Chapter Ten #2
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.