by Beth Bolden
He was just heating a pan on the stove when Sean showed back up. He was carrying a whole bunch of stuff—bins and bins and not just the plastic package of oversized tortillas he used for his wraps.
“I brought two kinds,” Sean said, setting everything down on one of the shiny stainless steel counters. “Tomato basil and spinach.”
“Tomato basil might be too much tomato,” Gabriel said, after thinking for a second. “Why don’t we try the spinach?”
“Works for me,” Sean said, opening the package. “I’m just surprised you’d allow a vegetable this close to your workspace.”
“Hey, I have vegetables,” Gabriel argued. “I freaking import tomatoes from Italy.”
“Tomatoes are a fruit,” Sean pointed out.
“And there’s some ground onion in the meatballs,” Gabriel said, ignoring the fruit jab.
“Oh wow, onions. Next you’re going to be claiming garlic is a vegetable,” Sean said, as he pulled a spinach wrap out of the package.
“I’m Italian, aren’t I?” Gabe said. “Garlic is practically our national vegetable.”
“Exactly,” Sean said with an exaggerated eye roll. “Where do you want to heat this up? On the flat-top grill?”
“Yeah, sure,” Gabriel said absently, as he spooned sauce into his sauté pan, enjoying the sound and smell of the tomatoes hitting the heat. His stomach growled, and Sean glanced up, laughing.
“Was that you?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Gabe said, trying not to be embarrassed. “It was coffee or food, and well, unsurprisingly, coffee won. Hands down.”
“Of course it did,” Sean said. “Well, good news. You’re gonna get something to eat soon.”
“Yeah,” Gabriel said, as he tossed three meatballs into the sauce, and then added another for good measure. He wasn’t sure it was all going to fit, but he didn’t want Sean to accuse him of being stingy.
Shaking the pan, letting the sauce continue to sizzle and the meatballs heat through, he grabbed the cheese. The mozzarella, of course, and the provolone slices, and even a little dusting of parmesan for good measure, he thought.
“Three kinds of cheese?” Sean asked, raising an eyebrow, as he flipped the tortilla on the flat top. “Should we try to melt them now, when this is heating up?”
“Yeah, good idea,” Gabe said, and passed the three bins to Sean.
He watched as Sean placed the bare minimum of cheese on the tortilla. “Really?” he asked. “Cheese is glue. You should know that.”
“Cheese is also full of fat,” Sean argued.
“Well, I’ve eaten my weight in cheese over the years,” Gabe retorted, “and it’s not like you were complaining the other night.”
Sean didn’t say a word to that, but did, Gabriel notice, surreptitiously add another handful of mozzarella shreds.
When he glanced up and saw that Gabe was watching, he just shrugged. “You’re right, it’s like glue. And I have no idea how this is going to work with all that sauce.”
Gabriel thought, that was what you said about my cock and your body, and it worked better than either of us could’ve imagined. “It’ll be fine,” he said. Even though it was stupid to assume that Sean would believe a relationship might be possible if this mashup of their two most famous dishes worked out.
“It’s just going to be a little wet, that’s all,” Gabriel said. “Messy, maybe. But nothing a few extra napkins won’t fix.”
Sean looked skeptical at this, and the skepticism in his expression only deepened as he slid the tortilla onto a plate, and watched as Gabriel attempted to spoon the meatballs over the cheese. They wouldn’t stay contained, and rolled everywhere they weren’t supposed to.
“Funny,” Gabriel ground out, “we don’t have this problem with the roll. Because they’re nestled in all nice and easylike.”
“Well, we’re not using a roll today,” Sean shot back. “Here, let me help you.”
Gabriel had noticed that he’d kept his distance this morning, but now Sean crowded in close, and Gabe’s fingers trembled as he tried to help him roll up the tortilla. But Sean was right. It was wet from the sauce he’d drizzled over the meatballs, which had taken a detour around the wrap, and now everything was covered in it.
“This isn’t going to work,” Sean finally said.
