Chapter 15 #2
Sam, abruptly remembering he can, steps into Jake’s space, kisses him silent, and then runs a hand through his wild hair a few times, taming it back down.
Jake seems to deflate slightly, sagging forward to rest his head on Sam’s shoulder.
So quietly Sam can’t be entirely sure he heard it right, Jake murmurs, “Christ. I’d forgotten how nice it is when you do that.
” Then he straightens up, and offers Sam a rueful smile, and says: “Hi, first of all, should have started there, and sorry again, and: I meant, like, the legal side? Of catering? Contracts or whatever?”
“Oh, sure,” Sam says. “I know a little. Why?”
“Well, you know the recital coming up? On Friday?”
Jake looks very relieved when Sam nods, as though he was expecting Sam to have forgotten the assorted conversations they’ve had about it over the last several weeks. “Yeah, of course. You’re afraid Jared S. is going to break his ankle and ruin your fledgling reputation as an instructor.”
“Jared S. is the least of my worries!” A long, involved tale follows this, although Jake insists Sam not interrupt his work and so trails Sam around the restaurant to tell it.
When he steps into the kitchen he reaches into the bin of hairnets by the door and puts one on, undoing Sam’s work to smooth his flyaways down, without even breaking flow.
There are a lot of personal grudges at play between people Jake only half-knows, so Sam doesn’t quite follow all of it.
The gist seems to be: The event’s long-time caterer has pulled out at the last minute, and claims that the studio owes them not only the money they would have paid for the meal, but also a cancellation fee.
“But they’re the ones who canceled?” Sam’s puzzlement creases his brow so deeply that he can almost hear his mother telling him it’ll stick that way.
“I know!” Jake cries. “I know! But they say a cancellation fee if in case anyone has to cancel.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what I said! But they say we’ll have to pay, and we’ll have to pay someone else extra to do it last minute, and—”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Sam says, waving a hand. “I’ll do it. Or, rather, we will.”
Jake’s mouth snaps closed; his eyes widen. “What? No you won’t; it’s in three days! You need at least a week’s notice—”
“I mean, we say that.” Sam offers Jake a slightly sheepish smile. “But exceptions are kind of the rule there. We do a lot of funerals and stuff like that, and there isn’t usually a ton of lead time. Besides, a dance recital is, what, fifty people? Seventy-five?”
Jake bites his lip. “Around that, yeah, between students and parents.”
Sam shrugs. “Right, so: no big deal. A couple of deli trays, a veggie platter or two, and—hold on.” Raising his voice so she’ll hear him from her alcove of the kitchen, where the mixer and deck oven live, Sam calls, “Eileen!”
“Yeah?” As expected, she doesn’t bother coming into the main kitchen, just hollers back unseen.
“You think you could muster the will to do a couple of dessert trays for Friday? The nice ones, with the lemon squares and brownies? Maybe the mini coconut bars?”
“This Friday? Go fuck yourself.”
Jake’s eyes go wide with horror. He waves his hands frantically at Sam, making an entreating face, but Sam grins at him and shakes his head, mouthing, “Relax, she’s fine.
” To Eileen, he calls back, “What if I told you it was for a dance recital at Jake’s studio?
Little kids and their parents? Also, their normal guy screwed them last minute, so if you don’t do it, there’ll be no dessert for anyone. ”
There’s a weighted pause, during which Jake looks like he’s considering the fastest exit strategy, but every visible member of staff starts to snicker or smirk. Then Eileen calls, “Okay, Sammy, you can eighty-six my last request. I’ll even do the mini cupcakes; kids always like those.”
Sam rolls his eyes, but cheerfully enough. “Thanks, Eileen. You’re a peach.”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Eileen warns him, and then immediately turns on the mixer, its loud thunking and thwacking both unmistakable and impossible to shout over.
“Sam,” Jake says, his eyes still wide, “you can’t just… I need a quote, for one thing, to make sure we can even—”
“Nope, stop, it’s on the house,” Sam says. “Obviously. Least I can do for all the free labor you’ve given me.”
“It wasn’t free! You’ve already paid me in food!”
“Not what I owe you,” Sam says firmly. “Not by half. Anyway, seriously, do you really want to argue with the easiest solve for this problem?” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively, lowering his voice.
“Think of all the better things we could do with the time you’d spend hunting down another last-minute caterer. ”
Jake meets his eyes, flushing slightly, and hesitates. But then, slowly, he nods. “If you’re… sure?”
“Very sure,” Sam says. He reaches out and squeezes Jake’s shoulder, his interest and his pulse both spiking when Jake sighs and leans into the touch. “I can start the prep tonight, and do most of the work myself. You can even help, if you want to. It’ll be fun.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you’ve ever understood what fun means,” Jake says. “Like, even one time, in your whole life.” Then, lower and more sincere, he adds, “Thank you, Sam.”
“It’s nothing,” Sam says, and he means it, at the time.
But, as it turns out, it’s not nothing.
That’s not to say that doing the work is a problem; far from it. Everything comes together, and Sam enjoys preparing it immensely. It just… isn’t a couple of deli trays and a veggie platter, and ends up meaning more to Sam than all of his previous catering jobs combined.
Jake does help him prep that first night, which is really the deciding factor, the one variable that changes all the others.
Because when Jake once again starts talking about how Sam should do his own thing, should make what he wants to make, the kind of food he makes for family meal, Sam finds, for the first time, that he has no excuse not to.
