by Beth Bolden
Miles’ dark eyebrows slanted with annoyance and everything he was holding back, but he remained silent, letting the quiet grow until the beep of the oven timer interrupted his pouting and Evan’s cold shoulder.
“Eat,” was all Miles said, as he slid a wedge of quiche over on a plate, a fork balanced on the edge. “You’ve got to keep your energy up, and you look tired.”
Evan wanted to retort something spiteful, but he buried the spike of heat under the cold wall of ice surrounding him, and merely looked pointedly over at the list on the fridge.
Miles didn’t reply, merely walked over to the fridge and scrawled something under the third rule. “Rule number four,” he announced, “sarcastic retorts are banned.”
“Fine by me,” Evan said, even though he felt a pulse of disappointment at losing the banter he’d actually enjoyed trading with Miles.
It didn’t matter, anyway. Only one thing mattered now. Not fucking this up again.
“First,” he said, between big bites of quiche he didn’t really taste, “I want you to go through the cookie recipe again. That’s what we’ll do for the test. It’s the easiest recipe on the list.”
There was a mutinous jut to Miles’ jaw but he nodded, and Evan watched as he began to assemble his ingredients.
He was right. He had to be right. There was no more room for error.
* * *
Miles watched as Evan ate his quiche and didn’t even taste it, then pushed it aside only half-finished. He pressed his lips together and told himself that it didn’t matter if this felt all kinds of wrong; it was what Evan wanted.
Or at least what he’d told himself he wanted, though that was a distinction that even Miles could acknowledge didn’t matter anymore.
“I made notes last time we baked these cookies,” Evan said.
As always, Miles’ gut reaction was to correct, to snark just so Evan could snark back. A stupid petty correction that he could use to flirt with the other man. But this time, he kept his mouth shut, even though technically, they hadn’t baked anything. Miles had baked these cookies by himself, and Evan had just watched—and also, if Miles was being really honest, drove him insane. With sexual frustration. With desire. With need.
“I bet there isn’t time for me to teach you how to make them,” Miles said, and sue him, he sounded regretful because he really was. The best afternoon he’d spent in forever had been the one when he’d taught Evan how to make pain au chocolat.
That was the afternoon when Miles had discovered that maybe teaching other people how to bake might not be too terrible.
Evan leveled him an annoyed look, frosted cold at the edges. “Both of us know that wasn’t a serious offer. I’m not here to learn how to cook, and you’re not here to teach me.”
He was right, but the truth still stung.
Miles turned back to the counter where he’d been assembling his mise en place to make sure he had everything he needed.
“We need to finalize the recipe today,” Evan announced. “So no crazy experimentation, please.”
It was only all those hard years of being shit on by head chefs in kitchens that kept him even-keeled and calm when he nodded. “I’m going to do a quarter dark chocolate, and three quarters semi-sweet,” he said. “That should balance out the bitterness nicely. And I’m swapping white sugar for brown.”
Evan’s sharp nod of acknowledgement shouldn’t have hurt, but it did.
It didn’t matter, though. Miles wasn’t going to be the one responsible for killing off Evan’s chances at a successful production of this show. He’d worked hard enough for it, and it wasn’t fair for him to lose his shot because Miles was a careless jerk who couldn’t keep his fingers under control when he got drunk.
The afternoon passed by achingly slow. Evan didn’t question every decision Miles made, he only wanted solid, unchanging ones. And every question was polite, painstakingly professional and about zero degrees.
Miles hated every minute of it. In his fantasies, he might have dreamed about an afternoon just baking and hanging out in his place, and it was glorious. The reality was so much different and so much worse.
Third batch pulled out of the oven, Miles tested a cookie and gave a shrug when Evan asked if this was finally the final recipe.
“You can’t tell me you don’t know,” Evan said, and for the first time, his frustration felt warmer. Hotter. Like Evan was just on edge as Miles, he’d just buried it under so much ice that it took time to melt and show through.
“They taste good.” Miles shrugged again, because if Evan didn’t get it now, he probably never would. Miles had sworn that Evan was close to understanding what drove him, but maybe after everything, it was safer to assume Evan didn’t give a shit. “They taste really good, even, but perfection can’t be rushed.”
“Perfection,” Evan said through clenched lips, “is not what we’re aiming for here. We’re aiming for good enough.”
It felt like something inside Miles died a little with Evan’s words. He had to turn back to the cooling rack, fussing uselessly with the warm cookies, so Evan wouldn’t see his devastated expression.
“I didn’t work so hard to become a chef so I could skate by on good enough,” Miles said softly.
“Well, this certainly isn’t what I worked so hard for either,” Evan snapped. “We’re all settling here.”
It shouldn’t have hurt more, but somehow it did. It burned, in a way that none of Evan’s other snarky retorts had ever hurt before. Miles turned from the stove and wrenched open the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of pinot blanc that he’d been saving for a special occasion.
He opened it with quick, efficient movements, and for a brief second, considered not even bothering with a wine glass, just dumping it into his empty water glass, but that felt wrong. Disrespectful of the wine and the effort the winemakers had put into crafting it. So he walked across the kitchen, grabbed a glass, and poured the wine.
