by Beth Bolden
“I don’t have an issue,” Lucas said. “It’s big visibility. The vegan truck is already signed up. I know Wyatt is trying to get Nana’s Desserts in, too.”
“It would be great for us to have a big presence at the festival,” Tate said. Gabriel knew he was one of the people who’d mentioned wanting to go, but hadn’t been sure how to go about doing it.
“I agree,” Tony said. “So we’ll just close that whole week. Post announcements ahead of time, and signs directing anyone to the festival. Santa Anita Park isn’t that far from the lot.”
“It’s not,” Alexis agreed. “I will definitely be applying.”
Gabe still didn’t know if he wanted to. The weekend alone had always been nuts and had drained him and Ren for weeks after. To spend a whole seven days there? He wasn’t sure, visibility or not, that he wanted to commit to it.
Maybe he could actually take a vacation.
“Speaking of the lot closing,” Tony continued, “let’s talk about security.”
“Security?” Sean wondered.
“Yeah, Wyatt and I have been discussing the possibility of adding more trucks this fall, and well, I’m concerned about the security. We have the lights, but that’s only going to keep problems at bay for so long. I think we need to install a security system. You know,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Cameras and all that shit.”
“Really?” Tate sounded dubious. “Have we had any problems?”
“A few,” Tony admitted. “You know Alexis had his door scratched up a month or so back, like someone was trying to pick the lock. And there’s been some reports of some suspicious people lurking around. The lights won’t scare them away forever.”
“With more trucks, it’s going to become a bigger enticement,” Lucas pointed out. “There’s a lot of expensive equipment we’re leaving with just a weak lock to protect it. I don’t think it’d hurt to not only have cameras but a security patrol at night.”
“Wait a minute, a security patrol . . .” Ash stood up abruptly, the chair legs clattering on the concrete floor. “You are fucking out of line, Tony.”
“What do you mean?” But Tony had that suspicious tone again—the one that everyone knew meant that Tony thought he’d put one over on everyone, but was actually transparent as fuck.
“You are going to hire Lennox,” Ash said. “I know you are.”
“He’s already a customer, which makes him an obvious choice,” Tony argued.
“I don’t want that guy hanging around,” Ash argued bitterly. “I don’t like him.”
Clearly Ash had moved on from this guy might be cute and could be interested to I don’t like him. Didn’t bode well for Lennox getting into Ash’s pants—or the other way around.
“Well, unfortunately he’s a highly recommended professional who already knows how our business works,” Tony said, not sounding sorry at all.
Ash glanced at Gabriel, the look full of mutual commiseration, as Tony continued prattling on and on about how qualified Lennox was.
Yeah, Tony had definitely managed to screw both of them over, that was for sure.
A few minutes later, the meeting broke up and Gabriel guzzled the rest of his beer, wondering if he might have time to grab another before he had his inevitable confrontation with Tony.
But before he could make a break for it, Tony appeared at his right elbow, steering him towards the bar.
“Hey,” Tony said in a low voice. A quick glance around told Gabriel that Sean had already left. Before Gabriel could even proposition him for another night of hot sex. Yet another thing that Tony had screwed him on.
“What do you want?” Gabriel asked, leaning against the bar, gesturing to Shaw that he wanted another beer. “You got any other bright and wonderful ideas designed to ruin my life?”
“That wasn’t . . .” Tony started to say but Gabriel held up a hand.
“Don’t even try it,” Gabe said. “I know what you’re about. Well, what someone is about. This plan is too smart for you. Who came up with it?”
“What do you mean?” Tony asked.
“I mean,” Gabriel said, taking a drink of his beer, “that this is a little subtle for you, dude.”
“Hey, you know, I told you guys to fix the name shit, and instead of doing it, you started fucking. So I figure, you’re getting along so great, might as well work together some more.”
“That is . . .” Gabriel groaned. “That is not the point.”
“Well, it kind of fucking is,” Tony said pleasantly. “I expect to see your collaboration up on both of your menus next week.”
“I really hate you, you know,” Gabriel said, equally pleasantly. “You are determined to make this impossible for me. For us.”
He’d been depending on the fact that they didn’t really work together to keep this new harmony continuing. But forcing them into the same truck? To develop a recipe? Well, their professional relationship had been a disaster from the first moment, and Gabriel was afraid this was just going to be more of the same.
“I am, huh? Then why did I have to find out from Ren that you already have a new name all picked out, with a logo and everything?”
“I don’t . . . it’s just a mockup,” Gabriel said hurriedly. Why had Ren sold him out that way? Why would he? He was not ready, goddamn it. Sean wasn’t ready. Not even remotely. They were still trying to figure out how to hook up without awkwardness.
If it fell apart now, it would fall apart.
And Gabriel hadn’t figured out a way to fix it yet, or even tougher, to come to terms with it.
“Really,” Tony drawled. “Okay, then, you have a mockup all ready to go. So, go.”
“It’s complicated,” Gabriel said defensively. “Did anyone interfere when you and Lucas were figuring your shit out? When you didn’t fucking listen to anyone about that asshole Jeremy who was stealing from you?”
