Hadley Beckett's Next Dish, page 26
“This is either going to be fun or a train wreck,” Max said to me as we sat on the loveseat together.
With all that we’d had thrust upon us over the course of eight weeks, we hadn’t had a single joint interview, outside of the kitchen. Apart from that, though, we’d been run through the entire Renowned gamut. From increasingly absurd cooking competitions to visits with chefs we’d competed against on America’s Fiercest Chef; hidden cameras that never caught anything of consequence to on-location filming scenarios that reinforced the feeling that we were on the first-ever season of The Bachelor: In the Kitchen. Max and I had joked that they’d probably have us cooking in a hot tub before all was said and done.
“I’m leaning toward train wreck,” I whispered. “Don’t you think it’s weird that we’re just now sitting down with Chef Simons together? Doesn’t it feel like we’re about to have the rug pulled out from under us?”
“When did you turn into such a negative Nelly?”
“When did you start saying things like negative Nelly?”
Max laughed as his nose was powdered and his already perfect beard was fussed with ad nauseum. “I guess you’re rubbing off on me.”
“I don’t say negative Nelly.”
“Maybe not, but you most definitely say things like negative Nelly.”
Chef Simons sat in the chair strategically placed across from us and said, “Okay, Chefs. This is it.” He reached out and grabbed my hand and Max’s and squeezed them both. “I simply don’t want to believe that our time together is over.”
Max could only move so much, due to the fuss that was being made over his face, but he managed to shoot me a look that I had no difficulty at all interpreting. The new and improved Max Cavanagh—whose potty mouth had very nearly disappeared—would never actually say it, thank goodness.
“We just can’t thank you enough for the opportunity,” I said, and I meant it. Even if I also would have meant a cleaner version of what I was pretty sure Max was thinking.
“Ah well. There is no time for sentiment,” Chef Simons said, yanking his hands away. “If I’d known Chef Maxwell was going to treat the call sheet as only a loose guideline, I would have had Lowell pad the schedule. Lowell!” he shouted, and Lowell came running.
As they whispered intensely—probably about how western civilization was on the brink of collapse because we were behind schedule—Max and I leaned closer together and did some whispering of our own.
“At least he hates us both now,” I said.
“That is nice,” he agreed.
“I just never understand the need for the whiplash. Either we’re his teenagers going off to college for the first time or we’re the bedbug-infested hotel he’s checking out of. We can’t possibly be both.”
More than anything, over the course of the eight weeks prior, Chef Simons had seemed annoyed by us. I think he thought we were always on the precipice of doing something he thought was really interesting, but we never quite took the leap. At least not since the risotto episode. Since then, there had been no major revelations, and Max and I had mostly managed not to fight in the kitchen. In the kitchen and everywhere else, he was respectful and considerate, and when he did make fun of my cooking, it had nothing to do with the fact that I was a woman, or that I was the less-experienced, not-yet-as-successful chef.
It was usually just related to the amount of butter I used.
Who could have imagined, all those months ago, that the drunk, obnoxious, sexist chef who threw food and couldn’t remember my name would actually be a joy to cook and create alongside? Or that he would become one of my favorite people in the world?
“All right, let’s go, people. Hadley? Max? You ready?” Lowell asked.
The hair and makeup artists scurried away, and Max and I nodded. Max leaned back slightly into his corner of the loveseat and crossed his ankle onto his knee. He looked so relaxed and casual, while I was pretty sure I gave off the vibe of a sixteen-year-old boy in an uncomfortable suit, meeting his date’s parents on prom night.
“You okay?” Max asked me in response to my slight fidgeting.
“Sure. I’m fine.”
“Quiet everyone!” Lowell bellowed. “Counting down . . . Chef Simons, we’re on you in five . . . four . . .” His fingers took over the count at the same time an expression of serenity overtook the one of vexation on our host’s face.
