by Beth Bolden
Before Gabriel could ask Tony to explain what the fuck that even meant, he’d strolled off, whistling obnoxiously.
Like he’d just set up everything to his own fucking satisfaction.
Gabriel went storming back to his own truck, in a mood that was not only increasingly bleak, it was increasingly pissed off.
“You look like someone peed on your lawn,” Ren said, when he stomped up the stairs and into the truck.
“Worse than that,” Gabriel said, leaning against the bulkhead. “Sean’s gone and Tony’s decided that it’s okay for him to interfere.”
“Is that really a surprise?” Ren asked. “Tony lives to interfere. And it’s not like he hasn’t, already.” He gestured towards the sign hanging in the window, advertising their new special, the wrap that Gabriel and Sean had invented together. “The good news is that at least that particular interference was profitable.”
“He told me while I’m re-naming myself, maybe I should think about re-branding,” Gabriel said, hating how wretched he sounded. “What the fuck is wrong with what I’m doing now?”
“Maybe there’s nothing wrong with it,” Ren said, “and maybe everything is wrong with it.”
“What do you mean?” Gabriel asked suspiciously as he washed his hands. As much as he’d like to throw a fit, he couldn’t, because there was a shit ton of work to do. And more of it, now, because Sean had left, leaving Gabe’s truck as the only one who was selling the new special.
That also meant that Gabe was going to have to figure out the sourcing for the wraps and for the vegetables. He was already internally groaning thinking about it.
“I mean, you’ve been doing what Nonna did, and what Luca does, and what your parents do, forever,” Ren said. “That doesn’t mean that’s all you’re capable of.”
“You sound like an annoying combination of Tony and Sean,” Gabriel complained as he dried his hands.
“I probably do, because they’re probably right,” Ren said. “By the way, don’t worry about stocking up, because while you were over gnashing your teeth and re-breaking your heart over at Sean’s truck, he had his daily delivery re-routed over here.”
“Really?” Gabriel was pleasantly surprised.
“Just the stuff we needed for the new wrap,” Ren confirmed. “It needs prepping, which’ll be a problem and a half, but if we rush, we should be fine.”
“Alright,” Gabriel said, and couldn’t believe he’d been so upset when he marched in here, he hadn’t spotted the boxes of produce, much more plentiful than their normal delivery, sitting in the corner, ready to be prepped for the day’s meals. “I guess I’ll get started on this.”
“I’ve got the meatballs today,” Ren said, gesturing to where he was already mixing them up in the big bowl. “And I’ll start the red sauce in a minute.”
Normally, Gabe would’ve protested. He always made the sauce. That was what he did. Nonna had forced him to memorize it early on, because the recipe hadn’t ever been written down.
“Please,” Ren added when he glanced over and saw Gabriel’s confusion. “Do you really think I don’t know the recipe?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Gabriel answered honestly. “I’m a fucking mess right now.”
“You’re not a mess,” Ren said firmly. “But you are at a crossroads, and that means you’ve got to decide what you want to do next.”
Gabriel looked over at his cousin. His best friend, if he was being perfectly, totally honest with himself. The only person he trusted more than he trusted himself.
“I don’t think that’s right,” Gabriel said. “I think it means that we’ve got to decide what we want to do next.”
Ren’s face broke into a huge smile, totally authentic, no deliberate charm to be found. “Really?”
“Really,” Gabe said firmly. “I finished buying Luca out, so I own this now, and well, I kind of think we should own it.”
“I won’t argue with that,” Ren said.
And even though everything was falling apart, it also kind of felt like the beginning.
———
Sean had thought he’d feel a lot differently if he ever came back to Oregon. Especially if he ever swallowed all his misgivings and not only came back to Oregon, but went to the place that he and Milo had loved to visit together.
Cannon Beach was laid out like a particularly busy labyrinth, already buzzing with people clogging the streets even though it wasn’t even ten in the morning yet.
