Recipe for Persuasion

by Sonali Dev

  If he laughed at that too, she was going to shake him. But he didn’t laugh. He grabbed her arm. Hard. Hard enough that his fingers squeezed pain out of her flesh. “That’s not funny.”

  She looked down at her arm where his hand was threatening to tear skin, then back up into eyes that had gone harder than she’d ever seen them. “I know it’s not. None of this is funny. I’m in love with someone else. And I’d rather die than marry you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ashna was clutching Rico’s arm so hard she was cutting off his circulation. The strange thing was that she seemed to have no idea she was doing it. Her eyes were glazed over and a blank smile was frozen across her face.

  Rico overcompensated by grinning at the studio audience—visible only when the spotlight panned the auditorium seats—too afraid to move for fear of startling her out of her trance. Again.

  It had been a week since their omelet challenge. There had been no elimination that first week, so today all the teams were competing to avoid being the first ones cut. Not that there was any chance that Ashna and he might be eliminated. Audience votes from last week and this week were going to be combined with the judges’ scores and they had more audience votes than the rest of the teams combined.

  “Before we get to the part you’re all waiting for—the cooking challenge,” DJ said, making Ashna’s grip on Rico’s arm tighten, “let’s introduce our competitors one more time.”

  A wave of applause went through the crowd and Ashna’s lips stretched wider across her frozen face. Rico placed a hand on hers, not sure what else to do.

  She blinked, her gaze falling on her fingers gripping his arm, and some color returned to her face. One delicate finger at a time, she released her hold. For a few seconds her hand stayed there, sandwiched between his arm and his hand. The fact that she did not immediately pull away and rub off his touch was telling. Whatever had just locked her up inside herself, it was taking everything from her. Again.

  With a swallow, she got a hold of herself.

  He tried to catch her eye, but all he got was the slightest nod before she looked away. He had no idea how he knew there was gratitude in that nod, but he did. The loose lock of hair that always seemed to escape the confines of her bun fell across her cheek.

  I want to be your hair.

  How many times had he said that to her? Not once had she needed to ask him what he meant. Her hair—midnight spun into strands—was always kissing her cheeks, playing with her collarbones, caressing her skin.

  Her gaze slid to him again and then away, shaken by what she saw in his face. He stepped back, giving her space, hating how hard it was to do.

  Her eyes were more exhausted than he’d ever seen them, and so filled with sadness they made it impossible to reach for the comfort of his anger. But he needed that anger. To wipe away the feel of her hand. To remind him that the sadness in her eyes wasn’t his problem. She had walked away from the kind of happiness he had made glow in her eyes. He could have that happiness again, with someone who wanted it, needed it, as much as he did.

  If he let the anger slip away, if he forgot why he was here, he would have no one but himself to blame for ending up alone. Again. Someone who betrayed you once would betray you again. Always.

  Rubbing her hands up and down her arms, Ashna looked at DJ with the kind of affection that made Rico forget what he was trying to forget. The red chef’s jacket made it hard not to follow along as her skin paled and blushed in turn as she found her way from fragility to strength then back again, over and over, giving him whiplash.

  The cameras panned toward them and DJ threw the warmest smile her way. “Next up is Chef Ashna Raje and her partner, the greatest striker in the history of football, Frederico Silva.”

  The audience went wild, their share of applause noticeably louder than everyone else’s. DJ made a production out of waiting for the applause to die down without seeming like a hack. The network had done well with their choice of host. The man had a deep, sophisticated voice and a London accent that moved comfortably between posh and working class. He grinned at Rico with the friendliness of someone Rico had not been an arse to just recently.

  The person who had provoked him enough to make an arse out of himself turned to him and seemed to read exactly how guilty he was feeling. That of all things seemed to loosen out the knots she’d been tied up in since they had arrived at the studio today.

  “Bonus points for calling it football, mate,” Rico said, and the crowd booed playfully.

