Chapter 6
SIX
The rest of October rips past Ben like an overdue bullet train, time streaking recklessly by, each day sliding between his hands like silk before he can totally get a grip on it.
It’s not that it’s a bad thing, exactly.
Ben’s lived months—years, even—wallowing in such depths where time seemed to become thin and hollow, the minutes stretched out meaningless before him and then flattening to nothing in his memory.
This, thankfully, isn’t like that. He’s, for once in his life, busy.
Days that used to creep along at a snail’s pace are now sprinting past him, cackling merrily at his shocked expression over their shoulders; there’s simply too much to do.
His work on twenty-seven isn’t difficult, but it is present, and it’s becoming harder and harder to get it all done.
One way or another, he keeps finding himself several floors removed from all that, ensconced instead in the increasingly familiar warmth of the Gastronome offices.
Still: Pete was better in it. A lot better.
Ben had been amazed by the difference when he cut the edit together: how much more easily Pete moved, how many more regular human sentences he said, how much easier it was to stitch them into reasonable cooking advice.
He still made plenty of errors, of course, and Ben still poked a little fun at his expense in the edit, a little, but it was gentler poking, and thus gentler fun.
The overall result was something easier to consume than even the first one, for all it wasn’t quite as funny.
Watching it made you feel more like you were in the kitchen of your clumsiest friend, listening to his buddy affectionately razz him, than watching a trained professional beef it for views on camera.
The latter of which was, for better or worse, what their first two attempts evoked.
Ben had been nervous, sending the video he’d come to think of as “Heaps for Dinner” off to Dave in S the second video had followed its footsteps; a tone shift in the third one was a risky choice.
On the other hand, it was less risky than their other option, which was submitting nothing and giving Miranda the chance to cheerfully send Ben packing, so.
He’d sent it off and tried to focus on other things.
But it had, in the end, gone even more viral than the first one, outperforming their second attempt by a wide margin.
And then the video they posted after that, which Pete filmed while Ben was stuck in a multi-hour retrospective meeting for a project on twenty-seven he’d only been an ancillary part of, performed worse than any before it.
It wasn’t that anything Pete did in it had been so much more horrible than what happened in the others—dropping multiple sheets of painstakingly hand-rolled pasta while making butternut squash ravioli was about par for the course—but the blank misery and frustration radiating off Pete had spoiled the vibe, no matter how Ben cut it.
So Ben decided he was going to be around for filming after that. For the good of the show, and everything. For the numbers. For his career.
God, Ben’s not even convincing himself. The truth is, he’s hanging around while Pete films because he likes being around while Pete films; he’s hanging out in the Gastronome offices because he enjoys being there more than in his own.
He’s come to know the other test cooks a little—Adina, whose background is in pastry, is a particular friend of Pete’s, so she’d been the first one he connected with.
She’s bright and funny and incredibly laid-back about everything except her work; about that, she is an absolute, unrelenting lunatic, which made Ben take an immediate liking to her.
She’s also very generous with scraps and samples, and though Ben’s not exactly proud of it, he’s not above being bought by a solid pate à choux, or a thin slice of apple tart.
She’s probably Ben’s favorite, but the rest of the test cooks are nice enough, too.
Ben is not, by nature, the sort of person who generally gets on well with others, so they’re not all a personality match.
Brogan, whose focus is primarily on fish and vegetables, is so easygoing that Ben has no idea what to say to her, and Ezra, their meat and butchery expert, seems like he might be someone else’s cup of tea but isn’t exactly Ben’s.
Ben, by nature more than intention, is the sort of gay man who’s never quite grasped “camp” as either an adjective or a verb; whether you cover him in sequins and feathers or drop him in the middle of the woods, he’s going to find himself wishing, in fairly short order, that he was at home in his sweatpants.
Ezra, on the other hand, is the sort of gay who gets his nails done professionally, and flirts salaciously with anyone who happens by, and often feels called to express himself by bursting out in song.
It’s entertaining, of course, and he’s got quite a good voice, but being around him sets Ben’s teeth on edge a little, leaves him with the raw, uncomfortable itch of not quite fitting into your own community.
