The Cupcake Conundrum, page 6
part #2 of Williamsville Inn Series
“That makes sense, I guess. You want me to pick you up when you’re done?”
“No. I have to hang out for the second one later today, anyway. It’s not too far from here. It’s right on the bus line, and the bus runs pretty frequently.”
“Are you sure? I could run you back there, then,” Adrian offered tentatively. “I’m just helping Seth unpack today. Or I could at least pick you up after the second interview.”
“It’s fine. I’ve got this.” Jay didn’t sound hostile, but his tone was firm.
“Okay.” Adrian knew not to push anymore. “Good luck!”
Jay nodded once, opened the door, then got out of the truck.
Adrian stared after him a moment, feeling a little deflated. He hadn’t expected effusive praise but a thank you would have been nice.
Not that he deserved it.
When Adrian returned to the loft, Seth was in the kitchen, wearing pajamas and staring at the coffee maker as if he could will it to brew faster with his mind alone.
“Where’ve you been?” Seth asked, lifting his head to squint at Adrian. His hair was sticking up in at least eighteen directions, and he sounded a little groggy. Considering the fact that he’d flown in from Barcelona two days ago, Adrian wasn’t surprised. Yesterday had been a very long, tiring day, even more so for someone dealing with jet lag.
“Dropping Jay off at his interview.” Adrian slipped the spare key Seth had loaned him yesterday into his jean’s pocket.
“Oh.” Seth looked surprised, and Adrian hardly blamed him. The tension between them had been palpable. “Want some coffee?”
“I’ve already had one cup, but I wouldn’t turn down another.”
Once Seth poured the coffee, Adrian carried the mug over to the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room. The sun was beginning to come up, and the view of the pink-and-orange-washed Philly skyline was amazing. Adrian snapped a few pictures to show Molly and Josh. Which reminded him, he should find a few souvenirs to bring home to them.
“Morning.”
Adrian turned to see Erik walk into the kitchen, his red hair darkened from water and his face clean-shaven. Seth sat on one of the stools at the island, and Erik went over to stand between Seth’s thighs. Seth reached out and grabbed his hips, pulling him in closer. “You sure you can’t play hooky today?” he murmured.
“Unfortunately, no. I have another important meeting. I’m sorry. I wish I could stay home with you.”
Seth smiled. “It’s okay. You’re going to come home to me tonight. And every night after that when I’m not jetting off somewhere.”
“I like that thought.” Erik leaned in and kissed Seth lightly.
“I like that thought too.”
God, Adrian could hear the love for each other in their voices. Damn. He was jealous of his brother. Really fucking jealous.
“I made you coffee.” Seth pressed a travel mug into Erik’s hand with a smile.
“Is it a mocha?”
Seth chuckled. “Maybe. You’ll have to find out when you get to work.”
“I’m not allowed to drink it until then?”
“Nope.”
“You and your rules.” Erik’s voice was amused. He dipped his head and kissed Seth again. “Guess I better get going, then.”
“Guess so.” Seth gently pushed him back, then slipped off the stool. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
There was more murmured conversation between them near the door that Adrian only half-listened to. He heard one part clearly though. “I am crazy in love with you, you know that, right?” Seth said with a little sigh.
“You’re not the only one. At all. I love you like crazy too. See you later.”
Adrian heard the sound of a kiss, then the door closing.
I could have had that, Adrian thought with a pang. It had certainly felt like the potential for it was there with Jay. They’d just meshed so flawlessly. There had never been a shortage of things to talk about. The chemistry had been scorching, and the intellectual connection just as intense. They’d just ... fit. As if they’d known each other for years. As if they’d been meant to be together.
But it was too late. Adrian couldn’t undo the damage he’d already caused. All he could do now was try to apologize and make Jay hate him a little less.
“Hey, you okay?” Seth said as he returned. “You have the saddest look on your face.”
“Not really.” Adrian stared down into his coffee, his eyes burning a little.
