Better With You (Better Love 2)

“Bananas are too dense.”

“Then make something else.”

“We’re a team,” he stresses.

“This is what I’m doing.” My jaw is tight as I start measuring out the flour.

“Do you need a sifter?” I don’t answer. “Fine,” he huffs, and I ignore him as he starts banging around next to me. I don’t need his stupid help. I can bake cupcakes in my sleep.

On autopilot, I dump eggs, vanilla, oil, baking powder, salt, and milk in the mixing bowl. Same as I do at home. I look at the bananas, decide to mash them up with some brown sugar, and then dump that into the mixing bowl as well. Then I use the stand mixer to make sure it’s all blended together.

I’m pouring thick, clumpy batter into my cupcake tin when a judge comes up to me with a cameraman behind him. I force a nervous smile.

“Bailey, tell me about what you’re baking.”

“I’m making banana cupcakes.” I flick my eyes to Riggs as he comes to stand next to me. “And I’m going to ice them with a cream cheese icing.”

“Sounds delicious. And is Riggs also making banana cupcakes? Because it looks like you two are working on two different things.”

“Oh, um—”

“I’m making a different batch, sir. Vanilla cupcakes with whipped topping,” Riggs says, voice smooth and steady, and the judge assesses us.

“Two different cupcakes?” He pops a brow. “And which will you present to the judges?”

“Mine.” Riggs and I speak at the same time, and the judge grimaces.

“Okay. Well. Seems you two need to discuss your game plan.”

When the judge walks away, I glare at Riggs then turn my back to him. Vanilla. What a joke.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Those are muffins,” Riggs says from over my shoulder. He’s right. These are too dense. Instead of light, fluffy, and moist, they’re dense. A few of them are even a little too soft on the bottom, telling me they might not be cooked through. They smell divine, but they are not cupcakes, and definitely not winning material.

“I know,” I murmur as I spread the cream cheese icing on them. I check the clock. We have fifteen minutes before we’re supposed to present. After that, we’re supposed to go through interviews, and after those, the judges announce their decisions.

I know I’m a disaster. I have flour all over my apron, egg splattered on my shoe, and from the way my cheek itches, I’m pretty sure there is cream cheese somewhere on my face. When I look at him, my face falls, because he looks perfect. Clean. Unruffled. I hate how my heart skips.

“These won’t win,” I admit, and he shakes his head slowly.

“They might.” He breaks one of the cupcakes in half, and shoves it in his mouth. I watch his jaw work as he chews. My eyes snap to his prominent Adam’s apple, watching it bob as he swallows. “It’s really good.”

“But it’s not a cupcake.”

He grimaces. “I made these. They’re not creative at all, but the texture and consistency is near perfect.” He hands me a vanilla cupcake and I take a bite. Damn it. It’s not near perfect. It is perfect.

“Ten minutes!” yells a PA, and Riggs and I tense.

“If we use your banana muffins, we’ll probably be sent home. They specifically said they wanted fluffy cupcakes, not hearty—“

“Yes, thank you, I know I made fucking muffins,” I interrupt.

“Right,” he says with a sigh. “But if we use mine, we could lose points because they’re—”

“Boring?”

Surprisingly, he chuckles. “Yeah.”

I rack my brain for a solution. Anything to keep us in this damn competition.

“I have an idea,” I whisper and then rush to the add-ins. I come back with another banana, a bottle of banana extract, and a spice bottle of ground cloves. “Um, scrape the whipped topping off your cupcakes, okay? I’m going to put banana flavoring in my cream cheese icing, and we can use that.”

Riggs nods, and I pour a tiny drop of banana extract into my icing bowl and a dash of the ground cloves. As I mix it up, Riggs dices the banana into small pieces. Just as I’m about to dump the chopped banana into the bowl, Riggs grabs my hand to stop me.

“Fold in a little at a time,” he says, and though my gut instinct is to pop off and tell him to STFU, I just nod and slide the bowl to him.

“You do it.”

When the buzzer sounds, announcing that our time is up, I’m just placing a thin slice of banana on the top of the final cupcake. We step back and survey our work.

Honestly, it looks good. Now we just have to hope it’s enough.

For the first time since this morning, I look around the room. It’s a gut punch.

“Shit,” I whisper. Everyone’s cupcakes are gorgeous—an array of colors that suggest a variety of flavors, and all I can do is cross my fingers that ours is better than at least four of these other teams.

Riggs and I have to present our cupcakes to the five judges, and I watch in silence as they all sample them. No one says anything. It’s torture. Then we’re whisked into a small room, with an overstuffed, comfortable red loveseat and a Christmas tree, and behind the loveseat is a backdrop painted to look like a picture window overlooking a snowy Chicago skyline. This is the scene room where they’ll be conducting all of our end-of-day interviews about our experience. They want to know how we think the challenge went, what our process was, why we chose to bake what we did. I let Riggs do most of the talking. His voice is smooth and steady, his answers confident and clear, as if he’s rehearsed them.

For a minute, I wonder if this is how he handles team interviews after a game. I’ve Googled him. I know he’s a big deal, and that he’s on camera giving interviews almost as much as he is pitching at games. When he turns his camera-perfect smile on me, I almost forget everything but him, and I’m transported back to aisle six of Quick Stop. I’m so out of it that I feel myself smile back at him. It’s the shock on his face that snaps me out of it.

After what feels like a billion hours, we’re assembled for the judges’ decisions.