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CHAPTERONE
APizza Cake was a terrible name for a restaurant.
Unfortunately, Kevin Hamill had come to that conclusion about twenty years too late, and now he was stuck with it.
The restaurant had belonged to his parents, and it was their pride and joy while they were alive. Kevin was a child when they died tragically, and his Uncle Al had taken over running the restaurant. When Kevin was old enough, Al taught him how to run the business and passed it on to him. Al stayed on for a few more years, but he’d left town this past winter to enjoy his retirement in a warmer climate.
Kevin was alone now, but that was all right.
Life was a lot less complicated that way.
At least, that’s what he told himself.
He had bigger problems to worry about than how lonely he was—like customers coming in thinking the restaurant was a bakery because of the name.
It wasn’t uncommon for someone to demand a dozen donuts or ask how much it would be for a birthday cake. After being in business for so long, Kevin had thought that everyone in town understood it was a pizza restaurant, but at least once a week he’d get someone who wanted to get some cupcakes or ask if they made giant novelty cookies.
He blamed his mother’s love of puns.
Her humor was all over the menu—Cheesus Crust, their specialty stuffed crust; Sausage A Beautiful Pie, a deluxe pie with three types of sausage; Cheese The Day, a pizza with a three cheese blend; and Hey Weirdough, a combination of pineapple, black olives, and mushrooms.
That had been his mother’s favorite.
Kevin missed his parents terribly, and he thought about them every day. It was hard not to when he ran their restaurant and lived in the old arcade in the back.
They’d been murdered right in front of Kevin…
No.
He didn’t want to think about that.
He had to go to work.
Getting there was easy at least, since all he had to do was walk out his front door, which was technically the old back door of the restaurant. The arcade had stopped being profitable over a decade ago, and Kevin had walled it off to create a large studio apartment for himself.
He’d kept most of the games, of course.
His red and white 1972 Chevy Cheyenne pickup truck was parked outside, a gift from his Uncle Al before he moved away. It was the same truck both his uncle and father had learned to drive in; Kevin had too when he was old enough. It had hundreds of thousands of miles on it and desperately needed some new paint, but it meant the world to him.
The truck and the restaurant were all he had left of his parents.
A house fire while he was in high school had claimed every photograph and personal memento, leaving him with nothing but memories. Even those were fading now, and it was hard to be thankful to have escaped with his life when he’d lost so much. He had trouble recalling his parents’ faces, the sound of his mother’s laugh, or his father’s smile.
Even Uncle Al got fuzzy sometimes, but at least he was only a phone call away.
Kevin thought about calling him then just to hear his voice, but he knew Al was working on getting a new phone right now and couldn’t be reached.
He hadn’t slept well, not that he ever did, and he was a bit more melancholy than usual today.
There was a hole inside of him, a void that no amount of lovers or booze had ever been able to fill, and he did his best to hide his depressing temperament. He didn’t want to be like this. He desperately wanted to benormal.
Kevin had always had the distinct impression that he wasn’t like other people. Even as he longed for connection, it had never felt right. He was missingsomething, a spark that everyone else seemed to have but him. He could fake his way through relationships using humor and charm, but he was still left feeling the same way every time it inevitably ended.
Hollow.
He wondered if he’d felt like this before his parents died, but he couldn’t remember. He’d become acutely aware of it in high school when even though he’d been popular and good at sports, he’d been miserable. No one had cared when he came out as gay, a blessing in such a small town, and he’d dated the one and only other queer boy in his class for almost two years. He should have been happy, but it had felt like a prison.
He’d hated playing football, he had loathed his superficial social circle, and his boyfriend had finally dumped him for being too distant.