“I’m guessing this has something to do with Jay? You’ve both been acting weird as fuck since you saw each other. Come on, we’re alone now. You can spill.”
“Yeah.” Adrian sighed and walked over to the couch. “Come on. Sit down for a bit. This is going to take a while.”
Seth carried over his mug, then dropped into the chair across from Adrian. “So, what’d you do, sleep together at the expo or something?”
“We didn’t do a lot of sleeping,” Adrian muttered. “But, yes.”
“Oh.” Seth’s eyes got big. “I was sorta joking.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t.” Adrian let out an even bigger, heavier sigh. “I really fucked up.”
“How so?”
“Uhh, well, we had a hell of a weekend together, and then I ghosted him.”
Seth grimaced at him. “Well, that was shitty.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.” Adrian tilted his head back and stared at the exposed ductwork on the ceiling. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Does anyone mean to?”
He looked at his brother again. “I don’t know. You’re talking to someone who never dates.”
“So, you’re ... bad at it. You can get better.”
“Yeah, well, it’s too late now.”
“With Jay?”
Adrian sighed heavily. “Yeah, he’s pissed. And he has every right to be. I was such an asshole to him.”
“Given how angry Jay still is a year later, there’s a chance it might not be too late.”
“How do you figure?”
“If he’d stopped caring for you, he’d just ignore you or blow you off. The opposite of love isn’t hate, Adrian. It’s indifference.”
“So how do I fix things with Jay, then?”
“I think you should start by coming up with a way to apologize to him. Big time.”
The thought lingered as they finished their coffee, then tackled the huge stack of boxes in the den.
A big apology. Adrian mulled over the idea as he helped Seth unpack and settle his belongings around the loft.
How in the hell do I go about that?
“So why did you ghost Jay in the first place?” Seth asked over lunch. He’d taken Adrian out for what he’d deemed “The Best Philly Cheesesteaks on the planet”. After a few bites of the thinly sliced rib-eye beef, melted Provolone, and hoagie roll, Adrian was inclined to agree. “I’m trying to understand this.”
“Because I’m an idiot,” he said gloomily.
“Yeah, but we know that.”
Adrian kicked him under the small table. “You’re not helping, asshole.”
“Give me something to work with and I will.”
Adrian sighed as he set down his sandwich. “I got spooked, I guess.”
“Are you sure you just weren’t afraid of getting hurt again?”
“I know I am,” he admitted. “After the way stuff went down with Michelle, I was pretty gun-shy about relationships.”
“You guys are doing better now though, right?”
“We are.” The divorce had been rough. They’d tried their best to keep the fighting from spilling out in front of the kids, but he knew they hadn’t been able to hide it entirely. “We’re cordial now, at least,” he admitted. “We talk about the weather and the kids’ school stuff when we do drop-offs and all that. The kids come first for both of us.”
“Didn’t Michelle say she was seeing someone?”
“Yeah. She’s got a new boyfriend. He seems decent, and the kids get along with him fine.”
“Well, that’s encouraging.”
“I guess maybe I’m afraid shit will hit the fan if she finds out I’m dating men.”
Seth looked surprised. “She never seemed homophobic to me. I mean, I knew her for a lot of years, and she was always really nice to me, and she was friendly to any of the guys I was dating. I never got a whiff of disapproval.”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t think she’s homophobic, per se. Just ... not okay with her ex-husband being bi. She wasn’t really okay with her husband being bi either, but that’s a whole separate issue.”
Seth winced. “Yeah, okay, I can see that. I mean, I don’t understand it, but I know some people are like that.”
“I’m sure she’ll get over it eventually but ...” He sighed.
“But maybe that was another reason you gave up on the idea of something with Jay?”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Adrian contemplated the idea. “I hadn’t really considered that, but you have a good point. The divorce wasn’t even final when I met Jay, so maybe that was somewhere in the back of my head. Wondering if it would impact the custody agreement. Not that it should but ...”
