On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [60]
It was believable; after a hectic dinner service with a fully booked restaurant, they were all knackered. For Frankie and his fellow line cooks, that often manifested as being wired, too high on the adrenaline rush of finishing tickets and banging out a complete service to go straight home to bed.
Especially when that bed was empty.
Frankie sighed. Jess had started cutting back on his hours at Market and getting involved with summer classes and photography clubs and other school-related things. NYU started in a little over a month, and the closer it got, the more Frankie was uncomfortably aware of the incongruity between the way he lived his life, and the life unfolding in front of Jess.
This was only a problem when they were apart. When they were together, Frankie was generally too happy to bother much about the future. But when Jess was off with his college friends, being an upstanding young member of society somewhere out of Frankie’s sight, well, that was when Frankie started to think.
Thinking was a pisser. He tried to avoid it as much as possible, but in the early morning hours before daylight filtered through the grime-coated skylight in his tiny one-room attic loft, jokingly called the Garret, Frankie couldn’t help but wonder how much longer he’d have with Jess before the younger man sussed out that there were legions upon legions of better men than Frankie with whom to dally.
For instance, Wes Murphy, the kitchen’s new extern who was about Jess’s age, single, and charming. Wes and Jess had struck up an aggravatingly fast friendship.
When their schedules meshed and both Jess and Frankie worked the same night, more often than not, they hit Chapel afterward. Those nights, Jess spent half his time with Wes. Granted, Frankie was usually on stage with his punk band, Dreck, and Jess was in the audience being a right fanboy, but still. Wes was there beside him, close enough to touch.
“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Grant demanded, shocking Frankie back into the here and now.
“I am,” Frankie lied. “You’re on about Christian and why it’s a bad thing to have a bloody fantastic bartender coming to work here.”
Grant threw up his hands. “Never mind. I know you think I’m being stupid. Just . . . whatever. Forget about it, Frankie.”
With that, he stalked off, still shaking his head. Frankie watched him go with that squirmy feeling in his gut that told him he could’ve handled that better. Ah, well, you can’t win them all, as Frankie’s da used to say.
Shrugging it off, Frankie pointed himself toward the kitchen, intending to take care of the rest of his mise en place. A happy voice calling his name stopped him.
“Frankie! Hey!”
Joy bloomed in his heart. “Jess! Didn’t know you were on today,” Frankie said, turning in time to catch the bundle of slender, long-limbed young man that barreled into his arms.
“I wasn’t,” Jess mumbled into Frankie’s neck. “I switched with Kristen. Just felt like I hadn’t seen you in forever. You’re out when I get home, or I’m asleep already when you come in.”
“It’s been a bad run,” Frankie agreed, letting his arms relearn the wondrous heft and weight of Jess’s warm, wriggling body.
“I’m thinking about quitting the photography club,” Jess admitted. “It takes up so much time.”
Time I could be spending with you. Jess didn’t say it, but Frankie heard it on the air as clear as a bell.
Pulling back gently, he said, “Might want to think twice about that, Bit. Making friends in your club, aren’t you?”
Jess refused to be pushed away, nudging back into Frankie’s arms with a contented sigh. “Sure, but they won’t stop being my friends if I quit the club. We’ll have classes together once the semester starts, probably have to do projects and stuff.”
In other words, they’d only be postponing the inevitable.
“You’re here now,” Frankie said, taking the coward’s way out and avoiding the conversation. “Want