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If Noah was being honest, he was still shocked he was here in the first place.
Baking had always been a casual hobby, a hang-about-on-Sunday-afternoon-with-his-sisters kind of thing. So maybe he’d managed to become good at it, since half the time it was the only thing he could be patient for, but one of the best eleven home-bakers in the country? Even at week six, Noah was convinced they’d really brought him on as an early-episode sacrifice, maybe originally as a throw-away for episode one. (Poor Tad – Noah couldn’t remember a sponge cake ever being that cruel.)
The way things had gone today, though...
“You’ll be fine,” Blue insisted again.
Noah shrugged and kept twisting stems. He hadn’t said anything, but his fellow bakers seemed to think he needed cheering up. “I knew I didn’t have long as soon as Jesse went. I’m not on the same level as all of you, can’t hide it anymore.”
If anything Blue frowned harder. Gansey looked positively fretful under his posh veneer, which wasn’t much better. Henry was lounged in one of the low deck chairs with his phone out, but Noah knew by now that Henry’s feigned disinterest was a nervous habit not unlike his own fidgeting.
“Maybe Gansey will go,” Henry offered. He deftly dodged one of Noah’s cast-off daisy leaves, which Blue had balled up and thrown at his ear. “I think this is the first time you well and truly missed a showstopper, right, Ganseyman?”
“I was last in technical though, and he got better comments on the signature – don’t make that face Gansey, it’s fine!”
“I was second to last in the technical, if that’s worth anything. And my signature was miles away from Jane’s and Ronan’s.” Gansey sighed, restless fingers finally stilling on the tabletop. “I don’t want anyone to go. I know it’s a competition, but it never feels fair to send someone home for having a bad weekend.”
“Did you see Ronan and Blueregard’s showstoppers? They’re about the only ones who didn’t have a bad weekend.”
They fell silent. Adam had disappeared the moment Paul and Mary dismissed them from the tent – he wasn’t in any real danger of leaving, but they’d learned early on that anything less than the top wasn’t acceptable to him. He pushed himself harder than any of them on every bake. Ronan had also gone off on his own, but that was normal, and who could say how he felt. He seemed to care a lot about pies, so Noah would have thought he’d be happy, but most of the time he didn’t seem that invested in winning, which a number of the other bakers found frustrating.
Henry nudged Noah with his foot. “So if you’ve bravely accepted your fate and all that, why do you look like you’re prepping for May Day? I don’t think you’ve churned out that many flower chains during deliberation before.”
“I can still be nervous,” Noah said. “And, I dunno, I have to do something. But look–” He tucked in the last stems and held up a cloud of daisies, valerian, meadowsweet, and ragwort woven into a wreath. “If I leave today,” he declared as he crowned himself, “I’ll leave as king of the flower patch!”
“Star baker pales in comparison,” Gansey said gravely, and Noah was thrilled to see he’d finally got him to smile. “And the others?”
“For all of you, of course.” He expertly tossed another crown right onto Gansey’s head and was rewarded with a genuine, unashamed grin. “Obviously the king needs a court.”
Blue started to protest, but Noah wouldn’t hear it – maybe ‘dismayed’ was a step up from ‘planning Paul Hollywood’s untimely murder,’ but he wanted her to cheer up all the way and dismayed just wouldn’t do. “I insist, my lady, your flower king decrees it,” he told her, gently placing a wreath of late bluebells, knapweed, and corn marigold on her head. He slid the last completed crown onto Henry’s gracefully outstretched foot, which waggled about in thanks, and that was finally enough to make Blue laugh a little.
Satisfied, Noah stood and gathered his remaining flower chains. “I’ll go walk about for a bit, find some more flowers to finish Adam and Ronan’s. See you all back in the tent?”
“A good court will naturally await their king!” Henry proclaimed, rakishly draping his flower crown over one eye. And with a grand, theatrical bow, Noah set out towards the fields.
Of course, looking for flowers in the nearby fields meant finding Ronan, because the moment he arrived on the first day Ronan had made it his personal mission to charm the resident farm animals. How he had succeeded Noah would never know, given that they weren’t supposed to get close to the animals, but the show crew had been thrilled. Henry and Adam had a bet going on how many clips of Ronan communing with baby goats would be included in the final cut of the show as revenge for his complete refusal to give comments between bakes; the loser would have to bake the fussiest thing the winner could find in Mary Berry’s cookbooks.
No animals today though – just Ronan, laid out in the middle of the grass. He seemed to be asleep, but he opened an eye at Noah’s approach and gave him a nod. They’d ended up doing this before, during week two, when Noah had nearly set his work station on fire roasting almonds and felt like he needed to hide. He liked the silence, and liked that it was comforting instead of fraught, as silence so often was for him.
“They can’t send you home.”
Engrossed as he was in weaving his stems, it took Noah’s brain a moment to catch up. “Well… that’s sort of the point of the show, Ronan, sending people home,” he reminded him finally. “Thanks though.”
Ronan’s eyes stayed closed, but he glowered. Maybe he was also planning murder.
“Would you rather Gansey went home?” Noah continued. “Or Henry? Adam? Arguably they’re down there right now – well, Adam’s set in the middle – but they haven’t had a weekend as bad as mine, and they’re better than me anyways. Wouldn’t be fair.”
He knew Ronan knew that, and as the silence stretched between them he also knew Ronan felt like Gansey did, and Blue, and Henry. They’d all take everyone with them if they could.
Still, there were only so many times he’d let them feel sad for him.
There was a gentle whisper of footsteps in grass, and Noah made himself look up from his hands. Adam had come up beside them, clutching a small array of flowers. “They want us back in five – I offered to come find you two,” he said, accent carefully clipped as always. He offered Noah his handful of blooms. “Blue mentioned you were looking for flowers for a project?”
“Where’d you find poppies?” Noah said in awe. “I didn’t know there were any growing in the fields here.” He quickly started weaving one into Ronan’s flower crown, simply because it felt right.
Adam smiled a little cryptically and simply said, “Oh, just saw some around,” which made Noah worry that he took them from somewhere he shouldn’t. But he understood what the gesture meant: Adam was determined to stay in the competition, but that didn’t mean he was happy to see Noah go. As if on cue, Adam cleared his throat. “Noah, I’m–”
“Nope, no,” Noah interrupted, “not you too, stop that.” He dropped Ronan’s finished flower crown on his face and stood, ignoring Ronan’s cursing as he placed his last colorful wreath on Adam’s head. Two of the poppy blossoms nodded in the breeze. “When you win the whole thing, I’ll make you another one, a really big one for a winner,” he added, grinning. He couldn’t be sure if Adam glanced away because he was embarrassed Noah cared or embarrassed to hear someone say out loud that he might actually win, but either way Noah mentally doubled down on his words. Adam would get a winner’s crown, he decided, beautiful and worthy of him, no matter how far he got in the end.
“You made these for everyone?” Ronan asked, holding up his flowers. Noah nodded and he smirked, quickly getting up and setting the linked stems in place. “Perfect. No way I’m missing Hollywood’s face when he walks in and realizes we’re all wearing the same hat.”
“Anything to stop you and Blue glaring at each other.” Noah suspected Adam’s exasperated glare was just an excuse to take in how well Ronan pulled off the flowers. “This isn’t Chopped, the two of you don’t need to act like pie is a matter of life and death.”
“Then clearly you’ve never had my pies, Parrish.”
Noah fell into step behind them, listening to his friends bicker. Just before entering the tent for the last time, he reached up and adjusted his crown. Even if he was going home today, he felt every bit a king.