  “And by football they both mean soccer,” Ashna added. “This is America, guys!”

  The crowd went nuts.

  In high school she had sounded almost American, with only a little bit of a colonial lilt accenting some of her words.

  Now she sounded completely American.

  Rico had never been able to drop his accent, as they said here. With an English mother who had completely assimilated into Brazilian culture, he had grown up perfectly bilingual. Living in Northern California and then London might have altered how he spoke, but you didn’t so much drop accents as pick them up. The belief that the way you spoke was how language was supposed to be spoken and that everyone else had an accent was much like all belief systems: it was a way to benchmark yourself as normal and categorize everyone else as strange, coveted or inferior. Accents were your native garb, and the only way to get one that wasn’t yours was to pick up someone else’s, either by association or because you wanted to sound more like them.

  “Soccer, then,” DJ said finally—in the accent that had obviously gotten him the job.

  When DJ moved on to the next pair, for all her bravado earlier, Ashna’s body sagged with relief.

  She had never been the most social person. Rico hadn’t either. They’d been two self-contained teenagers who had somehow cracked each other’s shells and further destroyed each other’s ability to need other people. This version of her, the one who was so acutely aware of people’s reaction to her, made him want to break her loose.

  Once the last of the competitors were introduced, DJ recapped last week’s audience votes, starting with Ashna and Rico’s position at the top. Ashna pushed the loose lock of hair off her face and smiled diffidently. Rico braced himself for the look that told him exactly how much she hated the advantage their viral video had given them. It never came.

  If anything, she looked grateful for the advantage. He hadn’t really believed her when she said she was here to win. Now suddenly he did.

  DJ moved down the scoreboard and Rico studied the competition. The chefs all looked ready to do battle, keen on winning. The celebrities kept their focus on appearing affable and entertaining and upping their fan base. This was a marketing exercise for everyone. As for Rico, he didn’t have anything left to market, nothing left to prove. He tried that word out in his mind, the one he’d been avoiding: retired.

  The only celebrity who seemed somewhat unsure of how to navigate this particular landscape was Song. She beamed at him and he smiled back. Being an outsider was something Rico was intimately familiar with. When he’d moved to California, the first person who had not treated him like he was nothing more than his accent and his looks was Ashna. She had never told him why her family had moved, but he knew it had been devastating to her. Recognizing devastation in each other had been the magic that tied them together.

  Finally, DJ was done and it was time for their second challenge, and Rico realized that twelve years of being separated from Ashna had done nothing to take away his ability to feel her devastation.

  “Let’s take a brief break before we move on to the challenge,” DJ announced but she didn’t seem to hear him.

  Her shaking hands gripped the countertop. Then she seemed to realize that her hands were visible and hid them behind the countertop. Rico picked up a rolling pin and handed it to her.

  She grabbed it and squeezed it so hard that it was a miracle it didn’t splinter.

  “Hey,” he said, but again, it didn�
��t reach her.

  Over the years Rico had seen a lot of rookie nerves. That wasn’t what this was. But it was definitely something. Something he had to figure out.

  “It’s just throwing ingredients together,” Rico said, repeating her words from long ago.

  His words seemed to strike her like a physical blow. Her gaze on the rolling pin in her hands sharpened, came back into focus.

  “That’s just something people who can’t cook say.” She was right. She had said it when she’d avoided the kitchen at all costs. He’d told himself it was her quiet rebellion against her father, the natural need for a teenager to seek an identity outside of their parents. Asking her about her parents had been off the table.

  “But now you can cook, right? You made that journey, no matter what it cost.” She stiffened. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that last part, but it snapped her out of whatever this was. “You said you were here to win. To win you have to play the game.” He jumped into pep talk mode. “Just stay inside the game and shut everything else out and you’ll be fine.”

  The pep talk fell like a spark on her temper. “Must be nice,” she snapped, her tone so cold a shiver ran through him, “to care only about what you want. To be able to shut everything else out. To have nothing to lose.”