“And here we are. The final episode of this season of Renowned. A season which I dare say none of us will ever forget.” He spoke to the camera and came across just like the Marshall Simons I had watched and respected for years. “Chefs Hadley Beckett and Maxwell Cavanagh walked onto the Renowned set two months ago as bitter rivals. And today they sit here as . . . well, let’s allow them to tell us. Shall we? Chef Hadley, how would you categorize your relationship with Chef Max?”
Oh boy. “Wow. Not even a warm-up question, Chef Simons?” I chuckled and began fiddling with the hem of my blouse as the thought occurred that maybe that was the warm-up question. “Well, the truth is we’ve become very good friends.”
“And that’s been truly beautiful to watch,” Chef Simons said. “And, frankly, surprising.”
“I’m pretty sure no one’s as surprised as we are,” I added with a smile.
“So how did it happen?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I think everyone saw it happen, actually—”
“No.” He shook his head. “I believe our viewers had the privilege, as I did, of witnessing milestone moments, but what was happening behind the scenes?”
I glanced over at Max, who, as was usually the case in these sorts of moments, provided no help whatsoever. He just raised his eyebrow, tilted his head, and smiled.
“Well,” I croaked, and then cleared my throat. “We were getting to know each other—”
I think Chef Simons was already bored with my answer. “But to move past your public shared history could not have been an easy thing.”
“No. It wasn’t. But—”
“And then to be forced into a situation in which you had to share the Renowned stage—”
“We weren’t forced into—”
“Still, to know that your nemesis—”
“Max was never my—”
“To know that he was also reaping the benefits of—”
I let out a frustrated growl and jumped up from the loveseat. “For cryin’ out loud, Marshall! Are you going to let me finish one single thought?”
Mandoline. Nutmeg grater. Oven mitt. I performed a quick inventory. Maybe . . . maybe . . . nope. Not enough. Poultry shears . . .
Max’s hand enveloped mine as he said, “Will you excuse us for a moment?” And then he pulled me into the kitchen. He looked around the room which, with my dazzling open floor plan, didn’t do much to keep a cameraman and his equipment from rolling on in there. “Get out,” Max ordered.
“We have every right to film right now, Max,” Lowell said. Then he added, more quietly, “I’m sorry, but this is the show.”
I turned my back to the camera and leaned forward against the sink, but I wasn’t there long. Max pulled me away again, and I did all I could to keep up with him as he hurried up the stairs, down the hall, and into my bedroom. As soon as we got inside, he closed the door and locked it. He dropped my hand, but then he looked at the door, back to me, and then to the door again. Then I was once again being pulled, into my bathroom. He shut and locked that door, and then he looked instantly calm.
I separated from him and buried my face. “I can’t believe I lost it like that.”
“I’m glad you did.”
I shook my head inside my cupped hands and groaned. “No, that was bad. That was so unlike me.”
“Not really.”
I lowered my hands and placed frustrated fists on my hips. “Yes, it was. I’ve never lost my temper like that. Not on television anyway. Not with Marshall Simons! Oh my gosh, Max. What did I just do?”
He sat down on the edge of my bathtub and smiled at me. “You stood up for yourself.”
“And you!” I walked toward him, my pointer finger flailing wildly. “You didn’t say anything! You just sat there and let him push and push.”
His smile grew wider. “You didn’t need me to say anything. You handled it just fine on your own.”
I laughed bitterly. “Clearly not.”
He stood from the bathtub ledge and crossed the room. When he reached me, he opened his arms and pulled me against him. “Can you still pronounce Spago?” he asked against my hair, and my laughter grew less bitter.
I sniffed and rested my head against his shoulder. “I just didn’t want to give him what he wanted. You know?”
“I know.”
“And, let’s face it . . . if anyone was going to lose their temper, best odds were on you.”
I felt his chest and throat rumble with laughter against me. “You know what my favorite part was?”
“That I called him Marshall?”