“So maybe you were just kinda rushing things with Jay then,” Seth offered.
“Probably. I just ...” Adrian had to swallow past the lump in his throat. “I really liked him. When we were together, it seemed like such a stupid idea to miss out on something great just because of the way we’d met and the distance but ...”
“But maybe your timing was just really off,” Seth offered.
“No doubt. But that still doesn’t give me a clue how to fix it,” Adrian said. “Other than a big apology.”
“At the very least, he deserves that,” Seth said. “I mean, I love you, Adrian, and you’re my brother, but I’m not going to pull any punches. You were a dick to him, and I’m not going to cut you slack on that.”
“No, I get that. He’s your friend. And friend or not, I don’t deserve you to go easy on me, anyway. I fucked up. I’ll own that.”
“So at the bare minimum, tell him how sorry you are. Explain why you fucked up. You can’t go anywhere with it until you get that out of the way, at least.”
“You’re right, you’re right.”
“I’m always right.” Seth shot him a smug smile. “Now, finish your lunch. Your fries are getting cold, and that is way too good a sandwich to let go to waste.”
“Yeah, okay.” Adrian grabbed a fry. They weren’t cold yet, thankfully.
“Besides, you’ll need your strength. We still have a shitload more boxes to go through.”
Adrian groaned and threw the fry at his brother. “You need to own less crap, dude.”
They chatted about less weighty subjects as they finished lunch, but on the walk back to Seth and Erik’s place, they fell silent. Seth seemed content just to enjoy the sights, and Adrian was lost in thought.
Seth had given him a lot to think about. For all the shit he’d given Seth over the years about being immature and never really growing up, in this regard, he had Adrian beat. He was clearly doing a hell of a lot better job with relationships than Adrian was. His brother had a fiancé who adored him, and all Adrian had was a failed marriage and a guy he’d had a fling with who was so pissed he’d hardly look at him. Adrian had no room to talk at all.
Jay seemed far less tense when he returned from the interviews, windblown and smiling.
“Dude, how’d it go?” Seth clapped him on the arm as soon as he’d opened the door to let him in.
“I’m afraid to get my hopes up, but I feel like it went pretty well at both places,” Jay said as he shrugged off his leather jacket. Adrian tried not to stare. Jay’s thick black hair had flopped over his forehead, and Adrian quelled the urge to smooth it back. Jay’s gaze flicked over to him as if he’d heard Adrian’s thoughts. “How’d you guys do?”
“Pretty well.” Seth gestured around. “There’s art in all sorts of places now, and most of my clothes are hung up. Adrian’s been dealing with the kitchen stuff. Of course, Erik might not be crazy about where some of it ended up, but we can move it around if he doesn’t like it. At least, it’s out of the boxes.”
Even Adrian had to admit that Seth’s rug from Marrakesh and his art from well, everywhere, had made a big improvement in the place. Adrian had done little more in the kitchen than hand wash and dry Seth’s handmade pottery bowls and blown glass tumblers and set them all out on the open shelves that lined the kitchen walls, but even that small addition had added some color and life to the stark space.
“This does look nice,” Jay said as he walked around the living room, checking out Seth’s belongings. “Seriously. This is a great place, and your stuff looks amazing in it.”
Seth beamed at him. “It feels weird having my first really grown-up home.”
Adrian snorted. “You’re thirty-four years old. Isn’t it about time?”
“Is it weird being at a different stage of life than your boyfriend? Sorry, fiancé,” Jay asked.
Seth shrugged as they all congregated in the kitchen around the large island.
“Sometimes. Meeting his daughter Joanna was weird as hell the first time. But she’s pretty cool and more than a decade younger than me, so it’s not so bad.” He nudged Jay with his elbow. “So, tell us about the interviews. You said they went well, but we want details.”
“I definitely liked the first place better than the second,” Jay said. “The executive chef seemed really cool and totally unphased when I told him about what happened at The Kensington.”