“No,” Tony said. “Though maybe in retrospect, you maybe should have been more forceful about it. I really fucked that up good.” He took a deep breath. “Kinda like you might fuck this up with Sean, if you’re not careful.”
“I’ve got it under control,” Gabriel insisted. Even though he definitely did not. Not even by a long shot. “Though if you keep fucking interfering, I definitely won’t anymore.”
“Hey, I haven’t heard you guys snap at each other for two weeks now. That’s practically a honeymoon period.”
“Tony,” Gabriel warned.
Tony threw up his hands. “Okay, okay, I’ll back off. But the collab plan? It’s still on. And for the record, the whole thing was originally my idea.”
“Really?” Gabriel was not convinced.
“Well,” Tony corrected, “the collaboration might have originally been my idea, but I wasn’t going to implement it this quickly.”
“I thought so.” Gabriel stared at his bottle of beer. “I’m gonna have to fix this mess you just created.”
“Or you and Sean could fix it together, which is the whole fucking point, you know? I told you to take care of it, and I thought you would. If you had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”
Yeah, and Sean and I wouldn’t be fucking right now.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Fix this,” Tony said, stealing his beer and taking a huge gulp of it. “I mean it.”
———
An hour and two beers later, Gabriel was listening to Ash bitch about Tony and about Lennox, when he got a text. When he glanced at his phone, his pulse increased. It was from Sean.
Maybe he was inviting him over anyway. It was late, maybe, but as far as Gabriel was concerned, it was never going to be too late.
But when he opened the text, instead of a late-night booty call, Sean was asking when he would have free time in the next few days to start their collaboration.
Even worse, his words felt formal and strained. Like the last thing Sean wanted to do was collaborate with Gabriel, but he was doing it because he had to.
He
hadn’t intended to actually groan out loud, but he must have because Ash finally stopped talking and stared at him. “You okay?” he asked.
“No,” Gabriel said, rubbing a hand across his face. “No. Tony is determined to hack this all up.”
“I’m hardly a fan of his at the moment,” Ash said precisely, swirling his bourbon in the squat glass, “but I’m wondering if you didn’t get at least halfway there, all on your own.”
“What do you mean?” Gabriel wondered, even though he had his suspicions.
“I mean, just fucking change your name,” Ash said. “It can’t be that hard, can it? You’ve already done it once.”
“Yeah, which means I shouldn’t have to do it twice,” Gabriel said.
“This isn’t like Ross with his three divorces,” Ash teased him, referring to the character from Friends. “It’s not like there’s some kind of concrete limit you’ve got to stick to.”
“If it was that easy,” Gabriel said, “don’t you think I’d have already done it?” He thought about that packet he’d gathered together. The new name, the new logo, everything ready to go—but he’d never been able to bear pulling the trigger.
He still couldn’t bear it.
“Yeah, actually I do,” Ash said, leaning back in his chair. “You must have some kind of master plan. How to get out of this with the name and the guy.”
He didn’t have any kind of fucking plan. “That’d be great,” Gabriel muttered. Even though it seemed impossible now.
His fingers hovered over his phone’s keyboard, unsure of what he should say. How he should say it. Finally, he just typed out a message that hopefully didn’t look like he was trying too goddamn hard.
I could do tomorrow morning. How about you?
“Hey, maybe this whole thing will be a blessing in disguise,” Ash offered. “Maybe Sean will realize how great you work together . . . and not just in bed.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t seem very likely.”
He felt the buzz of his phone vibrating, with Sean’s return text. Works for me. Eight AM, was all it said.
Ash shot him another one of those annoying commiserating glances. He hated that he felt like he deserved them. “You deserve another beer.”
He did. He really did. But now he had to get up early, and if he had another, tomorrow was going to be miserable in more ways than one.
“Actually, I think I’m going to take off,” Gabriel said, draining the last of his beer and standing up.
“Well,” Ash said, shooting him a grin, “I hope you don’t kill each other.”
Gabriel hoped for that too, but truthfully, his expectations were low.
———
It turned out that Gabriel’s expectations were not quite low enough.
He slept badly, tossing and turning, worrying about what would happen the next day. It didn’t help that he’d had four beers, along with very little dinner, and he was more hungover than he wanted to admit when he woke up far earlier than he usually did.
It didn’t help when he stumbled out of his bedroom and into the rest of the living space he and Ren shared, and found a strange pair of shoes next to the couch, and a coat he didn’t recognize hanging on one of the wall hooks.
If all had gone to plan, he’d been hoping that he too could sleep over. The last two times they’d hooked up, Sean had seemed disappointed that he’d left instead of staying the night. Gabriel had hoped that he could change the pattern last night. But instead of hooking up, he’d ended up alone in his cold bed, while Ren had sex again.
He wasn’t jealous, exactly, because he had no interest in doing what Ren did, but he did feel like Sean was slipping through his fingers.
Then he pulled open the cabinet and realized they were out of coffee.
Sure enough, coffee was written on the little notepad Ren had put on the side of their fridge, but with the craziness of the summer, it seemed neither of them had had time to go to the store.
“Ugh,” Gabriel groaned out loud. “No fucking coffee.”
