But in the few weeks since I’d seen him, I’d kind of… sort of… online stalked him. Well, it didn’t count as online stalking if his food blog was public, right?
But I think I kind of took it too far.
First, I checked out the blog the night after he accepted the position. I was ready to hate it, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t going to be possible. He’d had the blog for years, had hundreds of recipes, and his food photography was incredible. It really was just as high-quality, if not better, than the photos on the Eat Network website.
But most importantly I realized that he wrote, a lot. Not only about food, but also about his life. That kind of thing sometimes annoyed me on food blogs—I came for the recipe, I don’t need to hear about your dear aunt Helen, thank you very much.
But with Dash? It was absolutely riveting. He was a great writer, to start with—he could craft posts that somehow were deeply personal yet related back to the recipe by the end, with an invisible slight of hand. And he delved deep, to topics that I didn’t know food blogs could even cover, like his disappointment after he failed to finish culinary school. It started to make me feel like an unbelievable asshole for having teasingly called him “Food Blogger.”
There were eight years of writing on there, and I clicked around aimlessly, feeling a little sneaky, like I was reading someone’s diary. Public diary, but still. There was bound to be personal information when someone posted on a blog for eight years.
I learned that his ex was named Caleb. That his all-time favorite food was carnitas tacos. That he wasn’t actually from New York City, but had moved there after high school.
And then I started to kind of feel like a stalker. I was learning all these things about a guy I barely knew, like I was getting to know him, before I’d ever actually worked a day with him.
So when I walked in to the studio for the first rehearsal taping, I felt… awkward. I couldn’t exactly say, Hi there Dash, nice to see you—so, in 2013, you really were having a rough time, weren’t you? Did you ever fix that pesky insomnia?
I hurried down the hallway toward what would become our studio for the Eric & Dash show. I’d arrived twenty minutes early as usual, because I wanted to get settled before we had to start the rehearsal.
But when I walked into the studio I stopped short.
Dash was already there, sitting on a stool behind the countertop, talking to one of the crew members. And he looked… different. Fantastic. Today was just a rehearsal that no one would ever see, but he’d donned a suit that made my button-up shirt and slacks look lame in comparison.
I wasn’t used to being intimidated by anyone. And yet I was, hopelessly so, as I gripped my shoulder bag and headed further toward the counter.
Dash didn’t give me much of a greeting when I walked in—a brief glance, before turning back to the crew guy he was talking to. But after a minute, the crew guy sauntered away to keep setting up, and I approached Dash.
“Hey,” I said, with a warm smile. I held out my hand to shake his. “You’re here early.”
“So are you,” he said, pulling out a small paperback book from inside his blazer and opening it to a page in the middle. “Coffee’s for you, if you want it.”
“Huh?” I said, looking down to see there were two cups of coffee in front of him on the counter.
He met my eyes, looking up at me from under his lashes. “The coffee. One of them’s for you.” He looked back down to the book.
“Oh—wow, really? Thank you so much, Dash, you didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugged one shoulder up, keeping his eyes down.
I picked up the cup and took a sip. “Oh man, this is exactly how I like it, too. Nice and sweet. God, that’s so nice of you, Dash.” It was exactly 2 packets of sugar—I could always tell if it was any more or any less—and just the right amount of cream.
“Not a big deal,” he said, flipping to the next page in his book, “It’s just coffee.”
Just coffee. Sure. But he’d somehow remembered exactly how I liked it, which I know I mentioned during his interview with Andrea.
So maybe he was a little more engaged than he seemed.
“So we’re making meatball subs today, huh?” I said.
He nodded. “Seems like a good, easy rehearsal meal. I love meatball subs. I was a vegetarian for a year, and meatballs are the food that were my downfall.”
“A vegetarian? How could you?” I said with a grin.
A quick smile flashed across his face. Finally. “I know. We all make mistakes.”