He could’ve flown in—Cannon Beach wasn’t a long drive from Portland, where the airport was. But he’d driven, because he thought he’d need the alone time to figure out how he was going to face this place.
He leaned against his car door and let his eyes drift across the busy streets. The cafes that he and Milo had shared so many meals in, the shops they’d browsed through, buying little trinkets and framed photos for the wall of the condo they’d shared in Portland.
He’d kept them all, but he couldn’t face displaying them, even two years after Milo had passed, so they were still sitting in boxes, stacked in the closet of the spare bedroom.
Someday, Sean had always promised himself, he’d unpack them and hang the pictures and set the driftwood and the blown glass pieces on his mantle and the coffee table.
Or maybe, he never would, not now. Not when he’d apparently moved on and hadn’t even realized it.
Guilt that Sean didn’t want to feel, guilt that he rejected, swamped him anyway.
It had been two days since he’d left Gabriel and Los Angeles, and he still wasn’t sure what the origin of the guilt was. Was it because Gabriel had told him he loved him and he hadn’t been able to say it back? Or was it because deep down, he’d felt a reciprocal feeling, and the very idea of moving on, of moving past Milo, was intolerable?
Must not have been too intolerable considering how tightly you were clinging to Gabe, his conscience supplied, even as he tried to silence it.
So he felt guilty about both, then. He regretted how much he’d hurt Gabriel. He regretted how easy it had been for him to fall into a new relationship with him.
How much he’d wanted it, even as he’d tried to claim otherwise.
Sean pushed away from the car. He’d come here, he might as well swallow down his pain and all this interminable guilt, and do what he’d come here to do.
Except, as he walked down the street towards the first set of shops and restaurants, a few blocks from the beach entrance, he still didn’t know what that was, exactly.
Was he asking whatever was left of Milo for forgiveness? Was he figuring out what he felt for Gabriel?
Maybe, Sean thought, staring in the window of the Celtic-themed store that Milo had adored, he should start by figuring out what he was even doing here.
“Sean!” Tara stuck her head out the open door. “I thought I saw it was you!”
He and Milo had spent so much time in this store, his husband deciding that despite all the clear indications otherwise, deep down he must be Irish, that they and the owner had become friends.
He hadn’t seen her since before Milo had died, the last time they’d come to the coast for a long weekend, staying in the family cabin that was usually available for them.
Sean wasn’t staying there this time; he wouldn’t be able to bear it. Milo’s mom, Lacy, was a wonderful lady, and he missed her, but he wasn’t sure he could face her. Surely she would be able to tell, just by looking at him, that he’d moved on, and he couldn’t do that to either of them.
Tara would have heard of Milo’s passing from Lacy, but he was still unprepared for her big, tight, undeniably fierce hug when he stepped into the shop.
“I heard about Milo, I am so sorry,” she said, her voice thick even though it had been four years.
But the thing was, standing in this place, letting his gaze drift over the CD display and the hand-knit Arran sweaters and the dusty fake Christmas tree, dotted with claddagh and dancer ornaments, he felt like it had been more like
four days, not four years.
“Yeah,” Sean said when she let go. Her eyes were a little watery, and he found his own matched.
He blinked hard and looked away. He’d underestimated how hard this was going to be. He’d underestimated how much he’d been needing to do it.
“What have you been doing?”
“I actually . . .” Sean cleared his throat. “I actually moved to California. To LA. I’m running my own food truck and well . . .” He didn’t want to say he was doing good, but it was on the tip of his tongue anyway.
“You’re doing good?” Tara went back to the unpacking she was doing, carefully unwrapping boxes of glass claddaghs, the light flashing as she set them in the window display. “I can tell you are. And I’m so glad. I was worried about you.”
“I’m . . .” Sean hesitated again. Should he apologize? Obviously she’d known why he hadn’t been back. “I’m really good, actually. Moving helped.”
“And a food truck!” Tara exclaimed. “That’s so cool! What are you selling?”
