Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
ADAM
Adam spent most of All-Star break basking in Skylar. It had been a dozen years since he last fell in love, and he’d forgotten how intoxicating it was. No matter what else was on his mind, Skylar always floated to the top, elbowing other ideas out of the way.
He was grateful Grace understood and gave him leeway. Actually, she encouraged it. He knew she wanted him to have someone—a partner. Someone to talk to who wasn’t her, an employee, a regular, or a fellow climber.
Now that Skylar was back up with his team, it was back to real life.
Grace’s stepdad, Alan, had graciously offered to help write a business report and run them through getting ready to sell.
They’d spent the afternoon at Grace’s apartment, and Adam watched with a great deal of jealousy as Alan baby-stepped them through this process that felt like walking across hot coals to Adam.
He didn’t know how Alan could be so confident, but Alan wanted to be a businessperson.
His sporting goods store in town was doing well, and while he wasn’t without struggle, when it came, he thrived on it.
“I’m going to reach out to my broker and see if they can help you get moving on this,” Alan said.
Adam felt like he’d gone through a meat tenderizer.
Even the word broker felt like too much for his brain to handle.
“In the meantime, get the place looking as nice as you can for as little as you can. You might not get much out of this, but I think you’ll get something. ”
It would be nice to sell a failing business for a lot of money, but Adam and Grace were realistic.
They were selling so that they weren’t tempted to decimate their personal finances in order to save it, not to make a quick buck.
Now that Ron was no longer interested without Gil, Adam wasn’t concerned with the legacy of Heathens ending.
He and Alan headed out to leave Grace and Michael to date night, and when Adam made it back to the bar, he realized he didn’t want to go up to his empty apartment.
For ten years, he had been fine living there alone, but now he knew what it was like to have Skylar’s dirty socks on his bedroom floor.
The pillowcase didn’t smell like him anymore.
Adam had been alone for a long time, but he’d never felt lonely.
Good thing that he, for the time being, owned a bar.
Willa and Tanner were closing tonight, and they would do fine on their own, but Adam needed the distraction. The Northern Lights game was just starting, and when Willa saw him come in, she flipped the channels on most of the TVs over to the game.
“Don’t mind me. I’m going to do some inventory and probably clean the bathrooms,” he told the two of them. It was a Wednesday night, and there were a handful of people sitting in booths, with one lone person at the bar.
He recognized most of them. Regulars. But then his eye caught on someone he wasn’t expecting to see. Beck, sitting in the booth closest to the entry, across from someone Adam didn’t recognize.
He grabbed a paper boat of pretzels and headed over. Sure, maybe he’d been prickly about Beck when he thought he had some proprietary feelings about Skylar, but after Beck showed up at Gil’s wake, he realized Beck wanted the best for Skylar, and so did Adam.
“Hey, man,” Adam greeted, putting the pretzels down between the two men in the booth.
“Hey. Figured we’d come see Burnsie’s game here. Chase hasn’t been here yet, and after all of Skylar’s yapping, I figured he needed to.”
“Chase McCoy,” the other man said, salt and pepper in his hair, fit for a guy who was clearly older than him and Beck. His face was all angles, which contrasted with the roundness in Beck’s face. “I was Skylar’s coach when he was a Star.”
“Coach McCoy,” Adam said, shaking his hand. “That sounds familiar. Welcome. Doing all right on drinks?”
“We’re good,” Beck said. “Thanks for the pretzels.”
“No prob. I’ll let you two enjoy.”
He and Beck may have buried the hatchet, but it wasn’t like they had a wealth of conversational topics to work their way through.
He wondered how common it was for players to hang out with their coaches, though.
Adam kept one eye on the TV as he checked that the bar was fully stocked, poured drinks for some folks, and made sure that the tips people gave him went to Willa and Tanner.
They knew he and Grace were selling. He wished he could provide stable employment for everyone forever, but that wasn’t how life worked.
If they got new jobs before they sold, Adam would understand.
He cleaned the bathrooms, then ended up in the office. There was a TV on the wall in there since it doubled as the break room, and Adam flipped it to the game. He was still figuring out hockey. As soon as he found Skylar on the ice, he was gone, the shift change not caught on camera.
