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

from Portland, where the airport was. But he’d driven, because he thought he’d need the alone time to figure out how he was going to face this place.

He leaned against his car door and let his eyes drift across the busy streets. The cafes that he and Milo had shared so many meals in, the shops they’d browsed through, buying little trinkets and framed photos for the wall of the condo they’d shared in Portland.

He’d kept them all, but he couldn’t face displaying them, even two years after Milo had passed, so they were still sitting in boxes, stacked in the closet of the spare bedroom.

Someday, Sean had always promised himself, he’d unpack them and hang the pictures and set the driftwood and the blown glass pieces on his mantle and the coffee table.

Or maybe, he never would, not now. Not when he’d apparently moved on and hadn’t even realized it.

Guilt that Sean didn’t want to feel, guilt that he rejected, swamped him anyway.

It had been two days since he’d left Gabriel and Los Angeles, and he still wasn’t sure what the origin of the guilt was. Was it because Gabriel had told him he loved him and he hadn’t been able to say it back? Or was it because deep down, he’d felt a reciprocal feeling, and the very idea of moving on, of moving past Milo, was intolerable?

Must not have been too intolerable considering how tightly you were clinging to Gabe, his conscience supplied, even as he tried to silence it.

So he felt guilty about both, then. He regretted how much he’d hurt Gabriel. He regretted how easy it had been for him to fall into a new relationship with him.

How much he’d wanted it, even as he’d tried to claim otherwise.

Sean pushed away from the car. He’d come here, he might as well swallow down his pain and all this interminable guilt, and do what he’d come here to do.

Except, as he walked down the street towards the first set of shops and restaurants, a few blocks from the beach entrance, he still didn’t know what that was, exactly.

Was he asking whatever was left of Milo for forgiveness? Was he figuring out what he felt for Gabriel?

Maybe, Sean thought, staring in the window of the Celtic-themed store that Milo had adored, he should start by figuring out what he was even doing here.

“Sean!” Tara stuck her head out the open door. “I thought I saw it was you!”

He and Milo had spent so much time in this store, his husband deciding that despite all the clear indications otherwise, deep down he must be Irish, that they and the owner had become friends.

He hadn’t seen her since before Milo had died, the last time they’d come to the coast for a long weekend, staying in the family cabin that was usually available for them.

Sean wasn’t staying there this time; he wouldn’t be able to bear it. Milo’s mom, Lacy, was a wonderful lady, and he missed her, but he wasn’t sure he could face her. Surely she would be able to tell, just by looking at him, that he’d moved on, and he couldn’t do that to either of them.

Tara would have heard of Milo’s passing from Lacy, but he was still unprepared for her big, tight, undeniably fierce hug when he stepped into the shop.

“I heard about Milo, I am so sorry,” she said, her voice thick even though it had been four years.

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