“I’ve got a bunch of different kinds of wraps,” Sean said. “You know how I used to sell them at the cafe I worked at?”
“Yeah, in Portland,” Tara said. “I’m so glad you did that, because I know how much you loved it.”
“I did. I do,” Sean said.
“That’s so great,” she said enthusiastically. “I’m so proud of you.” She reached over and gave him another quick hug. “And you’re back! Just for the weekend?”
He’d reserved the hotel for the week. He didn’t have to be back in LA until next Sunday, but he hadn’t been sure if he’d want to spend a whole seven days here, without Milo.
Even if he needed it, he wasn’t sure he wanted all that time off.
“For a couple of days, at least,” Sean said.
“Then you’ll have to stop by,” Tara said confidently. She glanced down at his hand. “I see you aren’t wearing your claddagh ring anymore. In the market for something new?”
Milo had bought him a sterling silver one, way back when, when they were still dating, and he’d stopped wearing it after his death. Even the thought of turning it around, proclaiming himself to be single again, had hurt too much.
He would be alright with buying another one—maybe even buying one for Gabriel, if he could get up the gumption—but then he’d have to decide if he was single or if his heart was taken.
And even if he did figure out how to make that difficult decision, he’d have to make sure it didn’t feel too much like something he and Milo had shared.
“I’ll think about it,” Sean promised. “I wouldn’t buy one anywhere else, that’s for sure.”
Tara grinned. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“It was so good to see you again,” Sean said, and discovered that he meant it. “Business seems to be great still.”
“Can’t ever complain about the tourists,” Tara said, voice dropping as a pair wandered into the shop. “Bless them, really.”
“That’s the right attitude,” Sean said with a chuckle under his breath. “I’ll stop by again, alright?”
“You’d better!” Tara called out as he exited the shop.
After leaving Tara’s, he walked down the main street towards the beach. This wasn’t where he’d scattered Milo’s ashes, along with his family—that was further up, out of town, along one of the impossibly tall cliffs overlooking the ocean—but he could still feel the warmth that was Milo touch his heart as he looked out over the crashing waves.
Maybe he didn’t know why he’d come, or what he was looking for. Or even why he felt that inexorable pull of guilt, but he felt like he’d made the right choice.
Even though he wasn’t sure right now, by the time he returned to LA and to Gabriel, he’d know the right thing to say.
———
“You said you wanted to spend your week off drunk and bored, but even then I thought you were kidding,” Ren said as he slid onto the barstool next to Gabriel’s.
He held up a hand for Shaw, who poured him a manhattan and set it in front of him.
Ren picked up the glass, taking a long sip.
Gabriel had already known that coming to the Funky Cup was not really hiding per se. There were too many people they knew that came here. Too many friends who would gladly tell on him if Ren asked them. And that wasn’t even taking into account the fact that they counted the owner and the bartender in that particular category.
“I didn’t want to spend the night at home.” Alone, Gabriel added as an afterthought. Ren had been out, Gabriel had assumed with a hookup, but it must not have worked out because here his cousin was, ready to bust his ass again.
He’d been bored and lonely and tired of scrolling through Netflix, looking for something to watch. So he’d come out here, not because he’d expected to see Sean, but he’d at least expected to see one of the guys. But it seemed they were all packed up and at the festival downtown.
Gabriel sighed into his manhattan. “If you tell me I’m pathetic, we’re not ever talking again.”
“Now, that might be tough,” Ren said with a glimmer of a smile. “Because,” he added, pulling a small notebook out of the pocket of his jeans, “we’ve got a new menu to plan.”
“Ugh, now?” Gabriel still felt a momentary panic slice through him whenever he thought about departing from the well-worn but beloved recipes that Nonna had passed down.
“We only had the special on the menu for a few days,” Ren said. “But the only thing that beat it in sales was the meatball sandwich. And it gave our specialty a real run for its money.”
“Really?” Gabriel knew they’d sold a lot of the Thai wraps, but it had never occurred to him that they’d sold that many.