He tidied up the office, finally filing a stack of papers he’d let collect for months.
He threw out dead pens and sticky notes with reminders written on them from months ago.
All of the minor tasks he took for granted.
The bar had never been his dream, but it had been the last ten years of his life. He would miss it.
When the second period ended, he couldn’t justify his loitering any longer. Beck and Coach McCoy had left. The meager crowd they’d had had dwindled to just a few folks.
When Skylar left, Adam told him it would be tolerable because it was temporary. However, he was finding that being apart was not tolerable at all.
But it meant that Adam wanted something. That was a new feeling. He headed back upstairs, and for the first time in years, he picked up his acoustic guitar and sat on the couch to noodle around on it.
“Two more weeks until playoffs start,” Skylar said, gloriously bare-chested over their FaceTime call. He had a light sheen of sweat on his skin from the orgasm they had just shared over the distance, and Adam wanted to bury his face in Skylar’s armpit. “We’re close to clinching.”
Adam knew enough to know that meant close to getting a spot in the playoffs. The post-All-Star-break locker room was fired up and ready to win and sounded like a serious place to be.
Skylar fit right in.
“You’ll make it.”
“Will you come to a game? If we make it to the playoffs?”
“Of course I will. You’d play at least two in Minnesota, right? I’d come up for both.”
Skylar smiled as though he hadn’t already known what Adam’s answer would be.
“And then after playoffs end, I can come down to Des Moines for however long it takes to sell the bar.”
Guilt ripped through him at the thought of asking Skylar to come back down for an indefinite amount of time.
“I hope we can sell before then.”
“Regardless, we can still look for a place in Minnesota. My two-way contract is up at the end of the year. This summer I’ll sign a one-way contract. Two years, maybe three. Casual conversations about it have started.”
“Not longer?”
“I’ll sign a short one now, with a low salary. When it’s up, hopefully they’ll think I’m worth more, and I can lock in a longer contract at a higher rate.”
“You will.” Skylar was an easy person to have confidence in.
“Nothing guarantees I’ll get to stay in Minnesota forever, though.”
“Trades.” Grace had prepared him for trades. They could happen at almost any time. They were post-trade deadline that season, so Skylar would finish out the season with the Northern Lights.
“Yeah.”
Adam could see it in his eyes. How badly Skylar needed the reassurance of his commitment.
“You won’t be leaving me behind. If you get traded, we get traded,” Adam said. Minnesota was convenient because his parents lived up there, but if Skylar got traded, he could still visit them.
“Sorry to make you spell it out like that. We don’t have to worry about it now.”
“We’ll get a place in Minnesota and take it from there.”
It was late, post-game. Skylar was in St. Louis, happy from a win, an orgasm, and a proclamation of love and commitment. Adam didn’t want to bum him out by how much difficulty they were having trying to find a buyer for Heathens. It had been weeks, and they hadn’t had a single bite.
They had already had conversations about just closing it down.
Now that he and Grace had decided, they were both antsy for the rest of their lives to start. Grace and Michael had taken a few days to go scope out apartments in Vegas. She’d also applied to community college out there.
Plus, they genuinely did not have the funds to stay open for much longer.
“How about you stay in the playoffs for as long as you can, and I’ll meet you up in Minnesota when we get the bar stuff wrapped up.”
“Deal.” Skylar beamed.
“How’s therapy?”
“Good, I think. I thought we’d just cover sports stuff, but apparently she believes in a ‘holistic approach,’ so she’s heard all about how beautiful you are.”
Adam couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not sure that’s what you should be covering in therapy.”
“It helps my mental health and stability to picture your face in my head, and no, I’m not kidding.”
God, he missed this man.
“Every moment without you is excruciating,” Adam said, letting the conversation turn mushy. They both needed it. Even though they exchanged a dozen “I love you” texts a day, hearing it never got old.
“You too, babe. I should have glued myself to you when I had the chance.”
“I can think of a few times when we were pretty much glued together.” There was a limited amount of post-coital cuddle time afforded before things started getting uncomfortable.
Skylar sighed, wistful. “Can’t wait to be grossly stuck to you again.”
“Soon, love.”