  She thought he’d lost nothing?

  When he’d first arrived here, all he’d wanted was for her to believe that. That she had taken nothing from him. But to see her actually believe it . . .

  He knew his eyes had gone as cold as hers. “It’s the orphan’s advantage. No one to please. Nothing to lose.”

  She paled. His first offering of guilt from her. Fuck that. She could keep her pity.

  “It’s the only way to win,” he said before she let out the apology hovering on her lips. He didn’t want it. “It’s the only way to stand back up when someone knocks you down. Or throws you out because you don’t live up to some bullshit benchmark.” Rico never let his heart rate rise. It was his greatest strength, being able to stay in the moment. “If I hadn’t learned to shut everything out, where would I be?”

  Instead of turning the pity in her eyes to anger again, all he managed was to make her go completely blank. Nothing, that’s what she gave him. Nothing but soul-deep exhaustion. Not being able to read her drove him only a little crazier than seeing everything inside her.

  Coming here was without a doubt the most asinine idea he’d ever had in his life.

  “So your next challenge is . . .” DJ was back at the mic.

  Ashna squeezed her eyes shut. Again. Like someone saying a prayer while stuck in the path of a speeding train.

  Music crescendoed from the speakers and DJ went on: “To make a favorite comfort food from your celebrity’s childhood.”

  The audience applauded, and a wave of half-relieved, half-enthusiastic reactions swept through the competitors. Ashna’s grip on the rolling pin tightened.

  “But first the fun part,” DJ said. “Chefs, you get to guess your partner’s favorite comfort food growing up. Bonus points for getting it right.” Groans rose around them. “Stars, please write it down on the flashcard in front of you without letting your chef see.”

  It was a rather obvious icebreaker activity to bring out the celebrity and chef personalities, but at least it distracted Ashna enough that she was breathing again.

  DJ started with Song and Miguel. Poor Miguel went through everything from shrimp chips to Korean barbecue and finally gave up.

  Rico laughed and Ashna raised a brow at him.

  “Come on,” he said under his breath. “Think, numbskull.”

  “You know a lot about Ms. Woo and her favorite foods?” A hot spark of something replaced the tortured look in her eyes, and for a breath all was right with the world.

  Rico shrugged. “It’s got to be tacos.”

  Ashna was halfway through an eye roll when Song turned her flashcard over to reveal the word taco written in cursive so perfect it looked like a printed font.

  It could have been any Mexican food, and Rico thanked his stars that the theory of probabilities had worked in his favor.

  The surprised tightening around Ashna’s mouth shouldn’t have been quite so satisfying, but it totally was.

  Next, it was their turn. Naturally, Ashna knew exactly what Rico’s favorite comfort food was. One look at her told him that she hadn’t forgotten. Was this cheating? It wasn’t guessing if she already knew.

  There used to be this Brazilian restaurant in San Francisco that was very creatively called Rio. Rico’s birthplace, his hometown. It was the only place in the entire Bay Area back then where you got churros filled with doce de leite. They didn’t begin to compare to the churros he had bought from the hand cart vendor down the street from his Leblon home, but still it had been something. Naturally he’d taken Ashna there too often.

  “Mr. Silva?” DJ asked. “Any clues?”

  “It’s not mac and cheese?” he said, making the audience laugh.

  Ashna let a smile slip too—the first bloom of it was even real, then all her other feelings turned it into a lip-stretch again. Would she pretend not to know? She bit her lip, and he knew she was wondering if he had mentioned mac and cheese on purpose, if he still felt the same way about it. Her obsidian gaze bored to the center of him. Everything was different about them, and yet nothing was.

  “Definitely not mac and cheese,” she said, her eyes revealing a flash of something they had both lost.

  Her red-painted mouth twisted in mock confusion. “He grew up in Rio de Janeiro. So, it could be so many things. Such a rich tradition of comfort foods. Maybe not something entirely traditional. Umm . . . churros?” She said it exactly the way he had taught her to say it, many moons ago, while feeding the crisp-on-the-outside, pillowy-on-the-inside confection into her mouth and then tasting the sticky sweetness on her lips.

