And Everything Nice

And Everything Nice (2016) Ada Maria Soto

The only way Angelo knows to tell a guy he’s interested is through food. Specifically, baked goods.

He held out the plate. He’d gone for his chocolate-chip cookies, always a good icebreaker. They weren’t too large, making them harder to justify refusing. He used the vanilla paste instead of extract for a richer flavor, refrigerated the dough for twenty-four hours to allow the flavors to meld, giving it undertones of caramel, dark-chocolate chips to balance the sweet, and baked them just before leaving for work so the chocolate was still semimelted.

Unfortunately, the new guy–Simon–turns down every single baked good Angelo brings in.

Over two months Simon had turned down chocolate-chip cookies, red velvet cupcakes, and warm scones of both sweet and savory varieties. He’d also responded to all of Angelo’s requests for early draft documentation, paid attention to him in meetings, complimented his Welcome to Night Vale T-shirts, and joined in conversations about gaming.

So much baking!

SO much adorableness!

And So! Much! Geekyness!

“We used this at my last job.” Simon gestured to the training binders on the table. Angelo looked at the binder for some new business tool. He had no idea what it was for. He just knew he had training with a date, time, and location listed in his calendar. The cover of the binder had a stock photo of smiling people in business clothes and gave him no hints. “Is it any good?” “It’s Microsoft Access with a trademarked skin and any useful feature stripped out. Cost the company a bundle, and no one ever used it.”

This is utterly adorable and there is no boinking and I loved it.

Publisher: Ada Maria Soto
Rating: 8/10

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