He threw his head back as the laughter exploded out of him. “Yes! It was such a perfect Hadley Beckett insult. The worst name you could possibly call him was the name he’d been telling you to call him since day one. It was so polite, but still scathing!”
And then I lost it. We both did. I buried my face in his chest and we laughed until we couldn’t breathe. Finally, our breath began to regulate, and he gently rubbed my back as he softly said, “We should probably get back down there.”
I let out another groan and pulled away from him. “This is so embarrassing.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. Seriously, Hadley. You said you didn’t want to give him what he wanted. Well, I don’t think you did. Do you think for one minute that’s the reaction he thought he was going to get out of you?”
It was hard to imagine he’d seen that coming. I sure hadn’t.
“Probably not.”
“You know what I think?” I shook my head and he continued. “I think he was hoping to make you cry. But you didn’t cry. You didn’t back down when Marshall Simons underestimated you any more than you did when I underestimated you. That’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and I sighed—the combination of all the sweet words and my favorite Maxwell Cavanagh posture almost more than I could handle. “In fact, I think you should be proud of yourself. I know I am.”
I looked down at my feet and noticed they were close enough to kick his, so I did. “Thanks.” There was no way I was going to ruin that moment with some emotion-deflecting attempt at humor.
“Welcome,” he said, kicking me back.
I took a deep breath. “Shall we?”
“Ready when you are.”
I looked up and smiled at him, and then unlocked the door and made my way out. But he stopped me just before I got to the second door standing between us and the cameras.
“Hey, Hadley?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember when I ordered for you at Cavanagh’s and you said it was the sexiest thing you’d ever seen in your life?”
I felt my cheeks flush—for many, many reasons. “I do.”
“Well, you standing up to Simons like that?” He stepped in front of me, unlocked the door, and opened it. Sure enough, there was a camera waiting for us just on the other side. But that didn’t stop Max from saying, “Ditto.”
After my makeup was retouched and lint rollers and other magic tools were used to remove my powder from Max’s shirt, we were ready to roll again. And neither Max, Chef Simons, nor I said a word until the cameras were rolling.
“Chef Hadley,” Simons began as soon as Lowell had counted us down. “Your friendship with Chef Max seems to matter to you a great deal.”
I nodded. “Of course it does.”
“And Chef Max.” He slightly adjusted his angle in the chair to have a better view of Max and, more importantly, the camera over Max’s shoulder. “After your nervous breakdown on America’s Fiercest Chef, resulting in one of the most spectacular falls from grace I’ve witnessed, very few in the industry believed you would ever again be considered reputable. Respected.”
“Is there a question in there, Chef Simons?” Max asked calmly.
“Well, my question would be how did you ever convince Chef Hadley to trust you? To let you in. To, somehow, become a friend?”
Max leaned forward—calm, cool, collected—and rested his elbows on his knees. I found myself repositioning my body so I could see him better. My trust in his transformation was absolute, but I was endlessly fascinated by it, nonetheless.
“That’s a great question, Chef. One I’ve asked myself many times. And the truth is—”
“Because you have to admit, Chef Max—”
Max held up his hand and Simons stopped speaking at once. I couldn’t quite see Max’s eyes, but there must have been something in them that our host took seriously.
“Let’s not do that. What do you say? Maybe you can ask questions, we’ll answer them, and then we can move on to the next? I’d say that sounds like a good plan.”
Well, doesn’t that just beat all? I chewed on my lip to keep from laughing as Chef Simons sat back in his chair and plastered on a fake smile.
“Indeed. Please proceed, Chef.”
Max nodded. “The truth is, Hadley and I were able to become friends because of Hadley. It had very little to do with me. I mean, forgiveness. I don’t know if I’d ever really seen it in action before. But she didn’t hold a grudge, she didn’t punish me for what I’d done in the past—”
“Oh, I think I did,” I said quietly.
