"You are going down."

At least that's what I think he mouths at me from across the room despite his teasing smile. I glare back at him, as I have this entire week of competing against him for the cooking competition we are both in. Yet I don't feel as much hate as I did now, in the final round, as I had in the start.

"In your dreams," I mouth back at him, making a face.

I don't need to win this, but I'd like to. I also know I deserve to.

Now it's just him and me, the final round.

He puts his meal together first, twenty minutes early while I use every second I am given. I watch the seconds tick by as I garnish my lamb, making sure it looks perfect. A four course meal: salmon puffs, pumpkin garlic soup, a lamb leg, and to finish it off a beautiful tiramisu made from scratch. We had to do one free choice starter, a soup, a meat main dish and a desert of choice. The alarm goes off and I step back, holding my arms in the air.

He smiles at me as the judge tastes his food, plenty of compliments given for his simple salad, tomato soup, roast chicken and red velvet cupcakes. So simple, just like him. I've only known him for four days, the duration of this contest yet I can easily read his face: he thinks he'll win. I don't listen to the judges words but he smiles proudly before they come to me.

Each course they go through feels like an eternity.

They start with the salmon puffs. The first course makes me think back to the first day of meeting my competition. After the cooking part, I went fishing in the lake a few miles away to calm myself. He was there too, but we didn't speak and stuck to our own sides of the dock. Neither of us caught anything.

The second course, pumpkin soup. Like the pumpkin patch I went to the second day, looking for a good one to perhaps buy as an additional ingredient. He was there too, but for the tomatoes. "Fancy seeing you here," he had said and we had had a tense, awkward and forced conversation about this seasons vegetables and he reminded me a tomato is a fruit. I told him to put it somewhere he didn't appreciate me saying.

They move onto the third course, the lamb, the main part. I ran into him walking to my hotel, he nodded tensely at me as we both remembered my tomato comment and the carrot I threw at his head after the competition that day after he said I looked like a swollen and baked tomato. "I'm sorry," the words slipped out as he had passed me, making him pause and turn. "About the carrot. I'm sorry about the carrot." He nodded, "Me too. About the tomato comment. You don't look like a tomato, a potato maybe..." I glared at him as he laughed and raised his arms in surrender. "Joking! I'm sorry." We exchanged a few more words before trashing each other and heading our seperate ways.

The last course, the dessert. Last night he asked me if I wanted to get coffee with him to ease the stress of the final round. Just him and me left. Despite that and all our heated words before, it was fun. We talked, we shared and we laughed. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much.

We make eye contact as the judges discuss.

I don't glare, he doesn't mock me. We are not rivals anymore as we watch each other, waiting to see who will win this round. We simply are.