His smile disappeared just as quickly, though, and reached out a hand to drum his fingers on the marble countertop. He turned back down to his book again.
“Nervous?” I asked.
He shook his head, not even looking up at me.
“It’s okay if you are.”
Finally he looked up. “I’m not, though.”
I shrugged. “I know it’s your first time doing anything like this. I just… I’ve been on TV a lot, actually, especially back in the day with the band, so if you need a break or want me to do more of the talking, let me know.”
“Think I’ve got it,” Dash said. He finally glanced up at me, his eyes as piercing as his words. He regarded me as if I was an ant he wanted to flick off of a table. “It’s just a rehearsal. There’s not even gonna be a live studio audience tonight.”
Cold as ice. I don’t know why I expected anything different. “Okay,” I said, my gaze lingering on him. “I just know things can be different once the cameras turn on.”
He was looking at his book again, but after a couple more minutes of silence, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“So how is San Diego treating you? It was so weird that it rained the other day—a lot of people don’t realize San Diego is actually a desert. We don’t get much rain at all.” God, I was lame when I was desperate.
After a pause, he looked up. “Sorry—did you ask me something?”
“You weren’t listening, were you?”
“Can’t say I was.”
I sighed. “Listen, Dash. We’re literally going to be making a show together every week for the foreseeable future. You’re gonna have to give me a little more than this.”
“I’m here for the job and the money, Eric. That’s it. I told you already that I’m kind of an asshole. Do you really think you’re going to be the one to change that?”
Damned if I’m not going to try. Anger prickled inside me as I met his gaze, unwavering. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to punch him or kiss him, and I didn’t know which was worse. “Guess we’ll see,” I said.
An incredible scent filled the room as a group of interns wheeled in a cart with the food we’d be using to prepare the recipe today. There were all the ingredients for meatballs, marinara sauce, and bread to create the sandwiches, all set in place and labeled on a stainless steel cart.
Within five minutes the studio had become crowded and busy, with crew getting everything ready to begin the rehearsal. We’d had vague scripts prepared for us, but also would be testing out the teleprompters, which we’d be using for the live broadcasts.
Dash and I took our positions behind the counter. It was the closest he’d ever stood to me, and on the playback monitors that we could see above the cameras, it almost looked as if he didn’t completely fucking despise me.
In another few minutes, one of the directors rounded everyone up and let us know that we were about to begin.
Finally, he gave us our cue. “Alright—Standby—3… 2… 1… and we’re rolling.”
“Good evening everyone and welcome to the first episode of Eric & Dash. I gotta say, I’m excited for this, are you excited, Eric?” Dash said, turning to me and beaming.
It was almost a little shocking—the second the camera turned on, he had morphed into a completely different person. Smiling, confident as hell, and seemingly… friendly.
I blinked, and one of the directors signaled and mouthed at me, “Go!”
&
nbsp; “Oh, uh—yes, Dash, this certainly is exciting. Dash & Eric—uh, sorry, I mean Eric & Dash—is going to be broadcast live, straight to you viewers at home, once a week every week, right here on Eat Network. Set your DVRs if you’re not home and curl up with a nice snack if you are, because tonight, we’re making meatball subs. Shit—meatball marinara subs.”
Oh God. Oh fuck. It was only rehearsal, and I was already fucking this up bad.
“Let’s take five minutes,” the director said, halting the filming. He walked over, removing the headphones from around his ears. I think I actually saw one of the younger crew members roll his eyes.
“Eric—did you get a chance to go over the lines at home? And you know you can’t say ‘shit’ when we’re on live television, right?”
“Sorry—yeah, I did, I just—”
“Even if you don’t have them memorized, just read the teleprompter. We’re gonna be using that for the live shows, so you need to get used to it.” The director looked stern, and I couldn’t blame him.
He walked away again and Dash turned to me, actually smirking. “You know, Eric, if you need me to do more of the talking, just let me know.” He was repeating what I’d said to him earlier, and I felt my face grow hot. “We won’t be able to stop like this when we’re on live TV.”
