Chapter Eleven #2
“Night,” Miles returned, all lazy satisfaction, like he’d gotten everything he’d wanted.
They both had; that much was clearly obvious from the way they’d both gone up in flames from the first moment they’d touched. Evan knew he should be feeling more resolved. But tomorrow’s screen test still loomed over them, and there was too much ambiguity about the future for him to relax.
He rolled over and willed sleep to overtake him. It still didn’t come. Even when Miles fell into a gentle patter of snores, too quiet to be annoying, and also too quiet to drown out his uneasy brain.
He told himself that he was making the right decision when he silently slid out of bed and locked Miles’ door behind him with the key he still had on his ring. It was just a night of sleep, and in the grand scheme of things, it really shouldn’t mean anything.
Was it fair of Miles to be pissed that he’d woken this morning and Evan had already been gone? Probably. Was it surprising that he’d opened his eyes to nothing but empty sheets? Not really.
Evan, even after admitting he wanted Miles and thoroughly acting on this desire, was still skittish. Still unsure. Never really convinced that Miles really wanted him, despite all the words and actions that proved otherwise.
A younger, more selfish Miles might have gotten frustrated with Evan before this, but Miles took pride in the fact that he wanted the other man because of how difficult he was to convince, not in spite of it.
There was a careful hesitancy in Evan that Miles loved—because when he finally felt secure enough to let go, you knew you’d won him over, heart, body and soul.
And that was the end goal that Miles was really gunning for.
Now they only had to make it through this screen test and hope that it would be enough to convince Reed, because anything else they could fix later.
Miles just needed this one thing to fall their way.
They’d arrived on set to the expected chaos of a show that was just getting underway for the first day of filming. Reed was there, and his boyfriend, Jordan, who wrote the script for Dream Team. Quentin Maxwell and Landon Patton, the talent, were running late, which didn’t seem to surprise anyone.
“That’s why they told us we could do our screen test today,” Evan murmured into Miles’ ear, and with the hot breath brushing his skin, he had to remind himself that Evan wasn’t going to do that hot little nibbling thing he’d done last night.
“Because things are already chaotic?” Miles asked.
“Because they won’t be likely to get much done today at all. Landon and Quen can be . . . tough to wrangle.”
“So it’s not just me, then?” Miles glanced over at Evan, grinning. Evan was not grinning. That was another thing Miles wanted desperately—for Evan to relax.
But asking Evan to relax in the middle of chaos, during one of the most important days of his career, was useless. It wasn’t ever going to happen.
“That was never our problem. Or your problem,” Evan said.
Maybe another day Miles would have asked Evan to detail exactly what his problem was, but the memories from last night—what could be if they could learn to work together instead of against each other—were too fresh. The last thing he wanted to do was dredge up all the shit from the previous weeks.
They hadn’t really resolved it, and it still lay there, stagnant and sour, between them. Maybe Evan thought they could move on without dealing with it but Miles knew they couldn’t.
Even if Miles cared about Evan enough to let it go—and despite how stupid it was, he was edging closer to that place—Evan would never let it go. Miles didn’t think he even wanted to.
“Are you ready?” Evan asked, jerking Miles out of the melancholy fog that he’d felt from the moment he’d woken up and realized he was alone.
“I was born ready,” he said, putting on a confident front that he didn’t really feel anymore. Before he’d come here, Pastry by Miles always made him feel freer, an endless opportunity stretched out in front of him. Now thinking of what could happen to his show, all he felt was apprehension.
It was hard to face that at least half of that was his fault, but he forced himself to.
Without that email, Reed wouldn’t have demanded a screen test, and he wouldn’t have spent the last two days unsuccessfully recording himself baking peanut butter chocolate cookies.
The cookies had been fantastic; his performance had been anything but.
Before, it had only ever been him. Then it had been easy to think it was just him and Evan, for better and worse. And now there was a huge crowd of people, and even though Miles had never cared before, suddenly what they thought mattered.
He swallowed hard, and unsuccessfully ignored the sudden tightness in his chest.
“Just remember that it just needs to be good enough,” Evan said.