“What if I cut the meatballs in half,” Gabe offered. “Might keep them in place better.”
“Alright, that’s a good idea,” Sean agreed, his tone begrudging. “Let me heat another tortilla.”
Gabe slid the meatballs and all the sauce he could salvage back into his sauté pan.
“You should get one of those smaller flat tops, and put it in your truck,” Gabriel said as he watched him competently flip the tortilla and then load it with cheese. “It’d be a lot easier than that heat press you’re using.”
He realized a second too late that he shouldn’t have said it. They were already prickly with each other this morning, and always before, Gabriel trying to be helpful and share his knowledge after spending his entire lifetime in professional kitchens, would have resulted in Sean getting even pricklier, and probably a big argument.
But to Gabriel’s surprise, Sean just glanced up at him. “I’ve actually been thinking of that,” Sean admitted. “Upgrading in general. I could use some help, actually, and some more space and well . . .”
“Your truck is barely big enough for you?”
“Barely,” Sean admitted with a quick grin. “And you know, I’ve got plans. I’d need something like this if I wanted to add the quesadillas to the menu.”
Gabriel did not mention that upgrading his truck and his kitchen would be a great opportunity to change the name of it. Why? because he wasn’t stupid. He could hear Ren in his head, telling him that if he actually liked Sean, then he shouldn’t do everything in his power to antagonize him.
“I know some great secondhand kitchen supply stores,” Gabriel offered casually. “We could make an afternoon of it next Sunday.”
“You really think we could find something that would make it work?” Sean sounded skeptical as he slid the warmed tortilla onto a plate and handed it to Gabriel. He’d roughly cut up the meatballs with the side of his spatula, and it definitely helped to get them in the right spot this time around.
“Yeah, you know they’ve got portable ones. We’d just have to find one of the smaller ones,” Gabe said. “But if you took out that press and rearranged a few other things, I think you could make it work. Maybe keep your truck for a few months longer. Maybe even til the off-season.”
Gabriel finished scooping the meatballs in and this time only layered in a little bit of sauce—which went against everything he was as an Italian—but he didn’t want to end up with another soggy mess.
They needed something to prove to Tony that they could work together. Because that, despite all of Tony’s posturing and ideas about bringing new customers into the food truck lot, was really what this was about.
“Here, let me,” Sean said, but instead of sounding patronizing, like he couldn’t believe that Gabriel couldn’t fold up the wrap with the same terrifyingly quick efficiency, he sounded like he genuinely wanted to help. He leaned over, and with a few motions, had the sides overlapped and then tucked in, in a very loose interpretation of a wrap.
Sean took a step back and looked at the lumpy mass critically. “It looks terrible,” he said. It kind of did.
“Maybe it’ll look better if we brush it with garlic butter.”
Sean raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, or that could make it impossible to hold,” Gabriel amended. “But maybe if we cut it in half?”
“Why not,” Sean said. “I’m not sure we can make it look worse.”
Gabriel had argued with Sean’s assessments on everything from food to lighting to kitchen supplies to whether or not paper straws were an abomination. He really wished that he could argue with him now, but he really couldn’t.
Because he wasn’t sure it could loo
k worse.
He grabbed a knife, and carefully sliced the wrap in half.
Immediately sauce and cheese started oozing out of the middle, and half a meatball plopped onto the plate.
“Maybe it tastes good?” Gabriel said, and reached in, picking up one of the halves and juggling it awkwardly as it began to drip sauce. The tortilla, while plenty sturdy enough for Sean’s fillings, clearly couldn’t handle anything this saucy, and it began to split down the middle. Gabriel barely managed to shovel half of it into his mouth before it totally began to disintegrate, sauce landing with a plop on his chin and then the floor.
The flavors he expected exploded on his tongue. The ripeness of the tomato, the rich unctuousness of the meatball, the sharp bite of the provolone and the mild creaminess of the mozzarella.
It was delicious. But even though it tasted great, Gabriel knew that construction issues notwithstanding, they couldn’t sell this. It was basically a worse copy of his most popular menu item.
