Chapter 20
TWENTY
ADAM
Adam wouldn’t describe his parents’ house as having fallen into disrepair, but…he wasn’t sure how else to describe it. It had been years since he’d been here. His folks usually came down to Iowa for a visit now that they were retired.
The lightbulbs in the garage were all burnt out. The storm door facing the backyard screeched when you opened it. You had to flush the upstairs toilet in a very specific way if you didn’t want it to run. The walkway up to their front door was dangerously icy.
He spent the first couple of days with his parents doing some neglected shoveling, chipping up slippery patches of ice, and doing a little maintenance on their snowblower.
In the evenings, he tackled the smaller indoor projects.
He loved his parents, and he knew he got his own hesitancy to ask for help directly from the two of them. Still, he wished they’d asked.
“Your father has a doctor’s appointment in the morning,” his mom told him as they stood around the kitchen as she made dinner.
His dad was in the living room watching a police procedural, and his mom was practically whispering.
Her hair was shorter and grayer than the last time he saw her, but her soft, warm face was the same.
Heath hadn’t been her own son, but she had always been welcoming of him, and her home was filled with plenty of photos of both Adam and Heath.
“His back is not doing so great, honey.”
“I can see that,” Adam said, thinking of the lurching way his dad had been moving around the house.
“He has a cane, but he’s too embarrassed to use it.” His mom shook her head and stirred the soup she was making. Adam had helped her make biscuits earlier between shoveling and a quick run to Menard’s to get garage lightbulbs.
“Do you need me to go with?”
“No, thank you, sweetheart. I know you need to get back to the bar.”
For the first time, Adam’s heart ached to have to go home. His home in Iowa. If he was here, he could be useful. Clearly, his parents needed more help than he realized.
“I’m going to figure out more times to come up here, all right?
” He hadn’t told them about Skylar yet. He thought he would, but seeing his parents struggle reorganized his priorities.
Maybe next time he came up, his parents could meet Sky.
“I’ve been thinking about moving back after Grace and I sell the bar. ”
He’d covered the state of Heathens the night before over dinner, thinking it would be difficult news to break, especially to his dad. Heath was his son, after all. But they were kind. They saw how much work Adam and Grace put into it. They understood it was time to turn over a new leaf.
“Don’t move here on account of us. I know you have a whole life down there now.”
“Not as much as you’d think, after ten years.”
“Your father and I would love to have you back up here.”
“Thanks, Mom. And that way I can come shovel or help with some other chores more often.”
“We are getting along fine,” she said stubbornly. In classic Midwestern-mom tradition, she lived the saying “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
“Then I’ll show up for dinner sometimes.” It was hard arguing with his parents, who had as much pride as he did. It was good to get a taste of his own medicine sometimes.
His folks went to bed even earlier than Adam wanted to, so he took himself out for late-night ice cream at the year-round Dairy Queen in his parents’ neighborhood. He hit the drive-thru for an Oreo Blizzard and parked in the parking lot to eat it alone.
Adam had a text conversation with Skylar that felt like it had neither a beginning nor an ending. He sent off a selfie with his ice cream and got one back of Skylar out to dinner with a few of his teammates. Not a good time for a phone call.
That was okay. Roadies were busy and chaotic, and they were squeezing in as much time for each other as they could.
Skylar was obsessed with voice notes, and it had taken Adam a while to feel like…
why wasn’t he just leaving a voicemail? But Skylar asked little of him, and if he wanted to hear Adam’s voice in the same spot as where they kept their text messages, he would.
He took another bite of his Blizzard and watched cars pass by on the main road.
It was always strange to come back to the town he grew up in.
He wasn’t one to get wistful much, but if it was going to happen anywhere, it was here, where he remembered getting his car stuck in a ditch on a snowy morning before school senior year.
This was the Dairy Queen his soccer team always went to after Sunday afternoon games.
His first kiss had been in the Rainbow Foods grocery store in the cookie aisle, in his days of being a hockey player’s dirty little secret.
Now he was a different hockey player’s…something else.
He was trying to let his brain decompress before going back to his parents’ place for one more night when his phone rang. It was Grace, a photo of her when she was probably about nineteen judging from the teal hair she had then, popping up on his screen.
“Is something wrong with the bar?” He and Grace didn’t normally call to chat. It was usually because whatever they had to say was too much work to type out.
“Kind of. Not really. I have some bad news. Are you… Is this an okay time?”
“I’m sitting in my truck, alone, parked, eating ice cream. What happened?”
“Adam, I’m so sorry. Gil passed away this morning.”
Adam’s stomach dropped out, his mind going in a thousand directions.
