Chapter 11 #2
Birdie, from three booths down, does not look up from her three-tiered blueberry masterpiece. She’s a woman who would continue her work while a meteor hit. Her competence is weaponized. She barely glances over before returning to whatever delicate architectural work she’s doing with fruit.
“Okay,” I say aloud, laughing in the hysterical register that I use when everything is breaking. I learned this laugh in my marriage to Marco. The choice between laughing and screaming, and screaming feels worse. “Okay. This is fine.”
Nothing about this is fine.
Jace returns from Morris-wrangling and looks at my station—the flour explosion, the honey splatter, the dough that still refuses to rise, the cinnamon hoofprints everywhere.
He hands me a spatula I didn’t ask for. Then a pastry cutter. Then a decorating brush, despite the fact that I am not decorating anything except this disaster.
“I haven’t asked for those,” I say, not unkindly.
“You will,” he says.
“How are you so sure?”
“Because I know what you’re building.”
Something about this lands in my chest, but I don’t have time to process it because the clock is counting down and my dough still looks like a small, sad lump.
The dough continues not to rise. The clock continues to count down.
Patrice in the crowd has now physically handed the kid to Trace, who is holding Brooklyn with one arm while his wife has some kind of laughing fit that involves her holding her stomach and making sounds that might be concerning if I didn’t know her.
Jax is narrating my continued spiral with the enthusiasm of someone broadcasting a championship match.
“The sourdough stands at a height of—let’s see—still not double. Still disappointing. Ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching the critical failure zone. The Outside Baker’s classical training is becoming what we in the sports world call ‘a liability.’”
I take my not-risen dough and bake it anyway, because I have run out of options and time is a cruel master.
It doesn’t feel right when I’m putting it in the oven.
Dough that hasn’t risen properly has a different weight to it, a different density.
But it’s three hours and I’m out of runway, so into the oven it goes.
While it’s baking, I attempt a presentation that was supposed to be “elegant classical presentation with modern Alaskan elements.” It looks like I arranged accidents.
There’s flour dust on everything. My hands are still sticky from the honey.
There’s a cinnamon handprint on my left hip where Morris hit me. I’m covered in evidence of failure.
Birdie’s blueberry creation comes out of the oven looking like it was assembled by someone with an architectural degree and a personal relationship with geometry.
Three perfect tiers. Each one a different flavor—I can tell because she’s labeled them with tiny cards.
Blueberries are arranged with thought, in a pattern that suggests intention and planning.
It probably tastes like a summer day feels.
My sourdough comes out of the oven dense and compact, like a brick that someone tried to bake into the shape of bread through sheer force of will. It didn’t rise in the oven either. It just baked itself into a small, hard disaster.
When the judging happens, I stand next to my station and watch the judges—three people I don’t know, presumably actual bakers—examine each entry. They taste things. They make notes. They move down the line like they’re assessing a crime scene.
When they get to me, one of them tastes the sourdough.
Her face doesn’t change. She swallows. She moves on. No note written. No feedback offered.
Birdie wins. Someone named Derek takes second with a spruce-tip shortbread situation that looks like it came from a professional bakery. A woman I don’t recognize gets third with honey cake that probably tastes like optimism.
I get dead last. I don’t even place in the top three. I am simply the baseline. The example of what not to do.
And you know what?
I stand in the wreckage of my booth—flour everywhere, Morris’s hoofprints visible in honey, cinnamon footprints across the counter, my brick of a sourdough sitting there like evidence of my hubris—and I laugh.
I laugh until my stomach hurts, until tears come out, until Patrice is staring at me like I might need medical intervention.
Jace is standing next to me, right there in the wreckage.
He’s not saying anything. He’s not trying to fix it.
He’s not offering solutions or encouragement or the words people use when something goes wrong.
He’s just… there. Standing next to my disaster like it’s fine.
Like I’m fine. Like this moment where I lost completely and publicly is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
“I brought a sourdough starter to an outdoor competition in Alaska,” I say, laughing harder. “I trained in classical technique in a climate-controlled kitchen in Austin. I packed all these tools I never learned to use in high-altitude conditions. I thought that would be enough.”
“It wasn’t,” Jace says.
“No,” I agree. “It really wasn’t. And then a moose exploded my entire operation and I lost publicly and spectacularly to a woman who is just… better at this than I am.”
“You tried,” he says.
“I failed.”
“Yeah. But you’re still standing here.”
I look at him. He’s covered in flour dust too, from helping me. There’s cinnamon in his hair. He’s wearing an apron that has honey on it from Morris’s explosion. He looks at my destroyed booth like it’s a perfectly fine place to be.
“I’m never entering another competition,” I say.
“Okay,” he says.
“I’m never moving to Alaska full-time and becoming a baker.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to stress-bake at three in the morning for the rest of my life and fail at things publicly and come in dead last at everything I attempt.”
"Probably not true," Jace says. "But if it is, you seem fine with it."
And standing there next to him, covered in flour and honey and cinnamon, holding a sourdough brick that I baked into a disaster, I think: maybe this is what it means to be okay.
Not the winning. Not the mastery. Not the elegant presentation.
Just standing in the wreckage and laughing because the wreckage is real and I’m still here.
The failure is real and I survived it. The dust is still settling and I’m still standing.
Jace is still standing next to me. He’s not going anywhere.
He’s not saying anything, which is exactly right.
Words would ruin this moment. This is the moment where I lost everything in front of everyone and someone stayed anyway.
He’s not offering me a hug or a pity speech or some warm reassurance meant to make me feel better about failing.
He’s standing here in the flour dust and the sticky honey hoofprints and the wreckage, and his presence alone is saying: I see you. I see this. And you’re still okay.
That seems important.
Morris has wandered away toward the honey station again, apparently unfazed by his earlier chaos.
Jax is still narrating from the crowd, but his voice has shifted.
It’s not laughing at me anymore. It’s laughing with me.
The whole crowd is doing that now—they’ve moved from observing my disaster to inhabiting it with me.
We’re all standing in this together. All of us covered in evidence of the catastrophe. And that makes it less catastrophic.
Birdie is still working on her next creation, but she’s not ignoring me anymore. She looks up once. Our eyes meet across the competition space. And in that look, I see the smallest nod. An acknowledgment only another baker would catch. You failed. You’re still standing. That matters.
I failed. Standing next to him, that feels like enough.