Nero chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth. Did you finish your painting?”
“Not yet. Might get it done tomorrow if you’re okay to get back in the kitchen.”
“I was okay to be in the kitchen today.”
“Liar.”
Nero’s grumbling reply faded away. For a while Lenny thought him asleep until he sighed softly and opened his eyes. “Everything’s about to change.”
“I know.” Disquiet threatened the tranquil calm that always came with being in Nero’s arms. “I’ve been in a bit of a bubble here, but it won’t be like that commuting to Vauxhall, will it?”
“Depends what role you decide to take on, but it can’t be worse than schlepping into Covent Garden every day like I did when I was at Pink’s. Twatty businessmen everywhere. Dick bags.”
Lenny laughed. Nero seemed to enjoy early mornings, but his ingrained dislike of the general population was something else. “You hate everyone.”
“Do not. And it won’t matter anyway if we move to Vauxhall.”
“‘We’?”
Nero raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m going without you?”
“Erm, no?”
Nero’s scowl was terrifying and heart-warming all at once.
Tears stung Lenny’s eyes. He blinked them away and tried to focus on the other source of his uncertainty. “Work-wise, I think I’d like to help Jake, if he’ll have me. I like waiting tables, but I kinda promised myself when I quit uni that I’d do something with my art.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Couldn’t, I guess. I shut it down when . . . he was around. I wanted to be invisible, and it was like all facets of my self-expression stopped working. I had different-coloured hair every week before all that shit . . . makeup, bright clothes. My old workmates at the club used to call me a chameleon and sing Boy George at me every time I came into work.”
“If you want serenading, you’ll have to ask Cass. I ain’t no singer.”
“And you like the quiet too much. But that’s been good for me. I lived my life at a million miles an hour before I came here, and it blurred by so fast I missed it all.”
Nero combed his fingers through Lenny’s hair again. “I get that, ’cause I feel the same in reverse, I s’pose. I’d forgotten how to see colour before you came along and trashed my living room. You even brightened up my food.”
Lenny knew Nero well enough to know how much the last statement meant. “Does this mean you’ve come around to building sculptures out of pea shoots?”
“Fuck no, but I can’t imagine a world without watching you do it.”
It was as close to a compromise as Nero ever got when it came to cooking, and in a week or so it wouldn’t matter. Nero would be manning the pizza oven at TST and Lenny would be . . . well, who knew? Their days of bickering over the chargrill at Pippa’s were numbered, and though it had been the last thing Lenny had imagined himself doing when Cass had offered him the lifeline, lying in bed with Nero now, he couldn’t have been more thankful.
Because being with Nero was all there was, and all there would ever be.
The following week passed in a blur of dashing between the old kitchen and the new as Nero prepared to hand Pippa’s back to Jimbo and take his place at TST. And in the first week of September, Lenny said good-bye to working at Pippa’s too, and took on his new job as Jake’s assistant. Commuting from the flat, his new role exhausted and excited him in equal measure, and the renewed spark in his hypnotic eyes kept Nero’s head above water as the launch night for TST fast approached.
God, I’m tired. But they all were, even Tom, usually so unflappable and cool. “How are you going to prepare the calzones if the grate trays don’t arrive in time?”
Nero shrugged. “Have to buy some from the wholesalers up the road, won’t we?”
Tom’s jaw twitched. “Why didn’t we do that in the first place? I don’t understand how we’ve ended up panic-ordering equipment two days before opening.”
“Because we didn’t know the ovens would be too hot to cook calzones on the stone. They take longer than pizzas so they’re burning on the bottom, and it ain’t like we can turn the stone down, is it?”
“Are you trying to piss me off?”
“No, but you told us not to buy stuff from the cowboys up the road, so what do you want me to do?”
