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

eyes distressed. “Hey, Alexis told me that you found it. You okay?”

“Ren and I did, yeah,” Gabriel said. He reached for Sean’s hand, and to his surprise, Sean met him halfway, giving his fingers a reassuring squeeze.

“Lennox is gonna make sure this never happens again,” Sean said.

“Don’t tell Ash that,” Gabriel warned. “He’s really upset that Lennox is the guy Tony is hiring to take care of it.”

They watched as Lennox looked over the scene, carefully touching the still-wet paint with the pad of his finger. His expression was normally difficult to read, but today, it was an impenetrable mask.

“You really think so?”

“Yes,” Sean said with quiet confidence. “Yes, he is.”

Gabriel searched for something he could say to distract from his own distress. Not let it leak over to Sean. “You think if Tony hires Lennox, he’ll be able to find out if Lennox is his first name or his last?”

Sean chuckled under his breath. “Oh, I bet he will.”

“Ugh, of course.” It was stupid to be disgruntled about that, when their safe space had been invaded.

“Or maybe not,” Sean said thoughtfully. “Lennox is practically a mystery in human form. You think he’d give the goods up that quickly? That easily?”

“Maybe you’re right.” Gabriel shot him a quick grin. “I bet it’ll drive Tony crazy if he doesn’t find out.”

“That’ll be fun to watch,” Sean said. He hesitated. Squeezed Gabriel’s hand again. “It was nice to wake up next to you this morning.”

“It was nice you didn’t kick me out. Sorry I fell asleep on you.” He’d apologized for falling asleep so early this morning, but he did it again, because he did feel a little guilty about that.

“We were both tired,” Sean said, dismissing the apology with a casual wave of his hand. “Maybe a repeat tonight?” He sounded so hopeful that Gabriel’s heart leapt. He wanted, more than anything, for Ren to be wrong. This wasn’t going to be a disaster; it was going to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

———

Gabriel wasn’t all that surprised that the next evening, the normal Saturday night event at the lot, turned into something a lot bigger. A lot of the owners must have told their friends and invited them to come out for the band that was playing—and they must have invited their friends too.

It was packed, and there was a supportive smile wherever he looked.

The tables were all occupied, more people spilling into the grassy area between the seating area and the semi-circle of food trucks. There was even a crowd towards the front, by the stage Tony had had built for the bands that played weekly.

But the one table that wasn’t occupied was the one that had been vandalized. Instead of cleaning it off, Lucas had taken one look at the still-drying paint and had said only three words: “Could’ve used glitter.”

Tony had stared at him, and Lucas had shrugged. “We all enjoy sucking dick, don’t we?” he’d asked, like it wasn’t intended to be an insult, scrawled across their property. “I don’t intend to pretend otherwise.”

“Do you really . . .” Tony’s voice had dropped low, so low that Gabriel, setting out his bins of plasticware and napkins for the day, had barely been able to hear him. “Do you really think we should keep it? I was going to clean it, and if that didn’t work, throw it away. We don’t need a constant reminder that someone invaded our safe space.”

“But it happened,” Lucas said firmly. “We can’t pretend it didn’t. We should own it.”

Gabriel had turned away, uncomfortable by the intimacy in the gaze shared by his two friends as they embraced.

He was also not surprised when the next time he saw the table, the words hadn’t been scrubbed off, but were permanently adhered with a thick layer of glitter, with a few bright rainbows up and down the legs. Rainbows that matched the style of the ones that Lucas liked to doodle on the blank toes of his Converse.

“Looks good.”

Gabriel glanced up and Sean was standing there, his eyes glued to the table and its subtle sheen in the firelight, sitting in its place of honor.

“I was surprised, I guess,” Gabriel said, “but it makes sense.”

Sean shrugged. “I was lucky enough that when I came out, my mom didn’t care. I think she even knew before I did that I was gay.”

“I wasn’t even the first person in my family to come out,” Gabriel said. “My brother, Luca, did first. Shocked the hell out of Nonna, but she recovered. Thank God, too, because then I did, and then Marco, our youngest brother.”

“And Ren, of course,” Sean said in a teasing voice, like he knew that him mentioning Gabe’s cousin in this context would bother him. But Gabriel knew now that Sean had never been interested in Ren—except to drive him crazy enough to give in.

“Ren was scandalizing everyone forever,” Gabe said. “I think he enjoys it.”

It had never occurred to Gabriel that, for Ren, it was about anything else other than enjoying himself and life, but after their conversation yesterday morning, he had to wonder. Had someone broken his cousin’s heart, and he’d never realized it?

Had nobody ever realized it?

He thought about asking Ren, but it was clear from what he’d said that he wouldn’t talk about it.

“Someday,” Sean said, smiling as he took a few steps closer to Gabe, “someday he is gonna meet someone who makes him reconsider everything.”

Gabriel couldn’t help but think Ren had already met the person who’d made him reconsider everything. But he didn’t want to betray his cousin’s confidence, so he just nodded. “Yeah, that’s gonna be a day,” he said.

“Lennox was prowling around right as it was getting dark,” Sean said, changing the subject. “Did you see him?”

Gabriel nodded. He had, off and on all day. And he’d seen some of what had to be Lennox’s employees, all in seemingly identical dark suits, prowling around, checking the cameras that they’d been putting up around the