She beamed. “If I was making it only for us, I would’ve used a little more dark chocolate and maybe some espresso, but kids aren’t usually fans of the bitter note.”
“Okay, I need to step away from these,” Duncan said, finishing off his donut. “I thought after the cake eating contest, I was done with sweets for at least a month, but here I am.” He moved out of the kitchen into the living room. “You want to start the movie?”
“Yeah,” she said as she caught her reflection in a small mirror above the table where she kept her keys and mail. She looked exactly like you might expect someone who’d spent all morning doing work and running errands.
“You can start the movie, I’ll be right back,” Retta said as she sped walked to her bedroom.
She quickly fixed her hair, blotted her face, and threw her apron into the clothes hamper before leaving her bedroom. As she approached the living area, she said, “I have this amazing blood orange caramel sauce that would also go well with the donu—”
Retta stopped short of entering the room. She found Duncan studying the paused TV screen. There couldn’t have been a worse thing for her to forget in the DVD player. The video was frozen on an image of her from a few years ago. Happy tears streamed down her face as she held a recognizable trophy in her hands.
He turned to her. “You wonWinner Bakes All?”
There were several ways she usually answered this question. The goal was to get out of the conversation as fast as possible, but she’d been caught off guard today.
“Yeah,” Retta finally replied, moving to the DVD player to remove the disc and add theRockyone.
Every once in a while, when she was alone and wanted to wallow in self-pity, and was definitely on her period, she’d watch herself win one of the biggest baking competition shows.
“That’s amazing,” Duncan said. “I once spent a whole weekend binge-watching it.”
Maybe he gained a little bit more respect for her and her work. But like many times before, she’d have to watch the awe morph into some version of pity.
“Except nobody has any idea I won,” she said.
Duncan frowned. “That show is huge though.”
Retta grabbed a beer and a couple slices of pizza and settled into her armchair. “You know Pierre Gustov?”
“The judge with the little…” Duncan waved his hand above his head to demonstrate Gustov’s signature hairstyle.
“Yeah, well, he was indicted for fraud a month before the premiere of my season.”
Retta, bright-eyed and new to the professional baking world, had submitted her casting video on a whim. She’d put it out of her mind and hadn’t told anyone she’d applied. So, when she’d received a call from the producers of the show telling her they wanted her to move ahead in the audition process, she was absolutely shocked.
“But wait, how did his crime affect you?” he asked.
“Oh, they pulled the entire season.”
There was silence as Duncan’s face moved in all sorts of directions. “What do you mean they pulled the entire season?”
“Just that. They stopped running ads for it, and the episodes never aired on TV. My win was mentioned on their website, and they uploaded a ninety-second clip of me actually winning the season on their Facebook page.”
“Retta—”
“Meanwhile, I’d been promoting the fact I was a contestant for weeks. There were viewing parties already scheduled.”
She forced herself to stop talking. He didn’t need to know all the details. But looking up at Duncan for the first time since she’d started rambling, she was taken aback by how upset he looked.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“Thanks.” She got up from her spot to grab the remote and draw the blinds to eliminate the glare on the television. “Enough about that. Let’s get ready to rumble.”
Duncan finally cracked a smile, and Retta returned to her seat and spent the first five minutes of the movie replaying the previous moments. The story eventually drew her in, but somewhere along the way she fell asleep.
Duncan, for the first time in the dozenth viewing of this film, was distracted and not at all interested in Rocky Balboa’s journey.
He’d spent a lot of the time on his phone, looking for remnants of Retta’s win on the internet. This deep dive was possible because she’d fallen asleep thirty minutes into the movie.
