Chapter 6
Two weeks into their arrangement, Adam still hadn’t figured out the rules of Mo’s car thing.
It couldn’t be solely about flash or expense, because Adam had googled the weird tiny car Mo had in his garage and determined it was an old East German model that was basically made out of cardboard. Likewise, the dusty, lifted Jeep didn’t scream money (although the engine did make a lot of noise).
Tonight, Mo pulled into Adam’s driveway in the Cayenne, which Adam had internally dubbed the Douchemobile, to pick him up for his planned date.
Adam was friends with a lot of hockey players, and a lot of them had ridiculous cars. None of them had purchased a Porsche SUV and then painted it a lurid iridescent purple in order to attract as much attention as humanly possible.
But at least Adam fit comfortably in the passenger seat. And Mo was only three minutes late picking him up, which was timelier than Adam expected.
Adam closed the door and reached for the seat belt. “Hey. Are you going to tell me where we’re going now?”
“Like you did?” Mo pushed his sunglasses up his nose and backed out of the driveway. “No.”
Adam probably should’ve seen that coming. “Right.”
The past two weeks had passed, if not smoothly, then at least without major event.
As they had agreed, Mo had become a fixture at Canyons games.
As Adam had agreed, he didn’t ask Mo to go out with the team afterward.
He would’ve said they’d reached a sort of ceasefire, except that Mo had also taken to sending Adam screenshots from Grindr with captions like:
look at all the d I am missing out on :(
Adam deleted those immediately. The last thing he needed was to try to have to explain that.
Mo could probably spin it without batting an eyelash, but Adam would rather walk into the desert without a hat.
Swearing off hooking up with other guys had been Mo’s idea, not that Adam had objected.
He hadn’t put this much effort into dodging a potential scandal just to go through the media circus infidelity accusations would bring.
Besides, the pictures made him feel weird. Not that he was jealous! Mo could look all he liked. Adam would just prefer if he kept the looking to himself.
“It’s paint ’n’ sip,” Mo said a second later.
Adam glanced over. The words had come out with a deliberately casual air—the tone Mo used to provoke a reaction. “Oh, Mads does those sometimes. Sounds fun.”
Mo made a strangled little noise. “She actually asked me if I wanted to go to this one, but I said I already had plans with you. She said, ‘Okay, have fun, maybe next time!’ What does that mean, Adam?” His fingers tapped nervously against the steering wheel.
“That she wants to make friends with you?”
Mo made the sound again.
“If you didn’t want to be friends, why’d you give her your number?”
This time, Mo responded with a gusty sigh that made his lips flap like a flag in the breeze. “It’s not that I don’t want to be—she’s nice, okay? I mean, maybe her choice of weeknight activity is a bit odd—”
Then why did you decide to go to paint ’n’ sip? Adam suspected the answer would bring nothing but headache, so he didn’t ask.
“—but she’s decent. I don’t know, what if we get along and then she hates me when we break up?”
What a weird thing to worry about. “I’m pretty sure she keeps in touch with one of Hallsy’s exes.”
“Okay, but presumably, Hallsy and whoever this lady was were actually dating!”
Adam blinked, taken aback for a moment. “Were you planning on telling her we weren’t?” Because then he’d have to explain to Jorts, and Jorts would… ugh. Jorts would look at Adam like he’d decided to wear a hair shirt for luck.
Mo exhaled loudly through his nose. “Never mind.”
A minute later, they pulled into the parking lot of a cheerful strip mall.
Only the Mexican-themed bar on the end looked open; bright strings of bulbs illuminated the patio, where two long tables had been set with miniature easels.
Mo waited pointedly on the sidewalk for Adam to join him, then flashed a falsely smitten grin and laced their fingers together before tugging Adam to the host station.
He leaned on it sweetly, batting his eyelashes like he wasn’t three inches shorter than the woman at the desk. “Hi there. Reservation for Mo, two for the paint ’n’ sip?”
The host glanced down at her tablet and then looked up and smiled. “Of course. Why don’t you go find some seats at the table—any open chair with a canvas is fine—and I’ll send Vicky over to take your drink orders.”
One of the tables had nearly been taken over by what was, based on the sashes and tiaras, a bachelorette party.
He hoped for their sake this was a different group than the one that had put the video of him and Mo on the Internet.
The sounds of cheerful laughter carried on the breeze, along with the scents of citrus and tequila.
Faint strains of pop divas from the nineties played from hidden speakers.
