THE TASTE TEST (#1 STEAMY CHEF SERIES)

◘ sixteen ◘

My fuck Zane Rose stint got me a lot of publicity—a fifty-fifty mix of positive and negative reports on me, my cooking, my fame, even my goddamn sex life.

The good press came from feminist advocates who appreciated that I'd spoken up for women in the culinary industry. By bashing Zane—however indirectly it was—I was telling the male-dominated profession to change. I was telling the males to go fuck themselves. I'd pushed boundaries by rebutting Zane's claims, by not letting him step on me.

Some people stated I was defending my human right to like or dislike certain foods. Why should I be blamed for having tastes that were different? Why would a man write an entire book about a woman because she didn't want to try his ratatouille? It was infantile, and I appreciated those who spoke up against Zane's behavior and immature reaction.

But then there were those who called me an angry woman and made memes out of me. Of course, audience members had been filming the panel. With their footage they made me into a caricature and created GIFs of me, red-faced and sputtering, whenever they needed to use something to express their rage. It was the second time I'd found my face all over the internet for all the wrong reasons, and it boiled my blood.

Luca told me the bad press would die down, eventually; but the good press would linger.

"Everyone will see how Zane was the one who used you, not the other way around," he shared with me, a few days after the conference, while we discussed the situation with Food Me! still being up in the air. "Those who read his book will either do so because they agree with him, or because they'll want all the facts to better defend you. But bad publicity is still publicity, and this might convince Hollywood execs to renew Food Me! so... it should all work out, okay?"

I tried to let his words echo in my head, but all they did was distort into all the cruelties I saw online about me. The mocking of my food preferences, calling me catty and bitchy and fame-hungry. The low blows to my ego by saying my dishes weren't that good anyway and my show wasn't that entertaining and my books weren't that well written.

Of course I spiraled into scrolling way too much and lost my mind in the process. I went back to being a recluse, refusing to leave the house unless necessary. I binge-ate and binge-watched TV, doing everything to divert my thoughts away from all the critiques.

Binge-eating wasn't normal for me; I never kept snack foods or bubbly drinks at home to prevent this from happening. But in such desperate times, the over-salted chips and the sugar-packed cookies were the only things between me and a fit of panic attacks.

The snacking didn't quite stop me from the doom-scrolling. I still fumbled across my social media platforms to make sure I hadn't been canceled—I hadn't, nothing I'd said was that bad—and that the Zane-lovers hadn't left me awful comments about how I sucked for embarrassing him and for not broadening my horizons. They tagged me in trashy posts, posted the GIFs about me all over the place, and I popped up in New York City Comic Con goers feeds, too. Even those who hadn't attended the panel.

It was a nightmare.

Then came the more personal critiques, the ones targeting me as a person, where I came from, how I got to where I was.

"She's let her fame get to her head. Now she berates audiences everywhere for reading a book that may or may not have some distorted truths about her in it. Who cares? She needs to chill."

"She made it all about her, when in truth, it's about Zane Rose. HE was denied the type of success she has because he doesn't come from money."

"Béatrice's father is a filthy rich French pastry chef! She could afford to go to Parisian culinary schools and buy buildings to set up her not-so-fancy restaurants. Then she publicly demeans a man who comes from a poorer background? Who had to put out loans to get his own restaurant, and then had to write a book to continue to finance it?"