Chapter Fourteen #2
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!”
But Ren was grinning unrepentantly. “When did you become such a prude?”
“Tony is going to kill us,” Gabriel said.
“Hey, it’s accurate, isn’t it?” Ren said, with a sly smile. “We’ve got meatballs, and we’re still going to have some in buns. The traditional style, of course, and then that banh mi you were just talking about. And the stroganoff. Those are all balls in buns.”
“Somehow I don’t think that’s going to convince Tony to like the idea,” Gabriel said. But at the same time, he knew Tony would secretly—or maybe not so secretly—laugh his ass off about it.
“It’s a good thing we’re not really considered a ‘family destination,’” Ren said.
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “You might think you’re the prince of dirty talk, but before Tony settled down, he would’ve given you a real run for your money. He hooked up with everyone.”
“Hey, if a guy that looked as good as Lucas was interested, I’d think about it, too,” Ren pointed out.
“Liar,” Gabriel teased.
Ren flashed a smile. “I said I’d think about it, not that I’d actually go for it.”