Page 13 of My Irresistible Enemy

I tried to pay attention as the other contestants spoke, but dammit, it was hard with Nolan sitting right next to me. It didn’t matter how much my brain knew he was a bigoted asshole. All my body knew was that he was tall and lean and smelled incredibly good—green and fresh, like one of those fancy cocktails with a bunch of herbs in it.

I shifted uncomfortably, willing my dick to calm down. I didnotget hard for homophobes—a guy had to have some standards.

By the time the introductions worked their way down to me, I was practically vibrating from my desire to get up and do something. And fine, maybe just from desire, plain and simple. My brain was buzzing, and I struggled to pull it into focus as everyone turned to look at me.

“Uh, hey.” I grinned—my brightest, sauciest one, the one I was pretty sure had landed me a spot on the show in the first place. I waved, then grinned again like I was embarrassed by my own enthusiasm.

“I’m Aiden Hastings. I’m twenty-one years old, and I’m from LA, and I’m an actor.” I paused for half a second, biting my lip. “Well, I’m trying to be an actor, but I guess, mostly, I’m a barista. But I loveA Piece of Cake. I feel like I’ve been watching this show my whole life, and I just can’t believe I’m finally here. I can’t wait to meet everyone and to get baking.”

Just a cute little gay who was excited to be here but a teensy bit overwhelmed. Snarky but loveable, even if it turned out I was disastrous in the kitchen. Which, to be clear, I definitely would be. But I was counting on my other charms to keep me around.

In all honesty, until a month ago, I’d never seen an episode of the show. But in the weeks before I’d left LA, I’d mainlined every single one of them, to the point where it really did feel like I’d been watching the show forever.

And while the show might be a competition in theory, winning the viewers’ hearts was what really mattered. If I could get enough votes from viewers to stay out of the bottom three each week, I’d be sent on to the next episode, regardless of how competent I was.

The judges might critique the bakers’ techniques and results, but it was clear that what kept viewers tuning in—and voting—were the contestants with the most watchable personalities. And after last year’s controversy, I thought I had a good chance of making it at least halfway. After all, why cast your first openly gay contestant only to send him home in week two?

As long as Nolan kept his mouth shut, I should be fine.

When Vivian turned to him, I made myself smile again. Just a cute little gay who thought his chair-neighbor was attractive and definitely wasn’t worried about what he could reveal about me.

“And Nolan, how about you?” Vivian said.

Nolan smiled, but there was something off about it. It looked too tense, and he was holding himself very still.

“Hey, everyone. I’m Nolan McAllister. I’m twenty-eight, I live in Washington, DC, and I’m a restaurant manager.”

That was it. No added details, no spin, no jokes. It was the shortest introduction anyone had given, and paired with his dark black slacks and crisp white button-down, he gave the impression that he was filming an episode ofA Piece of Corporate Accounting.

Vivian stared, like she expected him to say more, but Nolan just looked back at her, that tense smile of his going uncertain at the corners. Finally, she nodded.

“Well, alright then. Let’s get started.”

The crew herded the lot of us out of the tent and through the Wisteria Inn’s grounds to the street in front. They really couldn’t have picked a quainter place to film this season. The building was like something out of a fairytale, all gingerbread shingles and lacey woodwork on its wrap-around porch. Flowers I didn’t have names for grew in a riot, spilling over the white picket fence and attracting a crowd of butterflies and bumblebees.

They filmed the group of us walking back through the grounds and into the tent three times before they were satisfied. Finally, we were allowed to take our places at the workstations that had been assigned to us. Nolan’s, I couldn’t help noticing, was right behind mine.

Then we had to wait while the camera people got into position to film Vivian and Tanner as they explained the first week’s challenge to the viewers—a batch of cookies that was supposed to tell a story about our childhood or home. Not very challenging if you actually knew what you were doing, but I guess it was supposed to be a good introduction to who we were as contestants.

Since the only cookies I associated with my childhood were store-bought ones from the day-old section of the supermarket, ones that tasted like chemicals and made your tongue hurt if you ate too many, I’d just looked up a recipe for chocolate chip cookies online and decided to go with that. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be too hard to get right.

The trouble, of course, was that I’d never actually made them before. That, and I’d never been good with numbers in general. They had a weird habit of swimming around on the page and falling out of my head the second I looked away from the paper.

But I could do this. Somehow. I could.

The recipe told me to start by creaming butter and sugar together. I frowned. I’d never heardcreamused as a verb before, except in one very specific context that I highly doubted was the one the recipe-writer had in mind. Maybe I was supposed to add cream to them?

I scanned the counter of my workstation. We’d had to submit our recipes ahead of time so production assistants could prepare our ingredients, and I didn’t see anything that looked like cream. There went hypothesis number one.

I sighed. I’d just have to mix the butter and sugar together and see how that went. Three-quarters of a cup of granulated sugar to start with. I grabbed a measuring cup and poured one, two, three quarter-cups into the bowl and then—fuck. That was a half-cup measure, not a quarter.

With a muted screech, I scooped out two handfuls of white sugar from the bowl, only to realize I’d already closed the lid on the sugar canister. Double fuck. I dumped the sugar into my workstation’s sink, then looked up to find a camera trained on me. The camera guy was cute, too. Blond hair and brown eyes, a little taller than I was.

“Clearly off to a great start,” I said with a sheepish grin. I might be melting down internally, but I had to keep it cute for TV.

I turned back to my recipe as the camera guy drifted towards Nolan’s workstation. I wasn’t really trying to listen, but I couldn’t help overhearing when Nolan said in surprise, “Em? What are you doing here!”

“Freelance work,” the camera guy replied. “I didn’t have too many clients lined up this spring, and it’s not that hard to work a video camera. Figured I’d pick up a little extra money.”

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