Obviously, the loss of his friend. He thought about Ron, Gil’s husband, who he’d left behind.
The community Gil had spearheaded at Heathens.
Of course, he knew instantly that meant they wouldn’t be selling the bar to him and Ron, but he wasn’t worried about that.
“Fuck,” Adam said, trying not to cry. Gil and Ron were older, senior citizens for sure. But they both seemed like they still had gas in the tank. “What happened?”
“They don’t know. He passed in his sleep last night. Ron came by this evening after a couple of regulars called them, wondering where they were, and told us. He stayed for about half an hour before he had to leave.”
Adam’s heart clenched. He took a shaky breath.
“I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. I’ll have to get in touch with Ron. I want Heathens to host his wake. On us. On me,” he clarified.
“On us,” Grace corrected.
“On us,” Adam agreed. He vowed to work hard to find a buyer for the bar who would give them both a good nest egg as they moved forward.
“We’ll do catered subs or something. Free pop.
Maybe a deal on alcohol so it’s pretty much at cost. I don’t want to feel like we’re making money off of this.
I know it was a special place for Gil and Ron.
” The people who showed up in your life every day became important, even if Adam hadn’t foreseen it. They were facing the end of an era.
“I’ll make some calls tomorrow morning,” Grace said.
“Thanks for the call. I feel really fucking guilty I’m not there.”
“You can’t wait around because something might happen here.
Gil and Ron were both so happy you were visiting Skylar.
They both loved him. He spoiled them.” Skylar promised them after their first conversation that he’d hook them up with hockey tickets, and he made sure to send them to a handful of games, even after he got called up.
“He has a good heart.”
“He’s going to be sad to hear.”
“He is.” Adam didn’t want to be the one to pass along the bad news, but who else would? It was his job. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you.” The two of them weren’t the type to tell each other that they loved each other, but in the face of death, he couldn’t hang up without saying it.
“Love you too. Get some sleep.”
He ended the call and stuck his Blizzard cup in his cupholder, slumping in his seat.
Grief, he knew from experience, was fucking weird, and as the news about Gil sank in, the hole Heath’s death had ripped in his heart frayed open again, the pain of each loss echoing against each other.
He felt like he’d just gotten a bit of control over his grief back, and here it was again, loose inside his body, ready to knock into everything.
He grabbed a couple of fast-food napkins from his glove box to wipe the tears that were falling down his cheeks and into his beard. He sent off a quick text to Skylar.
Adam
Hey, I’ve got something serious to tell you. Wanna do it over the phone. Sorry this sounds so dramatic.
Skylar
Just getting back from dinner. Give me five.
Adam scraped the last of his Blizzard out of his cup as he waited for Skylar’s call. He FaceTimed.
“Hey, babe,” Skylar said, his voice soft and careful. He was sitting on his hotel bed, headboard behind him, shirt unbuttoned at the neck. “What’s wrong?”
“I got some bad news from Grace. Gil passed away this morning.”
“Fuck, Adam,” Skylar said, the news clearly worse than he was expecting. Adam watched him tear up, and his own tears eagerly came back. “Oh my God, baby, I’m so sorry.”
Now that Skylar was there—or as close to being there as he could be, from Canada—Adam’s tears started flowing. He was used to reserving any crying for when he was alone, not the other way around. “I really fucking wish you were here.”
“I want that too,” Skylar said. “I want to hold you.”
“Right now, it’s enough to see you. Talk to you.” He grabbed another napkin from his glove box, leaving it open this time. He was going to deplete the entire napkin collection.
When Heath died, he’d held his grief to himself. His parents lost their son. Grace lost her dad. Adam’s relationship crumbled as he changed everything about his life. And he’d dealt with it all on his own.
Now, things felt lighter. He had someone to share the load with.
Skylar kept up the conversation, telling him all of his favorite things about Gil, before transitioning into talking about the Western Canada trip he was on.
His voice was soothing. When Skylar had shown up in his bar, cocky and annoying, Adam never imagined the two of them would ever share a moment like this, where Adam was emotionally ripped to pieces and Skylar was holding all of those pieces so gently. He was so grateful for this man.
He cried until he couldn’t anymore, and he and Skylar said good night. Adam stopped on the way home to get an ice-cold bottle of water from a gas station and chugged it. Skylar made him promise not to let himself get dehydrated.
The bedroom he was staying at in his parents’ house was once his, but now it was mostly a storage room.
Impersonal. It was a bit too much like his own apartment.
He climbed into the twin bed with his heavy heart.
He didn’t think he’d feel the pull back to Iowa so strongly, but now, he wanted to be with Grace, Ron, and the rest of his employees and patrons.
As much as he’d tried to avoid it, Iowa was home.