"And...we're rolling."

"I'm Derek. I live in New York."

Derek hadn't noticed how loud the ceiling fan was until it was the only sound in the room. The cameraman straightened up from his viewfinder and frowned, and the director said, "cut."

The director-John, or Jeff or something-got out of his chair and came over to in front of Derek's stool. "That's great, Derek. Could you give us just a bit more than that? You have to make the audience want to root for you, you know?"

Derek nodded, and Jerry went back to his seat. (It was a normal folding chair, not one of those fancy cloth and wood things that he might have expected.) The cameras lined up again, and they gave Derek his cue.

"I'm Derek. I live in New York. We want to start a bakery in California."

He knew it wasn't enough the moment he was finished speaking, but he couldn't think of a single other thing to say, so he waited for the director come over again. He gave Derek another pep talk about how important it was that the viewers know the real him and wanted him to succeed. Derek smiled tightly and agreed, while inwardly scoffing at the implication that a few cobbled-together clips of him talking about himself was enough for the people watching this god-awful show to know him.

"I'm Derek. My sister and I live in New York, but we grew up in California. My mom taught me everything she knew before she died. We want to start a bakery in our old home town. Is that enough?"

"Cut. Yeah, Derek, great stuff. I want to do it once more. This time, I want you to tell us more about your mom, how much she meant to you, and how she's going to be guiding your progress today."

Derek sighed, but nodded again. His knuckles turned white on the lip of stool. This was going to be a long day.

Derek really shouldn't have even tried to say no. Once Laura got something into her head, she wouldn't let go. She was like a pit bull in that way, though Derek had only ever said that to her face once, and it had ended very poorly for him(and for his action figures, which had never been the same, even though Mom had helped him paint the faces back on.)

Neither of them had ever watched a lot of cooking shows. As much as Derek loved cooking, coming home from a long day of preparing food to watch sparkly-toothed people preparing food on TV wasn't really his idea of relaxing.

So, when he came home to Laura watching some loud, multi-coloured, high-stakes cake show, he really should have known something was up. In retrospect, he'd blame it on the fact that he'd been at the end of an 8 day stretch of working 10 hours a day in a hole in the wall restaurant in Queens, and he was dead on his feet. He didn't sit down next to his sister because he could be sure what kind of food they were likely to be cooking on the show, and he thought if he saw another cannoli in the next 12 hours, he would break something, and their TV might have been small and old, but it would work better if there wasn't a fist-sized hole in it.

The next morning(or afternoon, technically), when Laura was still watching the same program, that was when Derek started to worry. He sat down next to her, munching his Cinnamon Toast Crunch loud enough that Laura's glazed over eyes narrowed in annoyance and shifted over to him.

"What's this?" he said, around another giant bite of processed sugar.

"Ew," Laura said, and punched him in the arm. He rubbed his shoulder, then dropped his spoon back into the bowl.

"Seriously. Why are you watching this trash?"

"Why do you eat that garbage?" She flopped on her back and draped her legs across Derek's lap, barely managing to miss the bowl and get toxically sweet milk all over both of them.

"Because it tastes good. And I'm too tired to make a full English."

"You're literally a chef. Doesn't it offend your palette or something?"

"Not anymore than those smiling potato things should offend yours. You're almost as good a cook as I am. And don't try to deny it. I saw them in the back of the freezer and very kindly didn't eat the rest of the bag. "

Laura jammed her toe into Derek's thigh, but went back to watching the show, where a frazzled looking man was painting sugar flowers faster than Derek would have thought was possible with hands that unsteady.

"That's a lot of flowers," he said.

"Uh huh," Laura replied, absently, her eyes gaining that shiny, vacant look again. "He has to make enough to cover the whole bottom tier of his cake."

"Why?'

"If he doesn't, the silhouette just won't be as 'wow.'"

"Okay."

They lapsed back into silence, and watched as spray guns jammed, sugar sculptures cracked and chocolate stubbornly refused to set. There were two teams, he found out, and they were racing against a giant clock to create a better cake than their opponent. It was all interspersed with cringingly dramatic interviews and dire commentary from the host. It was awful, and Derek hadn't realized how sucked in he'd gotten until he went to take another bite of his cereal and it was soggy beyond all recognition.

