Page 20 of Wild About You

“Okay, this doesn’t seem too bad,” I declare without believing a word I’m saying. Finn and I are standing by our cooking station, where in addition to the fancy camp stove setup, we have a gallon jug of water and a fully stocked bear canister we haven’t been allowed to open yet.

According to Burke, we won’t race to the second checkpoint until tomorrow. Today, all my fellow non-forager team members and I are facing off in a camp stove cooking showdown. Using the ingredients provided in the bear canisters—including mushrooms that are not the ones we foraged today, though the viewing public will never know—we’ve been tasked with making a one-pot mushroom carbonara. Complicating things is the fact that I don’t have the recipe—my partner does.

To add a fun, extra element of pressure, Burke Forrester gleefully announced that he brought a friend out to help him judge our dishes—celebrity chef and certified smokeshow Seb Kelly. Yes, Seb is allegedly the nicest guy in the world, and happens to be a coworker of my best gal Reese at the cooking channel where she’s worked for a year, Friends of Flavor. But he’s also famous and talented and unsettlingly beautiful, and none of these factors are helping me stay calm and focused in light of what I have to do.

You’re an experienced actress, I keep repeating in my head. So, like…act and shit!

My inner voice could work on her motivational messaging. But outer me keeps smiling, even if it’s shaky. Even if I barely know what carbonara is, the other teams don’t need to see us sweat before this thing even begins.

Finn, apparently, has none of those qualms.

“Have you ever even cooked outside?”

The sharp point in his question pierces my chest. It hits somewhere near the soft, squishy side of my heart that I don’t show a lot of people but found myself letting him see today. After that, I thought maybe we were past cheap shots at my capabilities.

Of course I was wrong.

“No, I haven’t,” I answer as calmly as I can. Which, okay, is not very calm. “If only I’d had the opportunity to practice the other evening, while there was plenty of time and space to do so around someone with experience in it. Wouldn’t that have been a big help to us right now, if he’d allowed me to participate in cooking over the fire that I got going?”

Finn drops the water bottle he’s been holding with such a loud thunk, I almost think he put a little extra force behind it. “Right. I’m an asshole and it’s my fault you came on a wilderness survival show without having spent a night outdoors in your life.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and look down at my boots, refusing to let him see any more of my emotions. I’m all too aware that any other team or producer or Smokeshow Seb himself could be witnessing this little drama we’re having, but I don’t expect anyone else to willingly wade into the shark-infested waters of our team dynamic. Until they do.

“Nah, I think it’s just your fault that you’re acting like an asshole.” My head whips up at the familiar flat tone, and I find Harper standing at the next station over with her arms crossed over her chest. It’s clear she’s refined the skill of overcoming her naturally sweet looks with that narrow-eyed, unimpressed scowl.

Finn looks so taken aback, it’s like he really thought he was yelling at me in a soundproof bubble. He leans away as if afraid the girl half his size might advance on him, his face and neck taking on a red flush as his mouth opens to respond.

Unfortunately, I’ll never know how he planned to save himself, as the producers choose that moment to resume filming. Burke officially kicks things off with an air horn that sends a whole flock of birds flying out of the clearing, and the humans on the ground descend into instant chaos.

“You got this, Harper!” I hear Evan call first thing from their spot the required ten feet away from Harper’s camp stove station. So many voices are talking over each other all at once, and I already feel like I’m behind, or not understanding how this is supposed to go or something. Burke told us that we’re allowed to ask our recipe-holding partner yes-or-no questions, just like they did this morning. They’re also allowed three “saves” to correct us if we’re doing something majorly wrong. But how does everyone else have questions for their partners already? Or are they all just getting a constant barrage of cheering and support?

My own partner’s voice, which I haven’t heard since an opposing team member defended me from his criticism, rises above the fray with his attempt at encouragement. “Forty-five minutes to go! No time to waste!”

“Inspiring,” I mutter under my breath as I open my bear canister. I pull out all the ingredients provided to me, most of them as cold as if they were just removed from the fridge, and set them on the small prep surface beside the burner. Then I assess what I know.

Mushroom carbonara is a pasta dish, confirmed by the box of uncooked noodles. I’m also pretty sure a carbonara is the one where there isn’t really a sauce so much as an eggy, cheesy concoction mixed in with the noodles. Eggs: check. Cheese: check. Whoa, maybe I do know what I’m doing.

“What are you doing?” Finn yells, interrupting my inventory.

I grit my teeth in what I hope to the cameras will look like a smile. “I’m thinking and planning, dearest Finn! Is that okay with you?”

I don’t even register his answer, because it doesn’t matter. It’s showtime. At showtime, you have one job, and it isn’t arguing with your costar on stage. It’s putting on the damn show.

“Do I need to boil water for noodles first?” I shout once I’ve got my thoughts together enough to form my first yes-or-no question.

“Yes, you—” he calls back, clearly wanting to say more, but catching himself. The hundreds of boxes of mac and cheese I’ve made in my life weren’t for nothing. I fill the pot about halfway with water, then set it on the burner.

Remarkably, I’m certain I hear Finn’s sigh, even through the ongoing, much louder commotion of teammates yelling back and forth to each other and the occasional declaration from Burke Forrester that one person or another has used a save.

“I can’t make the water boil any faster, bud!”

“Are you sure you have the stove as hot as it can be, and there isn’t anything covering up the burner?” he yells back. Behind him, the producer on the other side of the camera closest to Finn raises a hand in the air and waves, pointing at him with the other hand.

“Finn,” Burke Forrester bellows before I even understand what the producer was signaling. “You have used one save! You have two remaining.”

“What?!” Finn’s reaction comes out as a loud sort of croak that would be funny under other circumstances. “How was that a save?”

When I look down to search for any kind of temperature control on the stove, I realize my hands are shaking. Wonderful! My body’s timing could not be better. The smothering stage mom energy from the other half of my team is certainly helping nothing.

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