Chapter 6 Adam
SIX
ADAM
It was a bit of a relief when Skylar stopped coming into the bar for a while.
Adam didn’t have to exercise such constant willpower.
One more ask, and Adam would likely hand over his phone number.
Then he realized Skylar’s team was just on a road trip, and his nerves came back.
Skylar could show up at any moment, ready to bat his eyelashes and make Adam bend to his will.
He brought the puck with Skylar’s number on it up to his apartment and put the number into his phone, but didn’t send him a text.
It was like being back in high school again, sitting next to a hot hockey player in math class and getting flustered when he was nice to him. Brian had been Adam’s first heartbreak and had cemented the fact that athletes would treat you like shit the first opportunity they had.
If he was lucky, Skylar would get called up to the Northern Lights soon, and Adam would be able to move on with his life.
In the meantime, he pored over QuickBooks, trying to figure out how he was going to make sure he paid his vendors and his employees that month.
Adam was more involved in his older brother’s life after his death than he had been before it.
Heath had been nine years older than him, had a different mom, and had already gone off to college by the time Adam was in middle school.
And then, because of Grace, he never came home from Iowa.
Adam had watched from a distance as his older brother made a life for himself down here, opening a bar to support his kid and to have something that fulfilled him.
But Heath had a degree in business…something.
Marketing maybe. And Adam didn’t. His early twenties were filled with trying to get his bar band to achieve any semblance of success (which it had not) and flitting at the edge of commitment to a boyfriend who he sometimes thought might have been the one, if he hadn’t had to leave.
A handful of years into it, he thought he had the whole bar thing figured out. Then 2020 happened, and they nearly went under. Since then, he’d been gripping on with his fingernails.
Something had to give.
Tanner was back, though, healed and happy.
Adam had reassured several regulars that he hadn’t left for good and was only out for a few weeks.
Instead of barricading himself in the office to stare at his computer and move numbers around, he chose a table out in the bar.
It was a Wednesday. He wasn’t preventing anyone from finding a seat.
Was he out there because he knew Skylar was back in town and might stop by?
Of course not. It was just…better ambiance.
As the clock crept toward seven, he considered packing things in for the night.
Tanner and Willa had the bar covered. Trey, the security guard, would be there soon.
And then the front door of the bar opened, letting light from the streetlights in, haloing around the absolute puppy dog of a hockey player who wouldn’t stop nipping at his ankles.
And Adam could release the breath he was holding.
Adam had met few people who were as dazzlingly magnetic as Skylar. Rationally, he knew he shouldn’t get attached. Adam was a commitment guy. He didn’t want a fling. Skylar, future Minnesota hockey player, was only available for the foreseeable future. He could get called up at any moment.
Adam’s brain could work through the logic over and over, and then Skylar showed up, nearly glowing, his sharp cheekbones and blue eyes melting Adam’s brain, and all reason went out the window. It had been a long time since someone had pointed their attention Adam’s way, and it just felt good.
Skylar didn’t see him right away, but he had a couple new kids coats and a few pairs of mittens that he hung up on the coat tree before heading toward the bar.
Willa pointed Adam out over Skylar’s shoulder, and he watched as Skylar’s face went from contemplative to just…
happy. Willa whipped up two Shirley Temples, and Skylar made his way over to him, inviting himself to sit down and setting one of the drinks in front of Adam.
“Can’t decide if watching you bartend or watching you do business stuff on your laptop is sexier,” Skylar said, taking a sip of his drink.
“I could be doing anything on my laptop. I could be playing The Sims.”
“Let’s see your Sims, then.”
Adam spun his laptop around to show off QuickBooks, then spun it back.
“Barf.”
“You’re telling me.”
“So is this soda free?”
“Depends on whether you’ve scored a goal recently.” Adam knew he had. He had the excuse of Grace, who had become Adam’s Skylar Coburn Update Machine and told him a breakdown of all of Skylar’s games these days, but even if he didn’t, he googled him.
“Scored once, two assists on our roadie,” Skylar said. His face was bright until it fell. “Had a couple bad games too.”
“Grace told me you got ejected from a game.”
“Not my proudest moment. I yelled at a ref. They don’t like that. Neither did my coach.”
“How are you going to make it to the NHL if you’re yelling at refs?”