I gave him an irritated look and turned back to the cameras, taking a deep breath.
Not only did Dash look better than me, but he was owning the TV persona. It was like he was the expert and I was the one in amateur hour. I had to do better. I had to step up.
The director was giving his cue again.
“Ok, let’s roll again… Standby—3… 2… 1….”
Four
Dash
Holy shit, I was actually doing it.
I was standing in front of TV cameras, in a studio, and I… was doing well. Something clicked inside me when the cameras turned on. I forgot the rest of my life, and I felt like I became someone better, more confident, and totally capable.
The rest of the rehearsal went much better than the first 10 minutes. Luckily Eric finally got a hold of the teleprompters, although it did give me the slightest bit of satisfaction to see his ego dissolve after he’d first messed up his lines. But he fell into a good rhythm with me as we made the recipe. If someone were to watch the tape, they probably would have assumed Eric and I were longtime friends. I thought it would take weeks for me to get used to it, but by the end of the rehearsal I almost hadn’t wanted it to stop.
And… I’d felt like I could interact with Eric like a normal person would. I had none of my regular anxiety, none of my hesitance to talk to him. There was a prescribed reason why we were interacting, in front of a camera, and in that context I felt shockingly comfortable. Even though we were mostly reciting lines from a script, I almost had a good dynamic with Eric, and by the end of the filming, we were exchanging smiles that an hour ago would have felt impossible.
…But then the cameras turned off.
I would have done anything to keep that feeling going for longer, to delay the inevitable return to reality. But like a curtain had lifted, the magic disappeared after we wrapped. I was… me again. Sad, single, and lonely, in California without any friends or the social aptitude to make them.
Almost as soon as we finished, Andrea appeared at the front of the counter, eyes as wide as her smile.
“Dash! You were amazing!” she said, reaching out to give me a high five. “I knew you had it in you. Didn’t I tell you, Eric?”
Eric nodded. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see how you perform in front of a real audience.”
The thought still made me nervous, but now it was an excited kind of nervous.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I said. “as long as you can handle the teleprompters. God, I’m hungry as hell now.”
“Take whatever you want,” Andrea said. “That’s one thing about cooking shows—there’s a ton of wasted food. Enjoy the leftovers while you can, because before you know it, you’ll be sick of them.”
Andrea scurried off toward the crew members and left me with Eric.
“Seriously. You can have any of the food you want after filming. I’m having at least one of these,” Eric said, picking one up and reaching into the set cabinet for a plate.
“Eric,” a crew member shouted, “Not the set plates! Use a paper towel!”
“Fine, fine,” he shouted back, and looked at me with a mock eye-roll. He grabbed paper towels for himself and then handed me a neat stack. “Grab a sandwich, Dash.”
I picked one up and took a bite.
“Oh God, that is actually pretty good,” I said in between bites.
He nodded, blissfully eating his own sandwich. We watched the crew frantically discussing the playback and repositioning cameras as we ate. I finished quick, and was about to get the hell out of the hot studio when Eric spoke again.
“Hey,” he said, giving me a conspiratorial glance, like he was up to no good. “Follow me.”
He started walking over to a nondescript side door on the edge of the studio. I shot him a strange look, but as he disappeared through the door and it slammed behind him, my curiosity got the best of me.
I followed after, and entered into what must have been one of the test kitchens—it was a huge room, with at least 8 stainless steel countertop workstations in it, and all around the room were shelves upon shelves of cooking gear, ingredients, mixers, knives, towels, aprons—anything a cook could ever want. Eric was rummaging through one of the huge shelving units on the side of the space, and there were only two lone interns left in there, talking to each other quietly, off on the other side of the big room.
“All the people who work in here leave early?” I asked.
