Lenny caught up with Nero by the back door. “You want me to work in the pizza kitchen with you?”
“If you like. You’re a good enough chef.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Nero chuckled, warming the room with a humour that was far too rare. “I meant that it would be entirely up to you what you did here. I could use the help with the food styling when we pull the basic menu together, but that don’t mean you have to work in the kitchen. I hear things too, and word is you were the best server Misfits had. They were gonna offer you a step up before shit hit the fan.”
That was one way of describing the clusterfuck Lenny’s life had become, and he couldn’t deny the buzz being out on the restaurant floor gave him. The kitchen had an adrenaline-laced energy all of its own, but he craved interaction, damn it, even if working at Nero’s side was an addiction he’d struggle to quit.
“Do you think the big bosses would go for it?”
“For you working here?” Nero nodded. “I’m pretty sure they’ll give you a job wherever you want, as long as there’s room, which there is here, ’cause as far as I know, ain’t no one works here yet ’cept me and Efe.”
“So you have taken the job?”
“Piss off. Here, stop your stirring and come look at the garden.” Nero opened the back door and shoved Lenny outside. “I’ll buy you dinner after if you can behave yourself long enough.”
Lenny glanced around the bizarre hipster café. “I can’t believe you talked me into coming back here.”
“Thought you said you hadn’t been here before?”
“I meant Camden in general.”
“Oh.” Nero poked suspiciously at the chocolate-marshmallow sundae he’d bought Lenny for his dinner. “I thought you were too hyped up from your sugar rush to care.”
He had a point. Months ago, Lenny had watched the Cereal Killer Café set up with eager anticipation, but life had moved him on before it had opened, and he’d forgotten all about it until Nero had gently coerced him off the Tube in Camden. “This is lush. Sure you don’t want to try it?”
“I’m good. There’s a tapas place round the corner. I’ll get something there.”
“Works for me.”
They left the cereal bar behind, bought Nero some spicy potatoes that seemed to cheer him up to no end, and drifted to a nearby park. They ate in companionable silence until Lenny noticed Nero’s scowl return. “What’s up? Still fretting about that bus?”
Outside the warehouse, they’d made plans for Nero to work on the abandoned bus while Lenny painted the walls, but he hadn’t seemed hopeful that he could get it running without having it towed. “A bit,” Nero admitted. “It’s going to take a lot of money to make it into something that pays for itself.”
“You don’t think the bosses will pay?”
“I don’t know if I want them to. I kinda . . . I think I want to do it by myself, maybe.”
“Okaaay.” Lenny scraped the last of his cereal-studded ice cream into his mouth. Urban Soul paid well above average wages, and Nero was about as senior as it got outside the holy trinity of men in charge. Add in the fact that rent on the flat above Pippa’s was minimal, and it wasn’t inconceivable that Nero had cash to throw at a derelict minibus. “So what’s stopping you?”
Nero shrugged. “I’m crap at making decisions. I’d probably fuck it up.”
The logic made no sense to Lenny. Nero never fucked anything up. He ran the kitchen with an iron fist, managed Lenny’s impromptu chef career, ran a million errands for Urban Soul every week, and— Ah. “You mean you’re shit at making decisions for yourself . . . because you spend your whole life running around after everyone else.”
“I like it that way. Keeps me out of bother.”
“How much bother could you get into with that old bus? It doesn’t even start.”
Nero shrugged again, and his nonanswer didn’t matter, because the bus was hardly the point. Beneath it all, Lenny was fairly sure Nero’s reluctance to take the project on alone stemmed from the fact that he didn’t believe he deserved the rewards it would bring.
“I think you should do it,” Lenny said. “Say it does go tits up, how bad could it be? You’ve lived through worse, right?”
“Lenny, mate, you won’t ever know what I’ve lived through.”
The sun always seemed to shine brighter in Shepherd’s Bush than it had in Camden, and this morning was no exception. Warm rays filtered through the half-closed curtains as Lenny dragged his teeth along Nero’s collarbone, absorbing the answering low moan that turned his bones to molten heat. Mornings weren’t Lenny’s best time of day, but he’d woken with Nero’s dick in his hand and there was nothing bad about that.
He worked his way to Nero’s chest, tracing the dark ink with his tongue. Nero shivered and arched into the touch, then rolled them over, baring his own teeth against Lenny’s neck.
