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

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