He gave up on his first attempt at breakfast, and went back into the kitchen to start something else. Their pantry was pretty bare, since neither of them were home very much, but they had enough flour, egg and milk for him to throw into the waffle iron Laura had bought on a whim and shoved in the back of the cupboard. They even had a few softening strawberries he could resurrect to go on top.

Sunday morning breakfasts used to be a big thing for their family. The oven would get turned on at 7AM and not stop churning out baked goods and breakfast casseroles until at least noon. His cousins and his aunt and uncle would come over and they'd catch up on the minutiae of the week and stuff themselves with muffins and cinnamon buns and eggs.

Derek's lips trembled into a smile at the same time his heart ached with the tenderness of that memory, so he pushed it aside and finished making the batter as quick as he could. While the iron was warming up, he wandered back over to the couch where the show was wrapping up. The judges were making their final decisions, and the host was drawing out the announcement as long as he could. Finally, he called the name of the man who'd made so many flowers, enough, in the end, to cover the entire bottom two tiers of his monstrous cake.

Laura whooped and punched her fist in the air as they played out the triumphant ending sequence. Derek was about to ask, for a third time, why Laura had suddenly developed an interest in professional fondant wrestling when the credits finished and a placard flashed on the screen asking if he thought he could be the next Cake Face-Off champion! He stilled, his brain turning over the question as he looked at Laura, who was similarly frozen on the couch. One look at her face confirmed his suspicions.

"Laura."

She leapt from the couch and stood in front of him, grabbing his arms so he wouldn't walk away. "Derek, I know what you're thinking."

"Laura, no."

"I know it sounds crazy, but I think this could really work."

"Yes, it is crazy. And this is me, saying no."

"But, if you could just give it a minute, it might start to make sense."

"Okay. Hmm, let me think on that. No."

"Derek, listen." She moved her hands from his biceps to his wrists, holding them tightly in her comforting grip. "The person who wins gets a 30 thousand dollar prize. That's a lot of money."

"30 thousand, huh?" He furrowed his brow, like he was lost in deep thought. "You might be onto something, Laura. That might be just enough to buy us a parking space for a hot dog cart."

"Yeah, here in New York. But, between that and the savings accounts Mom and Dad started for us, there'd finally be enough to buy and furnish a fully equipped bakery in Beacon Hills."

"Beacon Hills." The two words ended his urge to fight her earnestness with sarcasm.

"Yes. Derek, the bakery. Or, I guess, what used to be the bakery. I think they turned it into a dentist's office. Regardless, the property is for sale again. I emailed the realtor, she says that she hasn't gotten any bites yet, and she'd wait for us to come up with what we need."

"But don't we already have-"

"Yes, technically, we have enough money between us to purchase the space, but it would put a huge dent in what we have, and what's the point of having the building if we don't have the money to trick it out?"

Derek stared down at Laura's hopeful, shining eyes, trying to remember the last time he'd seen her so excited. "You've put a lot of thought into this."

"Of course. Did you think I wanted to be a waitress forever? I mean, sure, I make good tips, but that's not what Mom and Dad wanted for me. And they didn't want you to be filling cannolis all day, everyday for someone else's shop. You're better than that." She put her hand and his cheek when he tried to turn it away, hiding from her undeserved praise. "We could do this together, Derek."

"Stop it. You're making my teeth hurt." She rolled her eyes, but held her tongue while he thought over everything she'd said. She was right about them both being stuck in a job they didn't want. It had taken Derek years to work up the ladder high enough that he could be in charge of his own dessert station, but he was still on someone else's payroll, and making what they wanted him to make. In this case, cannoli. So much cannoli. He was almost 30, had more years of experience in the kitchen under his belt than most of the people who were senior to him, and he was done with it. Done with the place he worked, done with New York. It would hurt, like an old wound flaring up in winter, but he wanted to go home.

"Fine," he said, and Laura's face lit up. "But, I can't-" he faltered, suddenly terrified in the face of her boundless hope. "I can't promise that I'll be any good at this. We might not win."

"I know." She reached up a hand to squeeze his shoulder, then ruffled his hair, like she used to do when they were kids. "But, we'll do our best to get you ready."

"Ready? What-"

"Sit down, baby bro. I have 3 more hours of this Tivo'd."

Derek groaned and went back to his waffles.