by Beth Bolden
He was definitely not looking forward to seeing Sean again.
No way.
Sean was outside his little truck this time, setting out plasticware and cleaning off the stainless steel counter under the window. He was slim, but his hips curved under his jean shorts, and that annoyingly jaunty white apron, which Gabriel hadn’t gotten quite a full look at, was tied precisely around his waist.
The logo was annoyingly right there, right in the center of his chest. Gabriel found he couldn’t quite look away.
“Oh,” Sean said, after glancing up, “it’s you again.”
“Gabriel,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s Gabriel Moretti. You know, the guy you copied.”
“I didn’t copy anyone,” Sean said, seemingly still unconcerned. “You just changed your name, which you failed to mention last time we spoke, by the way, and I’m brand new. It’s just . . . a rather unfortunate coincidence.”
“Rather unfortunate?” Gabriel thought it was a hell of a lot worse than that.
But Sean just shrugged. “We’re serving such different things. Does it really matter?”
“Yes, it matters!” Gabriel said, trying very hard not to explode. “I’ve got a reputation, and I’ve worked hard for it and . . .”
“And you don’t want me borrowing it just because we have the same name.” Sean gave a sharp nod. “I understand. Except that I work plenty hard too, and maybe, in a few weeks, or a month, it’ll be you trading on my name.”
“That’s never going to happen,” Gabriel scoffed.
“Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll have to stay tuned to find out,” Sean said lightly. He turned to go back into the truck.
“That’s not . . . no,” Gabriel said, and before he could stop himself, he reached out to catch Sean’s arm.
Sean shrugged it off easily, even though he was a few inches shorter, and definitely didn’t seem to have the same muscular bulk that Gabriel prided himself on. “I’m afraid,” Sean said with complete disdain, “you don’t get a vote here. Not at my truck. And not in my life.”
———
Okay, so that confrontation had not gone quite as Gabriel had expected.
He had also not expected to return to his own food truck, and after making about a thousand meatballs, check his phone only to realize that Sean had followed him back.
He’d also had the nerve to tweet, “Looking to stay on track with your new beach body? Make sure you visit the other On a Roll for more diet-friendly options.”
Gabriel couldn’t pretend it was insulting—he made zero apologies for his meatball subs. They were delicious but that was because they were full of carbs and cheese and meat with a high fat content. Still, it was annoying to see that Sean had already picked up a way he could market his own truck more effectively.
“You’re glaring again,” Ren said as Gabriel formed meatballs with an ice cream scoop, setting them in long rows on the baking tray.
“I’m not glaring,” Gabriel said. But he was. And he knew exactly why.
“Is it because of that cute guy?”
“The cute . . . what?” Gabriel exclaimed.
Ren rolled his eyes. “You know he’s cute. I’ve seen you staring at him. You know, when it doesn’t look like you’d like to punch him in the face.”
“No.” Gabriel shook his head vehemently.
“I’m just saying. So he’s got the same name as you. This is a big city. Lots of food trucks. You guys could co-exist peacefully, if you wanted to. But clearly you want to get under his skin.”
“He got under mine first,” Gabriel insisted. Did he completely believe that? Well, mostly. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Sean that he was worried about the problems of having the same name. It would have been so much easier if Sean had just recognized that right off the bat, and agreed to change his.
But he hadn’t, and he clearly had no intention of changing his mind.
Gabriel was just going to have to change it for him.
Right after the lunch rush, he enacted the first step of his plan. He pulled out his phone, quickly composing a tweet, challenging the food truck community to vote on which On a Roll truck was better.
Maybe, Gabriel thought, it was a low blow. He was going to get more votes, because it was his account, and because he’d spent so much longer in the community. He was well-known, even if most of that reputation had been earned when he was Nonna’s Kitchen on Wheels. Sean was brand new.
Maybe it was time to remind Sean that he was brand new.