“Of course, it might be because Sean wasn’t around to cut our sales in half, but . . .” Ren glanced over at Gabriel, like he was afraid even saying the guy’s name would unhinge him even more, “but he was only closed for two days this week. I don’t think that affected things that strongly.”
“Oh, good,” Gabriel muttered into his drink.
“The point is that people wanted to buy other things from us. They’re willing to be flexible. So that just leaves us one question.”
“What’s that?” Gabriel wished that as much as he’d wanted company, Ren had left him alone. He didn’t want to revisit why everything he was doing needed to be changed. It was bad enough that Sean wasn’t sure he loved him after all. He was losing his security blanket, too, and it hurt more than he’d expected that it would.
“How do you want to be flexible? What do you want to keep? What do you want to add?” Ren grabbed a spare pen that was sitting on the bar top and opened his notebook. It was, surprisingly, not empty, but already scribbled with ideas.
“I want to keep something from Nonna,” Gabriel said firmly, realizing just how much he meant it. “I don’t know what that is, but something.”
“You altered the meatballs and added them to the Thai wrap,” Ren said thoughtfully.
“You want to keep the meatball recipe?”
“I also think we should keep the meatball sandwich,” Ren said. “It’s a bestseller. I like the idea of innovating, but I don’t think we should throw everything out.”
“I . . .” Gabriel thought for a second, and realized he’d been about to say that he loved that idea. They could do a thousand things with meatballs. Hadn’t he always bragged that Nonna’s meatballs were the best, and also the most flexible thing she’d ever made?
Why couldn’t they take that idea and run with it?
“You love it, I know,” Ren said, his smile suddenly growing brighter. “I’m a genius.”
“Modest, too,” Gabriel teased, elbowing him in the side.
“Hey, I call it like I see it,” Ren said, flipping a page and making a notation on the top which read, Menu.
He watched as Ren wrote down meatball sandwich as the first item, and then the Thai wrap underneath it.
“I’m not sure Tony�
��s going to let us keep that on the menu permanently,” Gabriel said. “And what about Sean? We did that together. We can’t claim it for us, permanently.”
“No reason why you can’t convince Tony,” Ren argued. “You know how convincible he can be.”
Ren was not wrong. Gabriel nodded.
“And,” Ren added, “I think when Sean comes back, he’s either going to want to give you anything you ask for, or he’s going to feel so fucking guilty, he’ll give it up without a fight.”
“I don’t want him to give it up without a fight,” Gabriel argued. “I want . . . well, you know what I want. I want us to share it.”
The sympathetic look on Ren’s face hurt worse than the uncertainty Gabe felt deep down.
“He may not feel the same way about it as you do,” Ren said carefully.
“I know,” Gabriel said. Hesitated. “But keep it on there. I want to serve it. We’ll figure out this whole fucking mess when he comes back.”
“Alright,” Ren said. He tapped the pen against the paper. “What else?”
What else could they serve with the meatballs?
“We should do a spicy cranberry meatball,” Gabriel said. “Like those we used to have out at Christmas, you know? In the crockpot?”
“Like a play on the cocktail weenie,” Ren said with excitement, jotting that idea down.
“Never say the word weenie again, please,” Gabriel said with a laugh punctuating his warning. “I’m begging you.”
Ren laughed too. “Fine. But the idea’s solid.”
“And stroganoff meatballs,” Gabriel said, a world suddenly opening up in his brain, so many ideas suddenly filtering in that he could barely register them all. “We could do them up in a sandwich roll, like the one we already have.”
He listed three other ideas, Ren scribbling and nodding along, and then he paused, realizing something.
“If we do this,” Gabriel said. “We’re going to need to change the name on the truck. The one I picked out, it isn’t going to work anymore.”
“It won’t,” Ren agreed. “What about . . . well, what about Balls and Buns?”
“Oh my god,” Gabriel said, a little shocked. “Lorenzo Moretti!”
