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He hummed. “Yes, of course. Come over and we can talk this through face to face.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in an hour,” I said, hanging up.
I finished all of my errands as fast as I could and then headed straight to Alex’s place. When I arrived, something seemed amiss.
“Why is there a laptop and a camera in the kitchen?” I asked as soon as I was inside.
“I used to do these cooking streams a lot back in the day,” he explained. “I was going to try and revive that tradition today. Try to do everything one-handed. But with you here now you can save me the trouble.”
“I’m not a good cook,” I threatened.
“Even better. This will be awesome,” he smiled his disarming grin and all the resistance in me melted away.
“This was not a good surprise,” I mumbled, forcing my face into neutrality as I made my way to help him set up the kitchen.
Alex had chosen a relatively simple recipe—spaghetti carbonara—but I was still nervous because I just knew I would mess it up.
When we went live from the kitchen instead of Alex’s streaming setup, the viewers weren’t expecting it. I was acutely aware that Alex had done this multiple times before. He immediately started reading through the ingredients for the viewers to be able to cook along with us. I almost felt like I was on an amateur cooking show.
Much like with the hand and brain NLA game, Alex was the brain and I was the hands in the kitchen. He still couldn’t do much because his hand was in a wrist brace, but it was apparent he knew a lot about cooking. The chat started mocking pretty quickly, all the “women belong in the kitchen” comments got old in the first five minutes.
Everything was going smoothly until it was time to add the eggs to the pasta. Which was one of the first steps, mind you.
“Okay, Ems, just crack the eggs into the bowl and whisk them together,” Alex instructed and handed me the whisk.
But as I cracked the last egg, the shell broke into the bowl. I tried to fish the small bits of eggshell out, but ended up somehow spilling the mixture onto the counter. The chat erupted; the messages were scrolling so fast I couldn’t read them.
Next to me, Alex couldn't help but chuckle. “Looks like we have a bit of a situation here,” he said, still smiling. “Let me help clean that up.”
As he reached over to take a towel off the counter, I backtracked and slammed into his body and accidentally knocked over a bag of flour off the counter. It landed on the floor with a thud and sent a cloud of flour into the air. Alex stepped back, covered in the flour, and I couldn't hold back my laughter.
“Fucking hell. You certainly don't belong in the kitchen, babe,” he said with a grin, as he reached out to wipe the flour off my cheek. His hand froze in mid air, when he realized what he had said.
I felt my face heat up and the chat went wild with messages again that I could see scrolling on the laptop screen out of the corner of my eye. We both stood there, embarrassed and covered in flour, not knowing what to say.
My eyes flicked to his slightly parted lips involuntarily and fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuuuuuck. I wanted to feel them pressed into my own so bad at that moment.
“I—I didn't mean—” Alex stammered and pulled back his hand, taking a step back. He then took off his glasses and started cleaning them using the end of his shirt. My eyes couldn’t help but trail the small strip of skin that showed.
“It's okay,” I said quickly, my heart pounding in my ears and turned back to the stove. “Let's just finish this, okay?”
Alex walked over to the laptop and minimized the chat so we wouldn’t be able to read it. I didn’t want to see what was being said either.
The rest of the cooking stream was somewhat salvaged because we were able to make a presentable pasta dish. As we sat down to eat, the awkwardness lingered. We ate the pasta and talked about the pro-circuit for NLA starting up again the following month. Alex was egging on the chat to try and guess who his replacement would be. We completely ignored the situation from earlier as if it hadn’t happened at all, and that was more than fine by me.
After the stream, Alex still didn’t address it and instead asked to take a look at the contract Team Solid had sent me. He got quiet and even after finishing his read-through, he was silent for a moment.
“And why don’t you want to take it?” he asked.
“I don’t think streaming is for me. It would be so different. It would just be me,” I said. “I don’t think I’m funny or entertaining on my own.”
“Do you think I am any of those things on my own?” He lifted an eyebrow. His glasses slipped down from the movement so he had to push them back up his nose.
I chose my words carefully. “You have your moments, but you are the best Carry in the world, they would watch you do anything. I’m a nobody.”
“I say you should do it. Try it out. You said it yourself that your warehouse job was killing you. Give this a try. It is bound to be better for you.” He seemed to almost plead with me. “Have a meeting with Lauren and talk this through with her. She is themastermind behind the success of Team Solid and says it like she sees it. If she offered you a contract, she has a plan for you.”
“That’s what scares me. What if she is overestimating what I can do?”