  Her huge irises turned smoky.

  Far too much knowing sparkled in the air between them.

  She’s just a girl I dated in high school.

  DJ turned to him. “Is she correct?”

  With the barest shrug Rico flipped over the flashcard.

  CHURROS, the card said in careless all caps.

  The audience lost it, screaming and clapping.

  From their competitors, several pairs of envious, even suspicious, eyes turned on them.

  “Wow! That easy?” DJ said, studying Ashna like someone who thought he knew her and suddenly found he might not after all.

  Welcome to my life, mate!

  “What can I say, I’m predictable,” Rico said for the cameras. “Maybe I should’ve lied and gone with mac and cheese?”

  That got him a half-fake, half-real smile from Ashna.

  He disliked mac and cheese. She did too. It feels like an incomplete dish, they had loved to say. Like it’s missing an ingredient or seasoning or something. How they had loved agreeing on things, finding common threads, even though every thread of the fabric he was made of had already been tied to her.

  “You better be careful if she can read you that easily,” DJ said.

  Too late. But he smiled for the cameras. “Hey, having teammates who can read you wins you games.”

  Another gleeful cheer swept the studio. DJ went through all the chef-celebrity pairs but Ashna and Rico remained the only ones who got it right. This seemed to fuel the audience’s anticipation for whatever they had seen in that video. The competition had barely begun, and Ashna and he were already the undisputed favorites by miles.

  As an athlete, Rico knew the value of having an edge. Ashna looked like she had just stolen candy from a toddler. Her guilt, her terror, feeling it all in his gut was doing nothing to ease his restlessness. This was not why he was here.

  “You have half an hour.”

  As soon as the words left DJ’s mouth, Ashna’s skin turned ashen again. She looked seconds from hyperventilating.

  He stepped close to her. “What on earth is going on, Ashna?”

  She turned to
him, hands shaking, eyes wide and blank.

  He slipped an apron over his head. “Can you tie this for me, please?”

  As though he’d thrown her a life vest, she stepped behind him and started tying, his body shielding her from the cameras.

  “I can’t do this.” Her breath fell in nervous puffs against his spine.

  “Do what?” he said without turning around.

  “Cooking . . . c-c-cooking in front of the cameras . . . I— I—” Her hands were having a hard time making knots.

  Before she could say more, DJ spoke again. “Oh, there’s something I forgot to mention.”

  The competitors groaned. Rico could feel Ashna’s grip tighten on his apron strings.

  “The chefs don’t cook today. Just the celebrities. Chefs, you get to give instructions, but hands off or your team will be instantly disqualified.”

  Commotion broke out across the workstations. Some teams had already started prepping and they stopped with loud exclamations of “Come on!” and “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  Tatiana, the dog whisperer, flung the handmixer she was holding across her station, knocking over a set of glass mixing bowls. Glass shattered all over the floor.

  Crew rushed toward Tatiana’s station amid gasps. Jonah called a break, telling everyone not to move until the mess was cleaned.

  Behind Rico Ashna’s trembling exhale warmed his skin. Her head fell forward, resting between his shoulder blades. He could feel her shaking. The fact that his body was shielding hers from the cameras, from the eyes in the room, turned all the confusion inside him to relief.

  It took her a few moments—he counted them off with his breaths—to finish tying his apron and step away. The commotion from Tatiana still took up everyone’s attention.

  He turned to her. “Ashna?”

  A vacuum cleaner started up.

  Jaw clenched, she wiped a hand across her face and pressed it into her mouth. Then the most incredulous laugh escaped her. She thought this was funny?

  The vacuum turned off and the cleaning crew inspected the floor to make sure all the glass was gone. Tatiana looked remorseful enough as she apologized, but some firm legal-sounding instructions were recited to her.