Almost immediately, as he settled down outside, on one of the tables set in the festival clearing, to eat his plate of meatballs—yes, even he avoided carbs sometimes—he started seeing retweets and replies, and just like he’d expected, every single comment sided with him.
And maybe he stoked the fire a bit higher by responding to some of them, agreeing with a lot of the comments, often giving a whole string of praise emojis after. He loved his customers. They were so fucking loyal, Gabriel was touched by it. This was the kind of thing that Sean needed to see so he’d understand that this battle wasn’t one he could win.
Gabriel was always going to come out on top.
And maybe he got carried away and tagged Sean on a few of the replies. Maybe he shouldn’t have called him an imposter.
His finger hovered over the tweet, wondering if he should actually delete that one. But before he could, a shadow crossed over his vision, blocking the bright California sunshine.
Gabriel glanced up and supposed that he shouldn’t be so surprised to see Sean standing there, a tight-lipped glare on his face, his arms crossed over that perfectly pristine white apron.
He wanted to mess up that apron.
He wanted to take it and tie Sean up with it and defile it.
Maybe Ren was right after all. This guy had really gotten under his skin. Maybe if Gabriel hadn’t been so attracted to him, he could’ve let the name thing go.
But probably not.
Gabriel already knew he was the kind of guy who didn’t “let things go.” It was the Italian in him.
“I can’t believe you did this,” Sean said, gesturing towards Gabriel’s phone. “Couldn’t you just leave well enough alone?”
“No?” It was like this guy didn’t know Gabriel at all; and then it occurred to Gabriel that he really didn’t. “Listen,” Gabe said. “I’m Italian. I’m loud. I’m obnoxious. I’m passionate about stuff I care about. I definitely am not good at compartmentalizing shit.”
“And?” Sean said.
“What I mean is that I was here first. You’re new. This whole Twitter thing proves it. Why can’t you just change your name?”
“Why should I?” Sean challenged.
“I changed mine. And it really wasn’t a big deal. I don’t get why you’re so determined not to. It’d probably help you, too, to not be tied to my obnoxious Italian ass for all time.”
Sean didn’t say anything right away. Just stared at Gabriel like he had two heads. And even though he was clearly pissed off, yeah, Ren was definitely right. He was cute.
Gabriel didn’t want to think it, because Sean probably hated him now.
“I just don’t want to, okay? I have my reasons,” Sean finally said. “And,” he added, his voice going cold and hard, “I’d appreciate it if you could take that whole thread down.”
“Oh,” Gabriel said innocently, “is it making you look bad?”
Sean’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“Actually, it’s making you look bad,” Sean said.
Gabriel had just stabbed one of the meatballs on his plate with a plastic fork. One of his moist, delicious, red sauce-covered meatballs. He froze, meatball speared by the fork, and felt his brain go blank with frustrated rage. Sean didn’t want to tell him why he wouldn’t change his name and thought that Gabriel was making himself look bad?
He’d never pretended to have anything other than a terrible temper.
He was Italian, wasn’t he?
Truthfully, he was actually pretty laid-back most of the time, but when he lost his chill, he usually lost it big-time.
This time was no exception to that particular rule.
Later, he wouldn’t even remember throwing the meatball and watching with gloating satisfaction as it slammed into Sean’s chest, emblazoning his red logo with an imprint of greasy red sauce. It hit the ground with a juicy plop, the only sound that Gabriel could hear over the roaring in his ears.
Sean stared at him in shock, then looked down at the red smear on his chest, and then at the meatball on the ground, and then back up to Gabriel.
“You . . . you . . . you,” he stuttered.
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “Now we both look bad.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tony approaching the scene, trepidation written all over his face.
“What the fuck is going on?” he demanded.
“It turns out that not only are my balls delicious, they make excellent missiles,” Gabriel said.
Sean’s brows slammed together and he looked completely, totally, incoherently pissed. Gabriel thought that if he’d been in Sean’s shoes, he wouldn’t have felt much different.
But maybe, maybe, it would be enough to convince Sean that it wasn’t worth it to tangle with him.