“I don’t know. It’s… When I’m on the ice, I just go.
I’m amped up. I don’t feel like I’m making decisions.
It’s hard to stay in control sometimes. Especially when shit gets bad.
” Somehow, Skylar looked small in the booth across from Adam, his broad shoulders folding in on himself.
Disappointment wafted off Skylar, and Adam wanted it to stop. He wanted Skylar to be happy again.
“Yeah, the soda is free,” Adam joked, trying to bring some levity back.
“Are you really working? Am I bothering you?”
“I am really working. You’re always bothering me.” He smiled at Skylar to let him know that it was a welcome annoyance.
“Okay. I’ll let you get back to it. But before I go, will you go out with me? To dinner or something? Or lunch if you like lunch more.”
Skylar was clearly flustered as he asked. Adam wasn’t used to flustering hockey players. What about him was flusterable?
“You’re too young for me,” Adam said truthfully. There were a thousand reasons to turn Skylar down, but that one was probably the best reason.
“Sure, but I’m a hockey player. We age fast.”
“That’s not how that works. That just means you’ll need joint surgery in your thirties instead of your sixties.”
“You don’t think I have more wisdom than the average twenty-five-year-old?”
“I’ve tried dating athletes before. It didn’t go well.”
“I’m different. Let me show you I’m different.”
“You’re leaving soon. You’d already be gone if it was up to you. That doesn’t sound different to me.”
Skylar chewed his lip. There was no arguing out of that one.
“Things don’t have to last forever to be good. And I like to work hard for what I want. I’m going to show you how hard I can work.”
He was so earnest, so intense. Adam couldn’t pretend any longer that he wasn’t interested in Skylar.
He was dodging bullets at this point. If Skylar kept trying, he’d get Adam, eventually.
Skylar had the look on his face that he had when he was on the ice.
Intense, focused. Even though this wouldn’t amount to anything, Adam was still going to file that look away for later.
“Even though I’m leaving, that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.”
“I’m not looking for fun.” It was the truth. He could stand to blow off some steam more often, but he reserved sex for one-night stands where he didn’t have to make a connection. Unfortunately, Skylar already felt like something to him. He was off the table.
“Tell me to stop bothering you and I will,” Skylar said, giving Adam the out that he ostensibly wanted.
But he couldn’t do it. Someday soon, Skylar would stop walking through the front door of his bar, but Adam didn’t want to be the reason he stopped. He pressed his lips together, keeping his mouth shut.
The tiniest smile curved up at the ends of Skylar’s mouth.
“I climb a couple of days a week out at Summit. Have you been there?”
Hope rose in Skylar’s eyes as he anticipated where Adam was going with it.
“The climbing gym?”
“Yeah.”
“I haven’t been there before, but I’ve been climbing.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow, noon-ish.” It wasn’t an invitation, but it wasn’t not an invitation either.
Hope resolved on Skylar’s face as pure joy.
He was so gorgeous that he could get the attention of anyone he wanted in Des Moines.
Those fucking cheekbones would be the death of Adam.
He wasn’t planning on getting attached, but he had to admit that Skylar was a pleasant distraction from his failing business.
“Then I’ll see you soon.”
“Sky,” Adam said, stopping Skylar as he extracted himself from the booth. “Thanks for bringing the coats and mittens.”
“I think it’s cool you do that,” Skylar said, nodding toward the coat tree, before taking his empty glass back to the bar and giving Willa what looked like a twenty.
Before he slipped back out the front door, he turned to give Adam a salute. Despite his best judgement, he gave Skylar a salute back.
He sipped the Shirley Temple in front of him. Even though he spent more time than was healthy in a bar, he’d never been a big drinker. No one he’d dated, in Iowa at least, had understood that. But Skylar did.
Climbing usually made Adam’s mind quiet. He could show up with a head full of anxiety and a body full of tension and leave feeling almost normal. That is, when Skylar wasn’t there, being the world’s greatest distraction.
“Didn’t realize you were friends with a Star,” said Jensen, one of Adam’s climbing friends.
Adam didn’t have many friends in Des Moines who weren’t patrons or adjacent business owners, but he had a couple of regular folks he climbed with, based more on their schedules than anything else.
Still, even if they weren’t having heart-to-hearts, Adam enjoyed spending time with Jensen and his wife, Christa.