I reached for flour. “This works.”
Sunny’s eyes cut to mine. “It would. You look like a man who considers gravy a love language.”
“It says what it needs to say.”
“Usually while sitting on a biscuit and blocking an artery.”
“Are you scared?”
“I’m never scared of beige food.”
I should’ve fired back faster. Instead, I watched her scoop cornmeal into a bowl, her fingers steady, her mouth curved. Her stance stayed planted in the packed dirt. She measured, stirred, and took her place across from me without giving an inch to the mountain or the camera.
My chest tightened.
I looked down at my station and cut cold butter into flour with two knives because I knew how to do that without giving away too much.
Ed moved between us, filming the tables. “Flint, what are you making?”
“Cast-iron biscuits, sausage gravy, eggs, bacon, and firepit potatoes.”
Sunny made a sound from across the clearing. “That isn’t a dish. That’s a lodge menu.”
“It’s dinner.”
“It’s breakfast.”
“That’s the prompt.”
She laughed and poured buttermilk into her bowl. “I hate that you’re technically correct.”
“You say that a lot.”
“You earn it a lot.”
Ed swung the camera toward her. “Sunny, what are you making?”
“Cornmeal griddle cakes with peach compote, whipped honey butter, and candied bacon.” She looked straight into the lens. “It’s sweet, savory, smoky, and bright enough to convince breakfast it should dress up for dinner.”
“See?” I said. “That dish needs a speech.”
“It deserves one. Yours needs a napkin and a cardiologist.”
Caprice checked her stopwatch. “Your ninety minutes have started, so please threaten each other while working.”
Spoons hit bowls. Flour rasped under my knives. Sunny’s whisk tapped fast, then slower as the batter came together. Bacon met my skillet with a low hiss. Coals shifted under the grates, sending up steady heat that rolled over my knuckles. The evening sun slipped lower behind Fire Mountain, turning the meadow grass from dry gold to copper.
I pressed biscuit dough together without overworking it. My mother had taught me that when I was ten. Push too hard and biscuits got tough. Leave them alone too much and they fell apart. Good dough needed hands that knew the difference.
I cut clean rounds with a tin cup and laid them in a buttered skillet.
Across the clearing, Sunny tested the heat over her griddle with her palm held high above the surface. She didn’t crowd the station. She didn’t set towels near the coals. When wind moved through the meadow, she paused, checked the smoke, and shifted her bowl two inches away from the heat before stirring again.
“You moved that bowl before I said anything,” I called.
Sunny looked up. “I’m growing as a person.”
“You’re learning fire behavior.”