Sean nudged the meatball with the toe of his black Converse. “You’re disgusting,” he muttered.
“I mean . . .” Tony trailed off.
“Don’t you dare say he’s right,” Gabriel said to his friend. Maybe he’d crossed the line, but if he got what he wanted out of it, it might be worth it.
“I’m right,” Sean said, and then, suddenly, his blue eyes were pinning Gabriel in place, not just flat and pissed off, but blazing hot with passion and indignity, “and if you think this is going to scare me off, you’d better rethink that whole plan.”
After Sean turned and stormed off—probably to try to get the stain off his apron, which Gabriel could tell him was going to be a total waste of time—Tony turned to him. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he asked. “He’s not . . . he’s not a bad guy, Gabe.”
“Are you really going to vouch for that guy?” Gabriel asked, rolling his eyes. “Really?”
“I’m just saying he’s not the enemy. Maybe you guys don’t need to be enemies.”
“That ship’s already sailed,” Gabriel said. “And you know it.”
Chapter One
Two years later
Sean Cooper couldn’t quite believe that even though so much time had passed, he could still feel that goddamn meatball.
Before that moment, he’d been laboring under some kind of wild delusion that maybe he and the hot Italian guy could be friends. He’d needed friends in LA—he’d been brand fucking new to the area, and lonely, and looking for friends. But from the very beginning, it was clear that Gabe hadn’t been looking to be friends.
The tweets that Gabriel had sent that day had been the beginning of the end. But the end end of it? Definitely the meatball missile.
Technically, it hadn’t hurt. It’d stained his apron, of course, and he’d never been able to completely get the red shadow out of the stark white cotton. But sometimes, when Sean came face to face with Gabe, like right now, when they sat across from each other at a table in their favorite bar, the Funky Cup, there were moments when he swore he could still feel it hitting him.
Time might have passed, and maybe he’d never changed his truck’s name, but neither had Gabriel, despite many threats to the contrary. Even though they’d kind of uncomfortably settled into the same friend circle, and the same food truck lot, they were always more apt to argue about something than agree on it. And that, Sean thought, sometimes felt more like habit than anything else.
Gabe argued because he liked to. And Sean argued back because by this point, it was sheer reflex.
Maybe he could’ve stopped it. Milo would’ve told him long ago that it was a waste of his time. But then, Milo wasn’t around. Hadn’t been around for awhile now, and Sean had occasionally, especially in the last six months, found himself not really caring that Milo might not have liked what he was doing.
He’d long since stopped blaming Milo for leaving him.
The spot in his heart, the one that always belonged to his husband, still stung every once in awhile when he prodded it especially hard. But mostly, he was a little embarrassed to admit that, with a lot of goddamn therapy, he’d mostly gotten over Milo’s death.
Milo would always be a part of him, but he wasn’t around to be a part of Sean’s life anymore. Sean had to make his own life, now.
And for better or worse, that life now included Gabriel Moretti.
“I can’t believe that everyone’s still intact,” Tony muttered as he slid into the seat next to Sean. He pushed over a bottle of beer towards Sean, and another towards Gabe.
“Hey, there’s been no meatball-on-man violence for some time now,” Gabriel said. Boasted. Like it had been some feat of his self-control to not chuck any more meatballs in Sean’s direction.
Sean rolled his eyes. “He didn’t say anything stupid for . . . well, now we’re back at zero, but before that, he was up to almost twenty-four hours.”
Tony didn’t laugh, and Tony almost always found their antics humorous. The miniscule but insidious part of Sean that had worried for the last two years that his steadfast refusal to change his truck’s name would come back to haunt him began to get antsy.
He’d worried this might happen before they were both invited to the Food Truck Warriors lot down by the Coliseum football stadium. But that had gone through without a hitch. But now, there was some kind of look in Tony’s eye that Sean hadn’t seen since the very beginning.
Since Gabriel had chucked a meatball at him.