He watched as Sean juggled his own half, narrowly maneuvering it to his mouth before it fell apart on his fingers, leaving them smeared with red sauce and melted cheese.
“Well,” Sean said after he’d chewed and swallowed, “that was an epic fail.”
Gabriel nodded, and Sean actually had the nerve to look surprised. Like he’d thought Gabe was going to try to argue that this was still a good idea.
Half of the wrap was currently dripping down his previously pristine stainless steel cabinet and the other half was on his chin. He was hardly in a position to argue.
Grabbing a handful of paper towels by the small sink, he wiped down, and then handed a fresh one to Sean, who shot him a grateful smile.
It was nothing. It should have meant nothing. But it meant everything.
Gabe cursed the day Sean had showed up in Los Angeles and had, without even trying, tied him up into so many knots he wasn’t sure he could ever untangle himself.
Chapter Nine
“So,” Sean asked, hesitating because Gabe could be so . . . well, Gabe-ish and difficult about things that shouldn’t be so difficult, “what are we going to try now?”
Gabriel shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “That was my one and only idea, and let’s face it, it sucked.”
“It . . .” Sean hesitated again. “It kind of did.”
But to his surprise, Gabe chuckled. “Don’t hold back or anything.”
“It was really good, if it makes you feel any better, but I think sticking to rolls as a delivery mechanism is a smart choice.”
“Best idea I ever came up with,” Gabriel said with a nod. “Though, I do think serving them in the cup, for those who don’t eat gluten or carbs . . . that was also a pretty genius invention.”
Sean did not know what he’d expected when Tony had announced that he and Gabe were going to be working together—and not in bed. In the kitchen. The one place they’d never agreed on a single fucking thing. It had been easy enough to let all that crap that lay between them go, when they were at his townhouse, and in his bed. It felt like a different part of his life, and he’d been working hard at compartmentalizing.
But this? This gentle teasing—this flirting without any acrimony at all—was new, and it was different, and it was kind of freaking him out.
Could they have had this before? Or had they needed to get all that shit out of their system first? Sean didn’t know.
The one thing he did not let himself consider was what would have happened between them if they’d never shared the same name.
“Confession,” Sean said, before he could stop himself, “I’ve ordered plenty of meatball cups over the years. They’re great.”
Gabriel’s face screwed up, his nose crinkling adorably. “What?”
“Just . . .” Sean swallowed hard. “Just not usually from you.”
“You’re ordering them from Ren?” Gabe said with what sure sounded like mock outrage. “Waiting til I leave and then coming over here? That’s a low blow.”
“You make a great meatball, Moretti,” Sean said, which was really something he probably should have told him ages ago, but their relationship had been so sour at points, he hadn’t wanted Gabriel to know how he felt.
He hadn’t felt particularly guilty about that before, but he felt guilty about it now.
“Thanks,” Gabe said, and he smiled, bright and surprised.
And suddenly, unexpectedly, Sean had an idea.
“What if we . . . what if we take one of my ideas that I’ve been working on,” Sean said, “and we use meatballs as the protein.”
“What do you mean, one of your ideas?” Gabriel asked.
Sean told himself that the vaguely suspicious edge to his tone was to be expected. Hadn’t he been unsure of Gabriel’s idea? Of course, he’d been sure it would fail for exactly the reasons why it had failed. Sean told himself it was different, but had it been, really? Or was that just an excuse he was telling himself?
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. He kept a running list of possible wrap ideas and recipe notes in an app and he pulled it up now, browsing through the list.
“I collect ideas all the time,” Sean said by way of explanation. “And there’s plenty I haven’t implemented yet, that we could use your meatballs in. What about this Thai crunch wrap idea? We could do like a ginger sesame meatball, with like some kind of sticky glaze.”
“Thai?” Gabriel sounded dubious. Sean supposed that was to be expected.