“Yeah. They work early shifts usually, from 6-2,” Eric said, reaching and pulling out a bottle of rum. He grabbed it in his fist and turned to me, beaming. “Do a shot with me.” Holding a bottle of alcohol, his young Don Draper look was even more apparent, and I hated how good he looked.
“Uh… is it okay to use the test kitchen alcohol? Isn’t it for recipes?”
He shrugged it off. “Eh, they’ll probably yell at me if they find out, but I’ll replace the bottle with a new one next time I come in. I mean, look, they have ten bottles of this stuff on that shelf alone. We’re done for the day, and at least one of us did an awesome job, and we should celebrate.”
As I watched him rummage around the kitchen for shot glasses, I tried not to dwell on his body. It was almost unfair. I was so thoroughly not interested, and I didn’t want to think about him that way—but I couldn’t help but notice the small strip of skin that showed as he reached to a tall shelf, or the way his pants hugged his ass when he crouched down.
My mind started to wander to places it shouldn’t. Namely, I started going over in my head just how bad it would be, purely hypothetically, to have sex with Eric.
Oh, how far I’d fallen. But I’d just gotten out of a 10-year relationship—wasn’t it time for some good, completely no-strings-attached sex? Was I even capable of that? I had no idea. I’d hooked up with a couple people drunkenly over the past couple months of being single, but I barely remembered the encounters—they’d mostly turned out awful, boring, and sad. I thought I wasn’t a hookup kind of person, but maybe with someone as experienced a “player” as Eric, it would work out better.
It certaintly couldn’t be boring to fuck Eric. Maddening, maybe, but as I looked at him I couldn’t help but let his general confidence get under my skin. I pictured how he might look in a senseless sex haze, panting and begging instead of giving me that stupid grin.
Jesus, filming really had gotten my adrenaline up.
Eric turned and started walking back toward me, shot glasses in hand.
“I knew they had these somewhere in here,” he said, setting them on the stainless steel counter with a clink. He opened up the bottle of rum and poured two neat shots, handing me one.
“I’ve gotta say, Dash, you seem a
lot more comfortable now than before we filmed,” Eric said, eyes twinkling as he held his shot glass and leaned against the counter.
I realized that it was true, but him pointing it out only made me uncomfortable.
“Guess I’m a natural,” I said.
“Well, here’s to that,” Eric said, raising his glass in the air. I touched mine to his, and then tossed back the shot. The burn was pleasant and the rum had a sweet aftertaste.
“That is the good shit,” Eric said, looking down at the bottle.
“So is this part of your, like, seduction routine?” I blurted out.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Seduction routine?”
I shrugged. “You know. I’ve heard all about your conquests. You date someone for two weeks and then it’s on to the next one.”
He puffed out a laugh. “Wow, Dash. Way to cut right to the bone,” he said. “You probably shouldn’t believe everything you read in gossip blogs. And conquests? I don’t have ‘conquests.’ I can tell you right now that everyone I have sex with comes away from it very happy.”
He gave me a smug smile and I just nodded.
“I actually haven’t done the whole ‘party animal’ thing in a while,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “Me either. It’s been at least a couple years.”
“Years?” Eric said, his eyes widening. “Oh. I meant it had been a couple weeks for me. Guess I am kind of a lush.”
He poured us each another shot, as if to prove his point.
“Don’t pour me too many,” I said, after we took the second shot. “I’ve got to drive home. And you don’t need to see me drunk, anyway.”
“Why not? You an angry drunk? Like, even angrier than you normally are, I mean.” He gave me a devilish smile.
I looked at him in mock shock. “Angry? Me? Never.” I took a deep breath. “But really, I’m not angry. At least not usually.”
“So are you saying that gets even worse when you’re drunk?” Eric said, crossing his arms and leaning onto the counter again.
“Nah. I actually am a happy drunk, believe it or not. But I get all annoying and confessional and… prone to doing things I shouldn’t.”
The Sweetest Star: Under the Stars Book 2 Page 4