It’s not a paid or contracted job; it’s not like he’s changing the catering menu, or the deli’s menu. It’s a one-off. Why not?
They end up blowing off dinner at Johnny’s that night.
Instead, Sam makes a variety of test dishes for the recital after the deli closes, which they eat in lieu of a proper meal.
Jake’s delighted by every bite, at one point bursting into actual applause, and this time when Sam pulls him back to the office, nothing interrupts them.
The next two days are much the same: Jake slipping over to his own apartment in the morning to change for work and then ending up at Sam’s again that night, flush against Sam’s chest, saying filthy things against the shell of Sam’s ear.
Sam thinks he could get used to it, this languid, relaxed new cast to his movements, his mood.
Being Jake’s friend was wonderful, but being with Jake is so much better that Sam laughs whenever he thinks about it.
It blows everything else—even the time he spent with Jake in high school—out of the water.
Jake insists they reschedule their Johnny’s date for as soon as things calm down, the night after the recital.
Sam agrees readily enough. He assumes Jake wants to discuss what they’re doing here, what they are to one another, to avoid making the same mistake they did when they were teenagers.
He’s fine with that. If anything, he’s looking forward to it.
He’s never felt so entirely on the same page with anyone.
The night of the recital, Sam loads the catering van and drives the ten minutes to Jake’s studio.
It’s an unassuming building next to the Cuyahoga River, which feeds up into the lake; the area was heavily industrial for generations, and Sam double-checks his GPS to make sure he has the right address.
But as he pulls closer, he sees a variety of children in outfits that remind him of Jake back in the day, trailed by resigned-looking parents. He grins, and parks.
It would be silly for it to be one of the greatest nights of Sam’s life. It is anyway; he’ll just have to live with that.
Jake, first of all, is astonishing. Sam didn’t know what to expect.
He’s never been to a dance recital before, and Jake’s always talked about this job as though he was barely hired and is seconds away from being canned at every moment, holding on by the skin of his teeth.
Sam thought there was a real chance he wouldn’t see Jake at all, at least until after the show was over.
But instead, as Sam leans against the back wall of the large classroom space that’s serving as tonight’s auditorium, he’s delighted to see Jake take the stage with a microphone and serve as the evening’s MC.
He announces each group of students and what they’ll be performing with gusto, and with enough detail that everyone—or, at least, Sam—can tell he’s built a personal connection even with the classes he isn’t teaching.
And Madame Louisa, looking on from the sidelines, is positively beaming at Jake.
She looks so proud of him she might burst.
Sam can understand the feeling. His chest aches watching Jake sparkle with a more grounded version of his old panache.
To see him make eye contact with a nervous eight-year-old and mouth, “You got this, Jared!”—Sam can’t bear it, has to duck out of the room and start preparing the food for the post-show reception.
He probably should have started doing that a while ago anyway, so it’s a win overall.
And the way the food goes over with the crowd…
that, in Sam’s opinion, is more than just a win.
It’s proof: that Jake was right, that the food Sam likes cooking is good enough to deserve a place on Silverman’s menu.
His savory green onion blintzes, which were inspired by one of his favorite snacks from the bakeries in AsiaTown, make one parent so happy she insists on taking his number to start placing wholesale orders.
When Sam tells her Silverman’s doesn’t really do that, she just shrugs and says, “Well, you’re going to have to!
” Sam’s not sure if that bodes well or ill for his own happiness, but he’s positive he’ll find out soon enough.
Some of the exchanges genuinely do bode well, however.
He gets three future catering orders off the chicken schnitzel sliders alone, and two more on the strength of his miniaturized Pastrami Arnolds, which is gratifying.
Eileen’s dessert trays net them three more requests, and at least a dozen people promise to stop by in the near future, impressed by the food.
There is one strange moment. Sam could swear, just for a second, that he sees Marty in the crowd.
A former regular, Sam hasn’t laid eyes on the man in months, and he’s been a little concerned.
At first he assumed the Kiss of Death review got to him, but as customers have trickled back in without an appearance from such a consistent visitor, Sam’s started to fear the worst. It couldn’t be good for a man’s heart to eat as much corned beef as Marty did before that damn review came out; what if something had happened to him?
But the guy who makes startled, guilty-looking eye contact with Sam for half a second before disappearing into the crowd…
it has to be Marty, doesn’t it? Sure, he’s across the room, and wearing a hat, and Sam’s eyes could be playing tricks on him.
But wouldn’t that be a weird trick for them to play?
He’s been concerned about Marty, sure, but not so concerned as to hallucinate him.
But then Jake is next to him, vibrating with the energy of the night, the release of all those built-up nerves.
Sam crushes him into a hug and congratulates him, makes him eat a slider, feels himself flush with pleasure when Jake doesn’t move away from him, loops his arm around Sam’s back instead.
He must talk to fifteen of the parents like that, unbothered by the image they present, the fact that those people will assume they met Jake’s partner—
—which, Sam realizes with a huge grin, is what they will have done, so. No harm there at all.
They go back to Sam’s place that night without having to talk about it, and Jake gives Sam such a profound and thorough thank-you that Sam sees stars, nearly blacks out.
He falls asleep with Jake curled against him, Pastrami snoring happily at the foot of the bed, and thinks that maybe somehow he’s done it, and found everything he wanted.