Maisy
The stench from the kitchen was so strong it gave her a headache, two days in and Maisy was already debating on kicking Rhys out.
She typed on her cell phone and sent a message to Rhys
"How much vanilla did you put in the cake?"
"A little more than the recipe asked."
"It's a lot."
Sighing as she headed to the source of the overwhelming scent of vanilla choking her sense of smell, heading to the stairs to go down into the kitchen.
"It's not like there's such thing as too much vanilla... It is a vanilla sponge cake." he texted her back.
She walked into the room to see the table covered in flour and sugar, the stove boiling over with the strawberry preserves, and Rhys pouring straight vanilla extract onto the baked cake she had set aside to teach him to decorate with.
Rhys winced, for a sponge cake, he wasn't sure how any baker stood with soaking the cake to make it spongey. It smelled like pure alcohol, not that he would omplain about a rum cake right now...
Rhys looked up at Maisy, seeing her look around the room in horror, then at his hand as he finished the bottle of vanilla. Maisy stormed over to the stove yanking the pot she had off of it, and gesturing to it, he peered into the pot she held, the strawberries scalded to the bottom, almos burnt.
He frowned, he'd genuinely thought if he'd left it itd be fine. Maisy grabbed her pencil and paper from her apron, writing furiously onto it.
"You didnt think to stir it?" She wrote.
"No. You never asked."
She slammed the table, turns out, based on what Spencer told me earlier, its how the deaf community got people's attention, but Maisy probably did it out of frustration of how poorly he was doing. She wrote down again, her cheeks flaming in frustration at working with this pain in her ass.
"What's this?" he read aloud, "You told me you wanted to do a sponge cake. Sponges soak up liquids..." He wrote back to her.
"It was already a sponge, because of its texture!" She wrote, underlining texture three times, as she threw her hands up, grabbed the ruined cake, tossed it into the half-filled garbage bin, and walked into the freezer, standing on her tiptoes to reach something.
Rhys followed her, seeing her struggle to reach a cake, as he shook his head, she was an annoying one at that. There was a reason he stuck to cooking, and not baking, it was too reliant on creativity, too much room for error. Not to mention that they spent a couple of weeks since their pact getting each part of the baking right. But this woman was sent from Baking Hell... She was stubborn, huffing in annoyance was her favorite pastime when he made everything precise wanting to do this as right as possible, as well as signing what he now learned meant "idiot" in sign language, thanks to Diana. When Rhys tapped Maisy's shoulder motioning her to scoot over as he got the round sheets of cake she wanted, handing them to her as she cocked her head to the side, and shook her head, grabbing them and flicking the lights, motioning to him to follow him.
He followed her, and she got a tub of icing and the caramel peanut nougat filling that she had made earlier, and wrote on a notepad, handing him a spatula.
"Show me how to assemble and dirty ice this." she wrote.
Rhys snorted, shaking his head as he did the easier task of assembling the first layer of cake from centering where the outer part was and putting the filling in the middle, careful not to get it on his skin, he had his epi in his backpack, but it was in the car. Based on her short legs, Rhys wasn't sure she'd make it in time before he died of anaphylactic shock on the flour-covered floor.
To his relief, he got all the filling and scooped out the icing turning the cake on its table, zoning out as he usually did, it was easy to get this part, letting him get lost in making everything even. Even Maisy was impressed by how smooth his dirty icing was, if he weren't such an ass, and drove her insane with the mess he made every time he practiced he could've had a job here.
She nodded in approval, giving him a thumbs-up as he shrugged, that impressed grin on her face fading before he washed his hands of the flour, and turned. She gave him a vulgar gesture behind his back, and took the iced cake to the freezer, taking out the one she had iced in case he didn't get the baking part down as he had tried to for a week. He'd learned piping last week with cupcakes, and had steady hands, it was almost as impressive as his icing skills, but she wouldn't tell him, out of fear his already giant head wouldn't fit through the door.
Rhys finished cleaning the table they worked on with a rag and checked his watch, an hour left, as Maisy brought out another cake, already iced and ready for decoration. He couldn't believe that he was headed to Los Angeles on what he had promised Joe that night, the deal he had made, in place of a gift for an old man. But there was something in the way Maisy looked at him, that pleading in her eyes, or the way she had stopped breathing waiting for an answer that told him a lot was riding on doing this with her, no matter how much of a little monster she was in the kitchen, her domain.
Flying was the least of his worries if they were to rely on his baking skills...
Maisy watched as Rhys echoed her movements precisely, and the cake he had decorated turned out pretty good, for him being a newbie.
"I'll put this in the back of the case in place of the first one, maybe even slice it before having someone be subjected to your... Sponge cake." She wrote with a tiny smile.
Rhys rolled his eyes and debated on how much icing he could put on her own mini cake before she threw him out. He had genuinely thought that was why they called it that, grabbing the container for the red icing he used, to be used some other time.
Maisy's watch buzzed, as she checked her messages "I'm out front!" Jamie texted.
"Holy hell, do we even have any flour left?" Jamie signed, taking in the kitchen, as Rhys started sweeping, and Maisy sliced the cake she just had him decorate.
"Your hair!" Maisy replied, taking in her friend's multicolored pastel curls.
"I did it last night!" She smiled brightly, taking out a breakfast sandwich for the three of them, she felt it was her responsibility to feed them both with all the training they did, getting ready for tomorrow when they flew out to L.A.
"Grayson said shooting starts at twelve, so that gives you both some time to sleep off that jet lag." She signed, writing it down for Rhys afterward.
"I already set you up with a hotel for the first three months, they didn't let me pay in advance for the next nine... Sorry." She said.
Rhys wrote that he knew that he had enough saved to cover a hotel room for them both for a couple of months, it was just once every month, and every round they made it to the season finale so, it wasn't too bad.
"I can pay you back once we get to Seattle." Maisy signed as Jamie wrote it down for Rhys.
"So, I'm guessing baking sucked?" Jamie wrote down to Rhys, as he smiled at Jamie knowing it wasn't going to end well. Her friend he liked, how she put up with Maisy for so long he had no clue.
Jamie sighed, and signed to Maisy, "God, he has a cute smile." She told her friend with a wistful grin.
Maisy rolled her eyes, shaking her head at her friend, sure Rhys was handsome, but underneath that, he was cocky, and a perfectionist, snarky and moody... but, he did show that he cared enough to help her out. That ought to count for something.
Rhys hit the table they were eating on, smiling as he got the girls attention, pushing the notepad he worked next to them.
"So whats the game plan, because I can't bake for.. " Rhys drew a picture of poop, complete with little drawn flies.
Jamie laughed, while Maisy rolled her eyes for the eighth time that day, "I will bake, you can decorate, let me handle the fondant sculpting" she wrote.
Rhys remembered the first time he had tried, failing spectacularly as his stick figure human folded, his head too big for his body.
"Deal." He wrote. Rhys looked at his phone, a call from Diana came through, he still had to pack.
"I gotta go. I'll meet you here tomorrow?" He texted her, putting up his apron at thehook where the others were.
"Sure." she texted him. "See you tomorrow." With a wave as he left the bakery.
"How was it?" Jamie signed with a grin, throwing a wrapper away into the bin next to her.
"Horrible. And better at the same time? No fires I guess." She told her friend.
As they shut off the machines, and shut down the bakery, Spencer and Dani were supposed to work in the afternoon, giving Jamie and Maisy the day off to help her pack and buy some luggage.
"Well... She told her friend, admiring Rhys' cake. "He can decorate almost as good as Carolina, so there's hope." She admitted, putting it into the cake display, while her friend held the door, waiting for her to walk through.