On a Roll by Beth Bolden (free ebook novel .txt) 📗

heart twist in his chest—even as he reminded himself that none of this meant anything. Sean had been as straightforward as possible, and in taking him up on his offer, Gabe had agreed to abide by that rule. They were just going to have sex. That was all.

It was the last thing he wanted to do, but Gabriel pushed himself upright. Away from Sean. Cuddling after sex? Probably not something friends with benefits did. He couldn’t imagine Ren doing that with any of his hookups. And that, he realized, as much as he loathed the idea, was going to have to be his litmus test: what would Ren do?

“Where are you going?” Sean wondered.

Suddenly Gabriel wasn’t sure. He wanted to do the right thing, whatever that was, but even though he’d promised Sean a second round, it was way too early for that. Would it be weird to say he was hanging around until that was possible?

“Um,” Gabriel said. “I wasn’t . . . I don’t know what you want to do.”

Ren had told him to be confident. To set the parameters. To not give too much. To not take too much.

The problem was that Gabe wanted it all.

“What I want is a quesadilla,” Sean announced, sitting up too. “You want a quesadilla?”

It was definitely not what Gabriel had expected him to say, but food was always a good answer to unsolvable problems. “Uh, sure?”

“Good,” Sean said. He stood up, unapologetically, gloriously naked. Gabriel had wanted to get him naked more than he’d wanted to take his next breath, and now he wanted to keep getting him naked. He glanced around. “Where’s my briefs?”

Gabriel grinned. “You weren’t wearing any, which, let me just say, was a very nice surprise for me.”

“I figured, why waste time?” Sean said with a laugh. He opened a drawer on the big, turquoise dresser in the corner, and pulled out a pair, tugging them on.

“I’m glad we were on the same page,” Gabriel said. He reached down, finding his own boxers in the tangle of his clothes on the floor.

“Let’s go make a quesadilla,” Sean said, and sounded so goddamn excited about the concept that Gabriel didn’t even argue, just followed him like a lovesick idiot back through the living room and into the kitchen.

Sean flipped on the light and it glinted off the golden strands in his hair, tucked between the lighter brown. Gabriel reached over and ruffled it. “I didn’t realize how blond you were.”

“Just in the summer,” Sean said, his voice muffled as he was deep in the fridge, pulling out ingredients haphazardly and setting them on the counter. “All that sun, you know. Especially since I moved to LA.”

“Why did you move to LA?” Gabriel asked as he watched Sean grab a frying pan from the rack hanging above the stove. For a small townhouse, Sean’s kitchen was surprisingly bright and well laid out. His own kitchen at the loft he shared with Ren was not nearly as nice as this one.

“Well, like I said the other night, I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to stay on the West Coast, and let’s face it,” Sean said, shooting him a lopsided grin, “Seattle wasn’t really an option. Plus, second best place for food trucks, other than Portland, is Los Angeles.”

“Why not Seattle?”

“More rain than Portland? No, thank you,” Sean said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great city, at least to visit. But to live? I wanted a little more sun in my life.”

“Nobody could blame you for wanting that.” Gabriel could only imagine how gray and dismal the years after Milo’s death must have seemed to Sean. He couldn’t blame him for chasing the sun. “You need any help?”

“If you can find the salsa, I think I forgot to grab it,” Sean said as he drizzled oil into the skillet and slid a tortilla in, covering it liberally with cheese.

“Cheese? Salsa?” Gabriel teased as he pulled open the fridge door and poked around, finally unearthing a tub of pico de gallo. “What would Health Food Nut and Wrap God Sean say to that?”

“I serve things that aren’t healthy,” Sean protested.

“No,” Gabe said. “You serve salad dressed up in a shell that resembles salad more than it does any kind of delicious carb-like item.”

Sean flipped the quesadilla with so much confidence Gabriel knew he’d done it a hundred times. A thousand. He’d clearly won the jackpot and was lucky enough to be privy to a very common post-work routine for Sean.

“I know you like my wraps,” Sean said, and he was still smiling. “You can pretend all you want. Sometimes you can’t eat another garlic butter-slathered roll loaded with cheese.”

“Sometimes,” Gabriel admitted with a laugh. “You know,” he added, patting his (mostly) flat belly, “I gotta stay hot for the guys who are desperate to get me naked.”

“And who are these guys?” Sean asked, arching an eyebrow as he slid the beautifully crisp and browned tortilla, melty cheese leaking out of the sides, onto a plate. “I wasn’t aware that there was a queue. Unless we’re counting Ren’s queue as your own.”

“We’re not,” Gabriel said, taking the plate from Sean. He dumped a good spoonful of pico on the quesadilla, and then drizzled it with another squeeze bottle he’d found in the fridge.

“What is that?” Sean exclaimed as he started the next quesadilla cooking. “Did you just ruin my beautiful meal by pouring ranch all over it?”

“Fun story: ranch is delicious with tortillas and cheese,” Gabriel proclaimed.

Sean just shook his head. “And here I thought you were some kind of purist.”

“I’m Italian, baby, not Mexican,” he reminded him.

Sean rolled his eyes, but the corners of his mouth were still upturned in a smile. Like he couldn’t quite help himself. “You’re ridiculous,” he said.

“Ridiculously brilliant,” Gabe said. He sat down on one of the barstools across from the stove, and dug into the quesadilla. It was the perfect salty-crunchy combination. Why had he never considered quesadillas as the ideal post-coital snack?

Probably because