“Really?” Evan snapped. “You’re drinking? Don’t you think alcohol has gotten us into enough trouble?”
“You want a glass?” Miles asked, because even though he had sent the email while drunk, it wasn’t like Evan hadn’t also used the excuse of a glass of good cabernet sauvignon to do something crazy. “Or are you afraid you’ll kiss me again?”
Evan’s lips compressed together, and he looked angry. The angriest he’d looked since the afternoon had started. “I told you,” he said stiffly, “that won’t be repeated. It doesn’t matter what I drink.”
“Then you should try a glass of this. It’s special,” Miles said, giving the glass a fancy little twirl and watching the golden liquid swirl around the crystal.
Evan made a face, but still went to get a glass from the cupboard, and poured himself a scant quarter of a glass. “What,” he retorted when Miles shot him a questioning look. “One of us has to stay sober.”
“I can bake drunk, sober, it doesn’t matter. You’re the one who needs something to loosen up,” Miles said, even though he knew what he was risking by saying it out loud.
“I like who I am sober just fine,” Evan said, but he didn’t even sound convincing.
But it didn’t matter. Miles had promised he would abide by the three rules—now four rules—hanging on the fridge. Drinking wasn’t technically on the list, though it would inevitably lead to breaking one, or all of them probably, but it might also make Evan more bearable to be around during this exercise in torture.
Miles took another bite of cookie, and suddenly it didn’t matter so much. It didn’t feel like life or death if the batter had another eighth of a teaspoon of salt, or he slightly changed the proportions of dark to semi-sweet chocolate or if he substituted more white sugar for the brown. “Final recipe,” he said, and tried to ignore Evan’s triumphant expression.
He was supposed to be giving Evan what he wanted, right? All of this done exactly the way he wanted it. But Miles felt hollow. Uninspired. More like quitting today than he’d felt since this
whole thing started.
All it took to squash that particular bug was the thought of Evan’s face if he gave up and let Pastry by Miles fall apart.
Evan’s fingers flew across the keyboard, as sure as they’d ever been. And something about Evan’s certainty helped Miles believe at least a little bit that they were doing the right thing, taking the right path.
“There, recipe submitted to testing.” Evan glanced up. “That’s Lucy’s minions, in case you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t realize they were going to be testing the screen test recipe.” Maybe if Miles had, he would’ve made another batch, tried another hunch. He didn’t want to talk big with his impressive resume, and then fall pathetically short.
“It isn’t a requirement,” Evan said, “but I thought it would seem pretty dumb to pass the screen test, but not have the recipe tested. Besides, Reed knows when faced with a challenge, I like to go above and beyond. He’ll probably expect this, on some subconscious level.”
Miles grabbed a plate from the cupboard, slid two cookies onto it, and pushed it Evan’s direction. He ignored it, which was a doubly unpleasant reminder: one, he didn’t like sweets, and two, that it didn’t matter to him how the cookie actually tasted.
“What’s next?” Miles asked, draining the glass of wine. If he had to stand here for another minute and watch Evan type furiously on his laptop, he was going to go out of his mind.
“Remember the wing-wang?” Evan said absently.
“The what?” Miles asked.
Evan’s eyes shot up to Miles’ face. “The Ding Dong, or whatever it was that you called it.”
“I remember it. I didn’t think we were going that direction.”
“We’re not. We’re going to practice filming, and because we have no equipment, we’re going to have to be resourceful. Now where’s that ficus you used last time? It’ll be steadier than my hands and we’re going to want to take this footage apart to make sure you’re perfect. It’ll be that much harder with the camera jerking all around.”
Miles shook his head incredulously and went to grab the ficus from his bedroom. As he dragged it to the kitchen, he realized that Evan had helped furnish this apartment. He’d known exactly where the ficus was and just didn’t want to talk about Miles’ bedroom. Or go into Miles’ bedroom.
He didn’t think anyone had ever wanted him so much yet spent so much time and energy avoiding the subject of sex. It was a fascinating dichotomy that should have frustrated him enough to kill any interest Miles felt, but instead, it was doing the opposite. This quirk of Evan’s made Miles hunt like a detective for any clues, verbal or otherwise, that gave away just how much he wanted. And each discovery was sweeter than if it had been freely admitted.
Miles didn’t want to think about what this said about his emotional hang-ups.
Evan had already pulled the duct tape from the supply closet it was stashed in, and he pulled out a GoPro camera from his laptop bag.
“Where’d that come from?” Miles asked as he pulled the ficus into place opposite the big kitchen island.
“The extreme sports department,” Evan said.
Miles frowned. “I thought it was just that one guy, and you said he’d been dropped too many times on his head.”
“He has.” Evan paused, checking the angle of the camera. “He won’t even realize I’ve borrowed this.”
The problem was Miles couldn’t help but grudgingly admire Evan’s determination to get shit done. He was pretty sure they had that in common. That much Reed was dead right on.
If only they could figure out how to align their priorities and stop fighting each other, they could run the world.
“Get behind the island,” Evan ordered. “I want to check the angle of the camera.”
Miles did as ordered, as Evan made a few minute adjustments.