“Thai,” Sean said. “Like really, it’s just a bunch of fresh veggies, with some crunch from some sweet and spicy candied peanuts.” This was one of his best unused ideas that he’d been thinking about and making notes on for months now. There was part of him that thought it might be a mistake to waste the idea on this temporary project, but maybe if it was a runaway success—the way that it could be, if the chips fell right—then Tony would let them keep it on their menus.
“Vegetables,” Gabriel stated, shaking his head. “I . . . I can’t believe you’re going to talk me into this.”
Sean had barely gotten started. But he knew, more than anything else, that the flavors he thought they could create together would be more than evidence enough. Gabriel might be the most stubborn asshole on the planet, but he knew his food, and if it turned out even remotely as good as Sean envisioned, he’d never be able to say no. “Do you have some meatballs that aren’t in any sauce?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gabriel said, pointing to one of the containers. “But they’re not . . . ginger sesame or whatever.”
“What’s in them?” Sean asked. Thinking that maybe they might not need to even make a new kind of meatball for this. If the flavor was generic enough, the glaze would do all the heavy lifting, imparting all that Asian flavor without actually changing what was essentially an Italian recipe.
Gabriel shot him an alarmed look.
“I really, really don’t want to steal your recipe,” Sean said hurriedly, remembering what Gabe had told him about his nonna and her recipes. “I was just thinking . . . maybe we don’t need to change the meatballs at all. Just add the glaze.”
“Alright,” Gabriel said cautiously. “They are pretty simple. Beef, pork, lamb, egg, and breadcrumb mixed together—since we started promoting the gluten-free meatball cups, I’ve actually swapped the breadcrumbs out for this cracker meal that’s gluten-free. Then there’s your basic seasonings. Garlic, salt, and pepper. I try to keep them simple, let the sauce shine through.”
“And it does,” Sean said, doing an internal fist pump. They wouldn’t have to change them at all. They could use them, and then glaze them, and then slide them right into the bed of crunchy veggies that Sean had envisioned and they’d be perfect.
“You really think this is going to work?” Gabriel asked.
“I think it’s worth a try,” Sean said. “But we can’t do it here. We need to move to my truck. That’s where I’ve got what we need.”
“What should I bring?” Gabriel sounded suddenly s
elf-conscious. “Just the meatballs?”
“Yeah,” Sean said, shooting him a quick grin. And before he could help himself, he added, “Just your meat, baby.”
———
Sean knew just how tiny his little food truck was. When he’d first bought it, he’d envisioned that he’d never really need more space than he had. That room for one person to work was plenty.
When he’d been planning his truck, he’d never imagined that one day he might need to share it with one big, tall, excited Italian.
There was barely room for the both of them in the truck, and that was with their hips pressed together, and their hands essentially sharing the same space.
Before, it would have been impossible, because Sean hadn’t been so comfortable with Gabe back then. But now? Being so close made him think of one thing and one thing only.
So much for being able to separate their professional and their personal lives.
Of course, if Sean had been counting on that, suggesting they share basically one person’s worth of space was a terrible idea.
“Well, I think I’m going to put a vote in for a bigger truck,” Gabe said with a low, intimate chuckle that made the hairs on Sean’s neck stand up.
“I’m shocked,” Sean retorted but it had no heat behind it. Nope—all that heat was pooling in his belly.
He wanted so badly to turn and let his body fit into Gabriel’s, the way he knew it did so perfectly. They’d only had sex a handful of times but it didn’t feel like even nearly enough.
Not that they could do it now. The rest of the food truck lot was beginning to come to life as owners and employees showed up to prep for the lunch hour. They’d seen Tate walk in, and then Ren, from across the way, as he slunk in and opened up Gabriel’s truck.
Sean dragged his attention back to the pan on the little burner in front of him. He was reducing some soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil, with a little extra brown sugar that Gabe had begged from the bakery truck down the street, in an attempt to make their first version of glaze.
“Smells good,” Gabe said, leaning down and taking a big sniff. “I’m just not sure it’s gonna get sticky enough.”