It’s not that Ben begrudges him expressing himself—if anything, he wishes that he, Ben, had more to express.
Still, it’s nice to have someone else openly queer around.
If nothing else, it’s helping Ben solve a little mystery for himself—in the back of his mind, for the last few weeks, he has been compiling a mental dossier without letting himself notice he was doing it.
While he worked on editing, and thinking through the production schedules, and considering the best methods to get reasonable human behavior out of Pete, he’d just stuck everything he could find in that folder, every little piece of evidence.
But only now has Ben allowed himself to mentally scrawl, across the folder, the actual query he’s hoping its contents will answer: Is Pete Bailey, In Fact, Gay?
Or Is He Just Excruciatingly Hot and More Friendly than Most People?
The question is driving Ben slightly insane.
It’s not that he doesn’t have gaydar. Ben has gaydar, of a sort.
He can tell immediately when, for example, a guy his sister is dating is gay, or a celebrity is gay, or a couple dining at his parents’ restaurant is gay, as opposed to a pair of middle-aged business associates who are about to be very offended by Ben’s father’s well-meaning assumption.
But the minute he, himself, actually likes a guy, all bets are off; somewhat relatedly, Ben has now spent several weeks convinced by turns that Pete is either straight, gay, or bisexual, which he’s sure means absolutely nothing at all.
And it doesn’t matter, anyway, since there’s one thing Pete definitely and categorically is, and that’s being so far out of Ben’s league as to be beyond rendering.
Even if Ben could determine whether or not Pete liked guys, it wouldn’t mean Pete liked him.
And Ben doesn’t care if Pete likes him, of course.
Why would he care? It’s not as though he likes Pete.
Or, well, no, that’s not fair—Ben likes Pete, of course he does, as a friend.
They’re friends, now; Ben thinks that’s fair to say.
They’ve had a variety of meals together, mostly in the test kitchen but also a few quick cafeteria lunches, and that one rainy afternoon towards the middle of the month, where they each scarfed down a hot dog from a street vendor under the protection of some nearby construction scaffolding.
Ben’s also gone along for drinks with the test kitchen staff after work twice now and, both times, ended up wound in a long conversation with Pete about some topic or another.
And they text, sometimes, about inconsequential stuff, or sharing memes and videos—so, normal friend stuff. Nothing weird there at all.
But in terms of liking Pete, in a less-than-professional, more-than-friendly way: Ben doesn’t.
He doesn’t. He does not. Pete is a perfectly lovely and very competent person so long as the camera’s not rolling; he’s kind to animals and children; he never seems to forget anything Ben tells him about himself, even though he does regularly forget almost everything else.
And that’s all fine and good and wonderful, Ben is sure, but he’s not about to go and let it make him into some sort of idiot.
He knows how things go, with guys like Pete and guys like him—it’s not an even match.
Straight or gay, there wouldn’t be any point in Ben nurturing a fixation, or crush, or whatever.
He’d just be setting himself up for heartbreak.
This is a good argument, a strong argument. It holds up admirably, despite several tests of Ben’s internal resolve, right up until the Halloween party.
The night of the event, Ben decides, after waffling about it through his entire dinner with Mrs. C, to take a cab to the party.
It’s not the sort of choice he would typically make. Cabs are expensive; if one is going to spring for a cab, best to save one’s money for the ride home, when one is likely to be far less sober, and thus far more incompetent at navigating the labyrinthine maze of the subway.
But tonight is not Ben’s typical party experience, because Ben’s typical party experience, at least here in New York, is something like a networking event, or the wedding of a family friend, or a public restaurant opening advertised online, which Ben is typically just dropping by at for the food, anyway.
This is a real, genuine party. A food media party.
A food media Halloween party. It’s apparently an annual thing, held in some warehouse space owned by one of Rick’s friends, and invite-only.
That Ben has an invite, if a somewhat last-minute one, still feels like maybe it’s a prank, or the result of a critical error, like mixing up his name with someone else’s.