“What did happen?” Adrian blurted out. He’d been dying to know, and he could have googled it, but it felt like an invasion of Jay’s privacy even if it was public knowledge. Jay’s gaze flicked up to meet his. “I mean, if you don’t mind sharing,” Adrian amended.
“No, it’s fine. I might need a beer for this, though.”
“Beer coming up.” Seth walked over to the refrigerator. “You want one, Adrian?”
“Why not? We’ve been working all day.”
“That’s the spirit.”
When they were all seated in the living room, Jay took a long drink from his bottle and looked at Adrian. “So, part of my duties as head pastry chef at the hotel was to manage the ordering and inventory for the desserts. It all ultimately went through the executive chef because he had to sign off on everything that came through the kitchen, but we worked together well. I didn’t notice a problem at first. Or, at least, I didn’t blame him for the problem. I did notice there were little discrepancies on orders. Different products than what I’d ordered. Different quantities. I made some comment to him about it, and he assured me it was an issue with the supplier. But then I started noticing the products were inferior. I wasn’t getting the results I was used to, that sort of thing, and I had some real concerns.”
Adrian frowned. Of course, Jay would be concerned. As a baker, if you couldn’t count on getting consistent results, that was stressful and bad for business.
“So, I brought it to his attention. He blew me off again, said he’d have a talk with the supplier, but it nagged at me. Something didn’t feel right. One day, I noticed he’d left some of the order sheets on his desk. I snuck a peek and noticed some inconsistencies between what I’d told him to order and what he’d actually ordered. To make a very long, sordid story short, I found out he was up to some really shady business to line his pocket. Basically, he was skimming from the hotel. I gathered as much evidence as I could and took it to the general manager of the hotel. She believed me, and she was great about it. She fired him, and I thought it was going to be fine, but the new executive chef said he wanted to start with a fresh slate, and I got let go. I got a decent severance but looking for new positions has been a nightmare.”
“Because the assumption is that you were let go because of what happened,” Adrian said.
“Yes.” Jay dragged a hand through his hair. “My name is tied to it now, so even when I explain the situation, they don’t want someone tainted by it. It’s a nightmare.”
“That’s terrible. Especially after you did the right thing by turning the executive chef in. I’m so sorry.” Adrian laid a hand on Jay’s shoulder. He flinched in surprise, and Adrian pulled his hand away. “Sorry,” he muttered again but this time for a very different reason.
“Which is why I’m in Philly looking for jobs,” Jay said. He took a long pull from his drink. “I’m ready to get the hell out of New York if it means I can start fresh.”
“Well, you have three different places you have interviews at,” Seth said cheerfully. “We’ll find you something.”
“I hope so. I don’t know what I’ll do, otherwise.” Jay’s mouth turned down at the corners. It broke Adrian’s heart to see him looking so gloomy and despondent. In the, admittedly short time Adrian had known him, he’d been such an upbeat, positive guy. But a situation like that could bring anyone down.
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” Adrian said.
“It’s fine.” Jay sighed. “Either something will work out here or I’ll keep looking. I’ll move to Seattle or L.A. or something, if I need to.”
“Okay.” Seth stood. “That’s enough moping. There are still boxes to unpack.”
“Forced manual labor. You really know how to cheer a guy up,” Adrian said as he stood. He heard a small snort that he assumed came from his brother, but when he glanced over, he caught a glimpse of a small smile on Jay’s face, and that made him feel good. It was another tiny crack in Jay’s armor. He smiled to himself as he walked toward the open box on the floor that he’d been dealing with earlier. All Adrian had to do was keep slowly working his way back into Jay’s good graces. If he softened Jay up a little, it would hopefully give him an opportunity for them to sit down and have a good conversation.
An opening was all he needed.
Seth appeared a moment later with several boxes. He set them down with a groan. “Hey, why don’t you help Adrian take care of this stuff, Jay? It’s all for the dining room. You can unpack it and set it all out on the table.”
