Groaning, Paolo dropped into the nearest chair and buried his head in his hands. His memories of last night were fuzzy thanks to the bottle of Toni’s finest they’d sunk. He should’ve warned Luis that shit crept up on a man, but he’d been too busy kissing him.Idiot.He’s supposed to be able to trust you, not worry about you throwing yourself at him every time you have a beer together.
Reason told Paolo it hadn’t gone down that way. That it was Luis who’d made the first move. Luis who’d pushed him against the front door and kissed him. Luis who made his dick so hard it gave him a stomach ache. But as Paolo sat alone in the dark cafe, reason seemed a distant memory. All he could clearly recall was waking alone on the couch with the imprint of Luis’s mouth on his lips.
Damn fucking chianti.
With another groan, he hauled himself to his feet and finished up the jobs he’d neglected last night. At quarter to five, the delivery arrived with crates of bacon, sausages, eggs, and black pudding. The bakery lorry arrived next with the bread. And then the milkman, and the greengrocer with the mushrooms and tomatoes. Paolo signed for it all, then gazed around the kitchen. Putting the deliveries away by himself had been his normal until a few weeks ago, but he’d grown used to Luis helping, or sometimes even taking the task away from Paolo entirely.How did I ever manage without him?
The thought solidified the fear that he’d truly fucked up last night. If Luis freaked out and left, Paolo would be on his own again, and it scared him more than he cared to admit. Less work gave him more time to do the things that mattered, like keeping the accounts in order and visiting Toni and Nonna. Like sleeping and eating proper meals. Luis’s company mattered too. He didn’t talk much, but he didn’t have to. His quiet presence was a balm to Paolo’s noisy soul, and Paolo needed that in his life like he needed cold beer and hot coffee. More than that.
Despite waiting for the soft tap at the back door, when it came, Paolo jumped a mile. He set down the box of bacon he’d been ferrying to the fridge and opened the door.
Luis was stood where he usually stood, three feet back, as if he expected the door to be slammed in his face, half hidden by the shadows of the lingering night. A night that had ended with them kissing against a different door.
Stop it.
Paolo waved Luis inside. Luis passed him in a haze of fresh scented shampoo and man, and Paolo’s head spun, but he blamed the smouldering hangover at the base of his skull and ignored it. “Can you put the rest of this away? I need to brush down the grill.”
Luis nodded. “Sure.”
He reached for the bacon box Paolo had abandoned and took it to the fridge. Despite having a million and one things to do, Paolo didn’t move.
Luis came back and eyed him over the stack of boxes still cluttering the kitchen. “What’s up?”
“What?”
“You seem out of it. Hungover?”
“Little bit,” Paolo admitted. “What about you?”
“Not yet. Ask me at lunchtime.”
Luis’s grin was as quiet as the rest of him, and Paolo spent much of their time together chasing it down, needling Luis until he set it free, but in the growing light of the early morning, it wasn’t enough. Paolo was torn between wanting to punch him and kissing him again.
And again. And again.
He couldn’t remember why they’d stopped.
Lacking any brighter ideas, he decamped to the coffee machine and added an extra scoop of ground beans to a brew that was already rocket fuel. He made Luis a mug of tea and took it back into the kitchen. Luis was in the fridge, and lingering made Paolo feel like a creep.
He dumped it on the side and fled.
The morning slipped away, lost to the daily grind of prepping the cafe for the day and then opening the doors. Breakfast came and went. Luis bussed tables and ran the dishwasher with the silence and efficiency he always did, and it was as if nothing had happened. As if nothing had changed between them, and perhaps it hadn’t. A drunken kiss proved nothing save the fact they were both queer as fuck and horny when they’d had a drink. Who knew? Maybe they’d fuck next time they shared a beer.
Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe Luis would disappear after his shift like he’d done every day until yesterday and Paolo would never get to lay hands on him again.Maybe—
Paolo’s phone rang, cutting off the irrational chain of maybes having a rave in his wine-pickled brain. Blinking, he pulled it from his back pocket, and his heart sank. It was Nonna’s nursing home.Shit.
He abandoned the omelette he’d been making for him and Luis to share, slipped through the kitchen, and out of the back door. “Hello?”
“Hello, Paolo, it’s Janine from Elm Lodge. I’m just calling to let you know your nonna’s hip is giving her quite a lot of pain today. The doctor’s been in and had a look at her, and he thinks it’s best she pops into hospital to have another X-ray.”
“Shit. How is she? Does she know what’s going on?”
“A little, I think. I asked her if she was happy to go with the paramedics when they arrive to fetch her, and she said yes.”
Paolo sighed. “She’d say yes to anything these days. Probably thinks you’re taking her to Brighton for fish and chips. How long is the transport going to be?”
“An hour or so. Would you like me to text you when it gets here? Or are you going to come in?”
