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

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,”