“I’m . . .” Tony cleared his throat. And couldn’t look at either of them. “I really hoped that it would never come to this, but I think . . . well, we think, actually, that it would be better for overall guest experience, if we didn’t have two trucks with the same name.”
“We?” Gabriel echoed Sean’s own thoughts, even the disbelief practically identical.
“Ryan and I, well, and Wyatt, too,” Tony said.
“So they sent you to play nice with us,” Gabriel bit off.
“I sent myself,” Tony’s voice was firm. “I thought it might be better coming from me, since I know we’re all friends here. I want to help you guys succeed. Just the same as I know you want the lot to succeed.”
Sean told himself to stay calm, even as he felt his heart begin to race. “Why now and not six months ago, when we all joined the collective?”
“It wasn’t a problem then. We didn’t think it’d be a problem. But . . .” Tony winced. “It kind of is, guys, and I know you’re not blind to it. There’s a lot of confusion, even though we’ve set you up on opposite sides. We went through your Yelp reviews, and there’s a lot of cross-posting. Lots of customers don’t understand that there are two On a Roll food trucks, and they don’t realize they’re both in LA, and they definitely don’t get that they’re both semi-permanently parked in the same lot.”
Sean didn’t know what to say to that. Tony wasn’t wrong. But he also, more today than he had been two years ago, was absolutely determined not to give up his truck name to Gabriel.
Not just because it was Gabriel and he was kind of a smug asshole sometimes. But because Sean had made a promise to someone who deserved to have that promise honored.
“I’m not changing my name,” Gabriel announced. And god, he could be a smug asshole. Sean didn’t even feel a tiny pulse of guilt for thinking it.
“I’m here to talk about it with both of you,” Tony said gently. “You and Sean. It’s a decision you guys are going to have to discuss on your own. Maybe you’ll both need to learn to bend a little.”
“Bend a little?” Sean echoed. “How is that going to work? We can’t each have the name six months out of the year.”
“No,” Tony said. Hesitated. “B
ut surely there’s something you two can work out.”
“And what,” Gabriel retorted, “you’re here to be our referee?”
Tony threw up his hands. “Hey, if you guys hadn’t proved on at least one occasion that you needed it, I’d be happy to walk away. More than happy, trust me.”
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “I know Lucas is here, so trust me, as someone who has walked in on you two more than once, I understand you’d rather not be coaching us through it. And,” he continued, his voice turning thoughtful, “maybe you shouldn’t be.”
“What?” Tony sounded surprised. Like he’d expected more of a fight from Gabriel than from Sean. And truthfully, Sean was just as shocked. Yeah, he’d been pretty stubborn about the name thing—but he had reasons. Gabriel was just being stubborn about it because he could.
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “Just . . .” He turned to Sean. “We can figure this shit out, right?”
Sean was not as easily convinced. “If this is just a ploy to get me one-on-one and away from Tony’s pacifying influence, you have to know by now that it’s not going to work.”
“It’s not. I swear . . . I just . . . it’s fucking embarrassing, okay?” Gabriel admitted. “We can’t even talk about this without Tony being afraid we’re going to lose our shit. Tony.”
“You’re the one who used me for target practice,” Sean reminded him.
“Hey,” Tony said a moment later. “I just got that.”
“Yeah, we know you got your shit together,” Gabriel said to Tony, “but maybe it’s time you let us take care of ours.”
“Well, I’ve been trying,” Tony said. Then glanced over at Sean. “What about you? Are you really with him on this?”
Sean wasn’t sure he believed Gabe either. Of course, after the meatball incident, they’d stopped arguing about the name. They’d argued about everything else, instead.
Had enough things changed in two years that they could find a solution to the problem that was satisfactory for both of them? Sean didn’t really believe it, but otherwise what were they going to do? Flip a coin? One moment everything would be fine, and then the next, Sean would be forced to give something up that he had zero intention of ever giving up. It wasn’t like the name of his truck was his last tie to his husband. It wasn’t. But it felt like the most important one.