grabbing all of our dry ingredients. When I returned to the cook station, Isobel had already begun creaming her butter and sugar together in the stand mixer, while I grabbed a large bowl to combine all of the ingredients for my cookie. As soon as I finished my batter, I tapped her on the shoulder, holding a spoon aloft with a bit of the dough on the end so that she could taste it. She snatched the spoon, tasted the batter, and turned back to her mixer.
“Well?” I asked Isobel’s back.
“It needs more salt,” Isobel tossed over her shoulder.
She was crazy; there was already the perfect amount of salt in this cookie thanks to my usage of salted instead of unsalted butter. I took a quick sip of water, then tasted the batter again to ensure that I wasn’t bugging and quickly concluded that it was Isobel with the defective taste buds, not me. I grabbed a cookie sheet, lined it with parchment paper and scooped out perfectly shaped spheres of dough onto the sheet before running it over to the convection oven. Then I set about making the royal icing glaze that I would be drizzling over the cookies once they were finished baking before we served them to the judges. I wanted to heighten the flavors in the sugar cookies, so I zested an orange to add to the icing to bring out those bright citrus notes that were evident in the cookie. The sweetness of the glaze would also cut some of the tartness of the dried cranberries that I’d added to the cookie batter.
Before I knew, the host was calling out that we had one minute left and we were scrambling to finish up the last minute decorating on our cookies as well as plating them in a manner that made them look palatable. Decorating wasn’t my strong suit, and it was clearly evident in the haphazard way that I’d splattered the glaze I’d made on my cookies. Isobel tutted when she looked at my cookies on the plate. I opened my mouth to say something, but we were being ushered backstage to wait to be called in front of the judges' team by team before I could get a word out. No sooner than we’d crossed the threshold of the green room backstage where we were to wait, Isobel turned on me chastising my decorating skills. We bickered back and forth until a production assistant poked her head into the door of the room letting us know that we were up.
“Isobel, Travis…have you all come up with a joint team name?” Thad, the host, asked as we stood in front of the judges, in advance of explaining our dessert concoctions.
“Can we be Team Girl I Guess?” Isobel quickly replied, “Because getting stuck with that one over there? My chances of winning are girl…I guess…”
“Tough crowd,” Thad replied, laughing, “I guess that tension we’d picked up on between you two while you were baking wasn’t manufactured.”
“Nah…we actually can’t stand each other. At all. But I’m confident we can put that aside to stay focused on the task at hand, which is winning this whole thing so that the Trevor Coleman Foundation can make the day of some very deserving children,” I replied, easily with my winnin
g grin.
The judges nodded positively at my redirect and asked us to explain the cookies we’d baked for them to taste. I deferred to Isobel, letting her speak about her sandwich cookie and then I went into my spiel about my sugar cookie. We then walked the platter on which our cookies had been resting over to the judges to serve them.
“Bon appetit!” I grinned before setting the platter in the middle of the judges' platform.
“Suck up,” Isobel muttered through a smile.
The room fell silent as the judges briefly sampled each cookie before giving feedback. Their response to our flavors was overwhelmingly positive, but they cited a few technical flaws in the execution of the cookies. Isobel’s sandwich cookie was a bit too sandy and crumbly in their mouths, a little bit dry according to the most critical judge. My cookies looked like my design skills were lacking and that they could have used a bit more salt to temper the flavors. At that critique, I felt Isobel tense beside me—her anger damn near emitting a vibrational pull that almost made me reach out and touch to make sure she wouldn’t combust. We pasted on smiles, thanked the judges, and retraced our steps back to the green room to wait while the rest of the teams went through their judging. Needless to say, the bad outweighed the good in our pre-heat attempts and we did not win the main heat round advantage.
The main heat challenge was to make a holiday dessert inspired by a holiday cocktail that we blindly picked from an oversized Papier-mâché turkey that had been rolled onto the set. Once again I deferred to Isobel, letting her choose the turkey feather that would decide our fate was going forward since I’d been the one to lose us the advantage in the pre-heat. I was still smarting a bit from the fact that she was right about my cookie’s salt levels and the lackadaisical approach that I had taken to decorating. I thought that since this was a ~celebrity~ edition of BakeOff that the judges would go a little bit easier on us for this first round, but I was sadly mistaken. I had to literally step my cookies up if I wanted to ensure that we made it beyond episode one.