Definitely a night intended to cater to women—and obviously something Mo wanted to lean into. He pulled Adam over to the second table, between a fifty-something woman drinking a pinky-orange cocktail and a blond with a Wine Mom T-shirt.
“Hi!” he said breezily, tugging Adam’s hand until Adam followed like an obedient dog. “I’m Mo and this is Adam. Are these seats taken?”
Wine Mom shifted her glass of white over a few inches out of Mo’s space. “All yours.”
He fluttered his lashes. “Amazing.” God, they were going to play this game again? “We’re paint-night virgins. Do you have any tips?”
Adam resigned himself to a long night of teeth grinding.
Cocktail Lady gave him a commiserating look. “I’m Bess,” she said. “The hurricanes are good here.”
Before Vicky arrived to offer alcohol, the instructor called the class to order.
“Hey, everybody! Thank you so much for coming out to paint ’n’ sip.
Tonight, we’re going to be painting a classic desert sunset, complete with cacti of your choice.
I brought a couple little miniatures you can see up here on the bar with me for inspiration.
So the first thing we’re going to do is prepare our canvas… ”
Adam glanced sideways at Mo. Miraculously, he did not make a joke about proper prep.
Vicky came just as Mo and Adam reached for their first paintbrushes.
“Absolutely love a beer, darling, thank you. Modelo?” More fluttering lashes. He’d absolutely dialed it up on purpose.
“Sure thing.” Vicky nodded and clicked her pen, then looked at Adam. “And for you?”
Fuck it. Mo wanted to play? Adam would change the rules. “Actually, I heard the hurricanes are great.”
Vicky smiled broadly. “You heard right. Coming right up.”
She walked back to the bar, and Mo squinted at Adam. “What’s your angle?”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” Adam picked up his brush. “Did you catch what they said about the back painting thing?”
During the first portion of the night, while Adam worked on his hurricane and managed to make enough small talk that Bess gave him some real advice, Mo stewed grumpily and made sad faces at his beer. His fault for choosing to drive—they could have taken a cab.
Maybe he couldn’t find a pink one.
Finally, halfway through his admittedly excellent second hurricane, Adam asked, “Why paint night?”
Next to him, Mo froze as if caught. On Adam’s other side, Bess was deep in conversation with her neighbor about something called phthalo blue.
“Because you thought I’d hate it?” Adam kept his voice low enough not to be overheard.
Mo exhaled audibly through his nose, but his posture loosened a bit.
“I actually just thought it’d be fun for me, and you could sit there and drink and be happy enough.
” He flicked his gaze over as Adam selected a particular orange for highlights.
“And then Mads texted me about doing the same thing and I’ve been in my head about being a real hockey girlfriend ever since. ”
That explained the bitchy behavior. “No worse fate,” Adam said dryly. “Than being in your head, I mean.”
Mo kicked his chair leg. Adam spread paint where he hadn’t meant to put it. “Hey!”
“You’re such a jerk,” Mo said, but he was laughing. Then he looked at Adam’s canvas. “Fuck sake. I made you screw up and your painting still looks better than mine. What the hell?”
“It is turning out better than I thought,” Adam admitted.
He’d selected a light, middle, and dark of each color he intended to use, knowing he’d never be able to match anything he mixed.
His painting looked a bit pop-art-y, but not in a bad way.
He had a tall saguaro cactus along the right side, balanced with a pink-flowered senita on the other side.
They framed one that was apparently called old man’s whiskers in the middle.
Adam had painted it so that it sort of looked like a stegosaurus.
“Why, are you having—” He turned to look at Mo’s painting and stopped. “Oh.”
Mo flushed. “The paint was too wet.”
Adam cleared his throat. “I see that.” Mo had done his background in pretty oranges, reds, and purples, inexpertly blended but still nice colors.
He’d chosen a bunch of hedgehog cacti for the foreground—simple upright cylinder shapes with light purple flowers at the top.
Except as he’d mentioned, the paint was too wet, and it had pooled at the bases of the plants.
Mo had tried to blot it but ended up spreading it around instead.
Then the purple had run too. The end effect resembled—
“I’m going to call it Pricks,” Mo decided with strained gravitas.
Adam bit back a snicker. “Happy little trees—”
“Oh my God.”
“I’m just saying.” Adam finished his drink. “Looks like something’s on your mind.”
“I can’t believe a jock is better at this than me,” Mo lamented. Then, under his breath, “Also, how big is your dick if you think those are—”
Without thinking about it, Adam poked his paintbrush into Mo’s cheek. It left an orange smudge.