The hardest part of the last two days was watching the hopeful light in Evan’s eyes go out as he figured out that Miles couldn’t perform on command. And hearing his words now only proved that even Evan wasn’t sure he could do it.
“Okay,” Miles said, shoving his suddenly damp hands into his pockets, wondering if anyone would notice if he ran away and hid in the bathroom.
He didn’t even have a green room because this wasn’t even his show.
“You’re going to be fine,” Evan said. He placed a reassuring hand on Miles’ back, high enough to be professional.
Stupidly, Miles wished that he’d move it lower, make what had happened last night official and public.
But that wasn’t Evan’s style. It wasn’t even Miles’ style.
At least it hadn’t been before he’d met Evan.
Evan made him want all sorts of things he’d always avoided, and the painful irony was that he was the least likely to get them because it was Evan.
“Fine,” Miles parroted back, tongue thick and uncooperative. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even been nervous but he was undeniably nervous now.
Evan checked his smartwatch. “Time for makeup,” he said, and with his hand still on Miles’ back, steered him over to the makeup station.
Miles had never worn makeup for Pastry by Miles before, and he forced himself to remember that they were trying to up the production quality for the new version.
It didn’t help.
He sat down in front of the mirror and watched as the nice lady put a new, strange face on him.
The bathroom had never looked more appealing. Miles didn’t even think about his little dinky kitchen in Napa because if he did, he wasn’t sure he could keep it together.
Would Miles be better if I had stayed?
The question echoed through Evan’s brain for the hundredth time since they’d gotten to the Dream Team set.
Miles had been nervous and tense from the moment Evan had met him at the set, and instead of relaxing with Evan’s hand on him, he’d only grown edgier.
Evan stood behind the central camera operator and crossed his arms over his chest, careful to keep the frown off his face, but feeling it reverberate through him.
Miles was standing in the kitchen, the place he always looked confident and sure, but he looked nothing like he usually did.
He looked like an apprehensive wreck, and it was taking every ounce of Evan’s self-control to not walk up there and do something—anything—to calm him down.
Evan knew he should have stayed. He never should have left, never should have given Miles a reason to doubt that he liked him, that he cared about him, and Evan had been monumentally stupid enough to do it the day before the most important ten minutes of both their careers.
That was exactly why Evan almost never let himself do what he really craved.
Because they were usually really bad ideas, and only made things worse, not better.
Last night had been great. He couldn’t even think about it without a little frisson of invisible pleasure, but it hadn’t been worth throwing everything else away.
The director called for quiet. Miles forced out a painful little half smile, and then the worst ten minutes of Evan’s life began.
He knew right away that Miles’ performance this time was even worse than some of the recordings they’d done over the last two days. He’d worried about those, had been afraid that he was too stiff, so he’d pushed and pressed and hoped that they could make some improvements before this moment came.
Now Evan wished he’d just kept his fucking mouth shut, because he would have loved to have those performances be this performance.
“And now, uh, you put these in the oven for ten minutes,” Miles said, and slid the cookie sheet into the oven. Wooden. Dry. None of the playful, laughing charm that had won over so many people who didn’t care about pastry at all.
Evan had counted himself in that group, from the very beginning, and this hurt more than he ever could have imagined it would. Because it wasn’t only his failure, it was the failure of a persona that Miles had believed in. A persona that he’d believed himself to be.
Evan wished he could take it all back, and leave Miles alone. Leave him to his bad production values, and poor lighting, and the single swipe of raspberry puree on one cheekbone. Perfection.
“Cut,” the director yelled, and it blessedly, thankfully, ended.
“What just happened?”
Evan turned and Reed was standing there. Evan’s stomach plummeted.
“He was nervous, uh, a little tense, I think,” Evan said, and because there was nothing else he could do, pushed. “I have a lot of rehearsal footage that you should see. It’s a lot better.” Not by much, but it was better.
Reed raised an eyebrow. “You rehearsed? How much?”
“The last two days,” Evan said, even though he was sure that Reed already knew the answer. Evan was unfailingly predictable.