“Now what?” Miles asked.
“Now, you make those cookies again.” Evan paused and Miles wondered if he could make that other set of adjustments he’d wanted to, and if Evan would even notice. “And you make them exactly the same. No creative wanderings.”
“Just make the cookies?” Miles leaned on the counter. He knew from how many editing hours he’d spent on Pastry by Miles videos that he had a not-insignificant charm factor when he stood like this. Evan didn’t even blink, he just went right back to his laptop, moving it so he was aligned right behind the camera. Seeing everything it saw.
Maybe, he couldn’t help but think, I’m losing my touch.
Something he’d considered ever since he’d walked into the Five Points offices and hadn’t been able to see eye to eye with the cute producer.
“Make the damn cookies, Miles.” Evan’s voice was cold and hard as steel.
So he made the damn cookies. Again.
* * *
Evan knew what the problem was going to be before they even reviewed the footage. Miles was a natural behind a camera, usually relaxed and jovial, even self-deprecating when the situation called for it. His appeal had been one of the more persuasive arguments that had sold Reed on him when Evan had first shown him Pastry by Miles videos.
The other persuasive argument had been that they wouldn’t need to spend weeks or months getting Miles comfortable in front of the camera. He wouldn’t need a single ounce of training because he’d already given himself the best training regimen he could—tons and tons of experience.
But that was before, and this was after—though before and after what, specifically, Evan didn’t want to think about—now everything had suddenly changed.
Miles was stiff and awkward on the first video. He spent a lot of time second-guessing both his words and his actions. Even worse, he kept directing hesitant, almost questioning glances at the camera, like he was asking Evan if he was doing the right thing.
This was not the Pastry by Miles superstar that Evan had been ready to finish molding.
Evan was at a complete loss. He didn’t even want to look at Miles, currently elbow-deep in sudsy water, washing dishes, because then Miles might know how bad things were, and that would make them even worse. He was self-conscious now, but he wasn’t aware of it yet. As soon as he became aware of it, it would be even more pointed.
“Was it that bad?” Miles asked, from over at his spot at the sink.
Evan didn’t know how he could’ve given it away, but he was pretty certain that Miles hadn’t even looked over at him the whole time he’d been watching the video, and he certainly hadn’t admitted anything out loud.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Evan lied.
“You’re totally silent over there. Which means you’re usually plotting some sort of world takeover bid. Or how to tell me that all my other episodes were a fluke.”
Evan had been definitely worried about the screen test before, because he and Miles saw eye to eye on so little, but when they’d come back to Miles’ place, he’d suddenly become an acquiescent stranger. Evan had begun to think that maybe they could pull this off after all, mostly resting on Miles’ natural charisma in front of the camera.
And now even that had deserted them.
“They weren’t flukes,” Evan said, but he wasn’t even convincing himself.
The tense line of Miles’ back as he scrubbed cookie sheets was proof enough that Evan definitely wasn’t convincing him.
“It’s been a long week,” Evan said. “You’re tired. I’m tired. This is a lot of stress. A few more practice run-throughs and the kinks will work themselves out.”
Later that night, Evan lay awake in bed, promising to himself that he’d told Miles the truth. He’d been so vigilant when he’d picked the talent he wanted to produce for the first time. He’d followed what felt like hundreds of food bloggers. He’d done research for months. He’d narrowed and winnowed and made at least a dozen pro-and-con lists. He’d kept coming back to Pastry by Miles for a reason, and that reason had to be more than how cute Miles was when he smiled, eyes crinkling and so damn bright. It had to be more than w
hen Evan had seen him for the very first time, he’d felt it deep down, right in the gut. More than just that he’d sworn to himself that one day he’d find a way to meet Miles Costa.
It had to be more because Evan had staked everything on his career, and he’d staked his career on Miles. But lying awake, sleepless as the hours ticked by, Evan couldn’t help but wonder if he had been wrong this whole time.
* * *
The next day, Evan worked both of them like the devil, like a man terrified he was going to waste a single moment of time.
Thirteen times, Miles thought sluggishly as he leaned against the counter, not even caring if it was his good side or he was laid out seductively. He didn’t think he could bring himself to stand up.
Despite what Evan had promised to him the day before, and that Miles had sworn to himself that he’d deliver if it killed him, the kinks had not worked themselves out.
Miles got more comfortable, and he’d developed a decent patter as he prepared the cookies, but there was no spontaneity, no life. No zing. He knew he felt annoyed and stifled at the man who stared coldly and calculatingly at the camera as he performed. Even when he worked his ass off to forget Evan’s existence, Miles couldn’t find the spark that had come as natural to him as breathing from the first Pastry by Miles video he’d recorded.
Even the stupid Ding Dong video he’d filmed to get back at Evan on their second day was better than the thirteenth run-through of the chocolate peanut butter cookies.
“Maybe we should use the Ding Dong video,” Miles said. “I bet you some people would even find it funny.”
Evan’s expression said it all. He didn’t find it funny and couldn’t comprehend of anyone who would. And that, Miles thought, was the root of the problem. Evan couldn’t unclench for five seconds and fucking relax, and his goddamn tenseness had caused Miles to lose his center.