“I don’t think so, Hadley.” He turned to face me, and for a moment it felt like it was just the two of us in the room. “You didn’t act like it never happened, nor should you have. But you gave me a chance.” He turned back to Chef Simons. “At rehab I had this counselor who said that the key to healing is self-realization, and that the key to self-realization is allowing yourself to embrace nothing. Hadley and I joked about how we didn’t really have any idea what that meant, but I think I’ve figured out that it’s completely backward.”
“What do you mean?” Chef Simons asked.
“I don’t think the key to healing is self-realization at all. I think you’ve got to realize that there are other people out there, and they matter more. And I think you realize that not by embracing nothing, but by embracing something.”
I caught a single tear with the back of my hand before it rolled off the tip of my nose. Without thinking, I stretched my other arm out and almost placed my hand on Max’s arm. It had become instinctive. Second nature. But just in time I caught sight of Chef Simons’s gaze following my hand. No. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of digging up any more of my very private emotions.
But Max would, apparently. Before I could pull it away, he had clutched my hand in his.
Looking like a kid in a candy shop, Chef Simons asked, “Chef Max, have you found religion?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what that means. I’m not going to act like I have things all figured out, or that I even understand what all there is to figure out. I just know that Hadley has something that not everybody has. And whatever it is, I think it’s at the core of why we were able to become friends. So, I’m grateful to whatever or whoever made that possible.”
I squeezed his hand and I didn’t care who saw. I also blinked my eyes furiously to try to keep more tears from falling, but it had the exact opposite result. I couldn’t bring myself to care too much about that either.
Nearly thirty minutes later we were nearing the end, and it was taking everything Max and I had in us to keep it together.
“We have one final Tweeter message for our chefs,” Simons was saying, as he read from the cards in his hands.
He’d called it Tweeter four times already, and not a single person on his crew had spoken up to correct him. At first, I thought maybe they didn’t know either, or that they were too scared to speak up, but the smirk on his face made it clear that at least one cameraman was fully aware, and perfectly willing to let Marshall Simons embarrass himself.
“This message is from ‘At Symbol FoodieShipper’—ah! A member of the food industry, perhaps?” he asked Max and me.
It was all just too good. I wished I was still holding Max’s hand so I would have something to squeeze. As it was, the inside of my cheek was probably going to be bruised in the morning.
“Actually, Chef,” I replied, turning away from Max so I couldn’t see his only moderately successful attempts to contain the laughter—currently consisting of a vicious rubbing of his face with both hands. “I think ‘shipper’ is a slang term for someone who wishes two people or characters would get together. As in, ‘relationshipper.’”
And it’s Twitter. And you can just say “At” rather than “At Symbol.” “Hashtag”—not “Pound Sign.”
“Is that so? Interesting,” he said, clearly not interested. “Well then, ‘At Symbol FoodieRelationshipper’ says, ‘At Symbol TVRenowned, Pound Sign HadBeck has rewritten the recipe of At Symbol ChefMaxCav’s life. Pound Sign MaxandHadley. Pound Sign FoodieLove.” He stared at his card, and then his lips began moving in silence. Finally, he looked at Max and me with a smile. “Indeed. Thoughts?”
Too much! I crossed my legs and shifted around uncomfortably. My stomach was beginning to cramp from maintaining my decorum.
“Thank you for that, FoodieShipper,” Max said into the camera, the hilarity etched all over his face. We were gone. One hundred percent. “You’re right. HadBeck”—he turned quickly to me—“Although, shouldn’t you be ‘At Symbol HadBeck’ rather than ‘Pound Sign Hadbeck’?”
I squeezed my fingernails into my knee as his twinkling eyes and mischievous grin pulled me into the conversation. “I’m not on Tweeter, actually.”
He shrugged. “I’m still going to start calling you HadBeck.” Then back to the camera. “HadBeck has completely rewritten the recipe of my life. She took her sloppy, delicious, maddening technique and got flour all over everything. And now I can’t even imagine a version that doesn’t have as much butter.”