He could stop on the way to the lot, but he was already running behind, and he’d intended to be early, because Sean was unfailingly on time. He’d be pissed if Gabe was late, and that was definitely not the right way to start out this whole collaboration thing.
But there was nothing he could do about it now, Gabriel thought with frustration as he took the quickest shower he could, throwing clothes on and racing down the stairs of their building.
The line at the coffee shop was longer than usual, and by the time Gabe set foot on the lot, it was 8:09. And sure enough, Sean was standing by his truck, sipping his coffee from a Starbucks cup, a disgruntled expression on his face.
“You’re late,” Sean said as a greeting as Gabriel approached.
“I . . .” Gabe thought about giving all the excuses he’d thought up. He was tired. He’d gone to bed late, and alone. They’d been out of coffee, and everyone at the coffee shop had been taking their sweet-ass time. But he snapped his mouth shut. Sean hated excuses as much as he hated people not respecting his schedule. “Sorry.”
“I bet you are,” Sean said.
It was useless to try to prove that he actually was. Especially when Sean was in such a clearly prickly mood. Gabriel set his coffee down and unlocked the door of his truck. “Have you thought about what you’d like to do?” He had, during his sleepless night. Hoped that he could convince Sean that the path of least resistance was the best route for them to take.
But considering the set of Sean’s firm jaw, and the stubborn glint in his eyes, he had a feeling that was already out of the question.
“I have a few ideas,” Sean said as they climbed into his truck. Everything was clean and sparkling, from Ren’s deep cleaning the night before. Not that Gabriel had expected less, but it felt good that Sean wouldn’t be able to complain or say something snarky about Gabe’s truck.
“I thought we could just do something simple,” Gabriel said. “Like a meatball wrap, or something.”
“You don’t think that’s a little obvious?” Sean said, raising an eyebrow.
“Maybe it should be.” Maybe it should be easy. Because nothing else is fucking easy.
Sean crossed his arms over his chest.
Gabriel knew that movement—had spent the last two years alternately hoping for and dreading the moment it showed up. It always meant that Sean was bound and determined to get his way. And usually that meant an argument, because Gabriel almost never agreed.
“Don’t you want to do something interesting and exciting?” Sean questioned. “Maybe Tony is fucking with us, but just because he is, doesn’t mean we should just phone it in, and do something shitty and expected.”
“Maybe.” Gabriel wasn’t really sure he gave a fuck, honestly—but he wasn’t surprised that Sean did. That was what Sean did, and if he was being painfully blunt about it with himself, that was part of why he goddamned liked Sean so much. He fucking cared. Always, and with a passion that Gabriel had always envied.
Gabriel was set in his ways because he was stubborn to the point of insanity, and for a handful of reasons that probably all originated from him being the middle child in a huge family that had always expected him to be a little Moretti clone.
But Sean? He not only had passion for doing things the right way, he had principles. He wanted to be the best, and not just for himself. Because he felt an intrinsic obligation to Tony, even when he was screwing him over, for inviting him to participate, and for including him in his food truck family. And, Gabriel thought darkly, because Sean also had a memory of someone he’d loved, that he was trying to live for.
No, he was totally not jealous of Milo. Not at all.
“Well, I’m not going to do something shitty and expected,” Sean announced. “You can do whatever you want, but that’s not something I’m participating it.”
“Except I can’t,” Gabriel argued. “We’re supposed to work together. This stupid thing is supposed to be a represent
ation of both of us.”
“Yes, well,” Sean said snippily, “if that was what Tony really wanted, maybe he should have started with a different pairing.”
“What, so we can only work together when we’re fucking?” Gabriel asked, even though he was afraid to hear the answer—because of everything, that was the thing he feared the most.
Sean glanced away. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” Gabriel told himself that it didn’t matter what Sean said, but that was such a blatant lie.
“I just mean that we approach things so differently,” Sean said. “You see that, don’t you?”
“Maybe instead of thinking about all the ways we’re different, we should think about what we do that’s similar.” Gabriel wasn’t stupid enough to think that would work; it was a pipe dream, born of too many fantasies where they could be more to each other than just enemies and fuck buddies.
“What is that?” Sean asked.
Gabe had not really been expecting that question. Right or wrong, he’d thought that Sean would keep arguing with him. And he was left grasping for straws. What ways were they similar? He didn’t even know.
“We both really care about our food,” he said. Which was true. “As long as what we make is delicious, what does it matter if it’s innovative or not? The point is feeding people and bringing joy to their lives, right?”
“Right,” Sean said suspiciously. “So you really want to do this meatball wrap.”
“I mean, it would be the easiest way to accomplish the goal,” Gabe said. But Sean still didn’t look convinced.
“I guess we could give it a try,” Sean said. “I’ll go grab a few wraps from my truck.”
Gabriel nodded, beginning to pull a few tubs and bins out of the under-counter fridges where they stored their leftover prepped ingredients. “I’ll heat up some stuff,” he said. “Meatballs and sauce.”
He also grabbed a tub of their famous roasted garlic butter, which got slathered all over the roll before it was dressed with meatballs and sauce and then a healthy helping of cheese—provolone and mozzarella.