41
On deck: A phrase that means, “This order is coming up!”
Cooks might call out new tickets and let the line know what’s on deck.
They’ll also give servers a heads-up if their orders are “on deck”
or coming out soon.
2016
Gale and Rhiannon stood on their marks.
Her hands clasped at the small of her back, military style; he didn’t know what to do with his.
Pockets seemed wrong.
At his back brought that copycat feeling. Arms crossed, too combative. Flopping at his sides, too defeated. On his hips, too superhero. These thoughts pelted through his brain in the time it took to entwine his fingers, cat’s-cradle style, at his abdomen.
The judges sat at their table, stone-faced.
The cloche covering the losing dish sat at the edge of that table.
Tom’s hand on the knob.
Stage directions were called. Tom’s famous, “Whose dish is being cut?”
would be dubbed in later.
Gale heard only garbles in the background of his brain chatter, eyes fixed on that cloche.
Win or lose, he was ready.
He’d had fun.
Back home everyone waited. Mom and Dad. Kyle and Marco.
Regina.
His stomach did a little flip.
He’d done her proud.
No question about it.
I’m proud too, man.
Tom lifted the lid.
To her credit, Rhiannon didn’t whoop or fist pump the air.
She folded into a squat, her hands over her face, holding back the joy she should be whooping.
Gale put a hand on her back, between her shoulder blades.
“Congratulations.”
“Oh, my god! Gale.
Oh, my god!”
She jack-in-the-box leapt into him, arms flung around his neck.
“I thought you had it.
I really did.
Oh, my god. Did this just happen?”
The director was calling for him to exit the set.
Rhiannon unwound herself, let go of him.
He would shake hands with all the judges first, just like Regina told him to do whether he won or lost.
It showed character, and he had that in spades. At least, she said he did, and Gale would do her proud even if she’d never know.
“It came down to splitting hairs,”
Harold Javian told him.
“Had you gotten that coconut cream on all the plates . . .”
“Rhiannon outcooked me,”
Gale said.
“Plain and simple.”
Harold held on to his hand a bit longer than necessary, smiling.
“Something tells me you’re headed for big things, Chef.”
He shook the other judges’ hands.
Tom’s.
It was over.
Behind him, Rhiannon basked in her glory. He was really happy for her. At least it hadn’t been Avraam or Nucci. Gale would nevertheless wish them both well when he got to the break room, as long as neither of them said anything crass about being beaten by a girl.
You did great, man.
No echo.
No Sean.
Maybe not even his voice, after all.
Yes it was.
Gale followed Betty’s ponytail off set.
He had done well.
His brain didn’t crash over what he could have, should have, would have done.
Gale’s foodie heart knew he’d have won if that coconut cream got onto all four plates. It wasn’t hubris, just the confidence that, if he had to do it all over again, he’d do nothing differently except time that last round thirty seconds faster.
“Excuse me, ma’am!”
Betty waved her tablet in the air.
“This is a closed set.
You can’t be . . .”
Gale nearly bowled into Betty’s back.
“Holy shit.
Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!”
And off she scurried, back the way they’d come, leaving Gale turning in a confused circle.
“Hey, Gale.”
It took a moment for his eyes to catch up with his brain.
“Regina?”
He took a step closer.
“What are you doing here?”
A tall woman Gale had never seen before stood behind Regina, tucking dark hair behind her ear and smiling awkwardly.
He looked from her to Regina and back again.
What the hell?
Gale echoed Sean’s sentiments, all the confidence and excitement and disappointment bursting out of him.
Regina.
Here.
In New York. In the Cut! studio. Where everyone—including Betty holy-shitting her way through her discovery—would recognize her. And Gale could come up with only one reason for Regina to be in the studio.
“You didn’t trust me.”
“Didn’t .. . what?”
“You thought I was going to crash and burn again.”
She reared back, the most irritated Regina expression he’d ever seen on her face.
“Fuck that, Gale.
I’m not your babysitter.
I’d have sent your mother for that. You’re not even remotely close.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
He put himself between her and the click and squeak of hurrying shoes coming up behind him.
“Are you insane?”
Regina raised a finger over her head; clicks and squeaks silenced.
Listening.
Waiting.
Gale had to imagine the judges and camera crew, the boom guys and scripters and directors and producers, all held in thrall by that finger raised, because he couldn’t have turned around if he wanted to.
“I wanted to see you compete,”
she said.
“Without you knowing.
Without anyone knowing.”
Her gaze flicked to someone beyond him and back again.
“That obviously didn’t work out.
But it was all in the works, Gale.
I was going to tell you everything after the competition.”
“Tell me? What?”
She pulled him closer, the raised finger only implied but still holding back the most immediate future.
“I can only hide for so long, and it’s been getting harder and harder, because I don’t want to lose everything again.
You and the kitchen and Marco and ... my life, Gale. I can make a go of it this time. I know I can.”
Regina was looking up at him, waiting for a response.
No tears.
Never tears.
How had he never realized it was she who had to look up at him? From the moment he met her, Regina loomed large, and he hadn’t even known who else she was. Queenie B. A culinary star who’d risen, burned bright, and went out before he ever stepped foot in a kitchen, but still had the power, in a single raised finger, to stop the world.
Cameras and mics were zoomed in on them.
Gale was no longer second in the Cut! Grand Redemption Championship; he was a starring player in Queenie B’s reemergence into the culinary world.
Center stage.
This scene, their words, would be everywhere. Pictures. Sound bites. Video clips. He was fully aware of, if slightly dislocated from, his surroundings; he saw only her. Not Queenie B, after all, despite the red lips and hair unbound. She was Regina. His unintentional mentor. His unasked-for friend. A woman who knew all his demons and still believed in him more than he believed in himself.
Gale scrubbed his face with both hands.
He technically had a right to be angry that she’d hijacked the day, and hurt that she’d kept him in the dark.
He’d deal with that later.
Something bigger boiled up inside him now, the same something simmering during the competition when confidence overpowered his racing brain and let him have fun rather than simply survive the ordeal.
You got this, superstar.
Turning without actually looking at the gathered throng behind him, Gale offered his arm to Regina, who looked at it as gruffly impatient as only Regina could.
“Your Highness,”
he said.
“Your people await.”
She smacked his arm but she took it, smiling a smile he remembered from the grainy video of days gone by.
Not for the camera, but for him.
Thank you, it said.
I owe you, it promised.
And then the world burst open.