Chapter 11 #2
“Why would I be? My parents need more space than me. And they’re here longer, have to come early to set things up. They usually stay here now with Chels, Simon, and Chuckie for at least a week around Christmas so they can share holiday and child-minding duties.” He shrugged.
“Didn’t you say they all live in Fredericton?” A bubble of hysteria floated up Mo’s stomach.
“Sure. But they don’t live in the same house.”
Mo was talking to a crazy person. “Adam… how far away do they live?”
“I don’t know, five, ten minutes?”
“Why the fuck do you stay in the same house?”
Adam stared back, reflecting Mo’s confusion. “I only have five days off, and that’s a lot this year. I don’t want to miss time with them.”
Mo dry-washed his face and tried to take this in.
Adam apparently bought a house in his hometown big enough to hold his extended nuclear family so he could put them all up during the holidays and get every second possible with them, even though two-thirds of them lived in that same town.
Adam could have stayed with his parents, surely.
But no, staying with a third of his family wasn’t good enough. What the fuck.
“Wait, wait, your mom was talking about having someone come in to fix the dishwasher less than a week ago,” Mo said stupidly.
His brain refused to adjust to this reality where Adam owned a house where he slept in the worst bedroom.
Seriously, it was tiny and in the basement.
It didn’t even have decent windows—they were basement safety in-case-of-fire escape windows, since it sat at the front of the house, instead of the back, which was entirely ground floor and opened up onto the yard.
Adam said a little defensively, “I leave a card to pay for house stuff,” like that was the point.
Mo laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Your house has petty cash.”
“Well, I can’t have my parents pay for maintenance or to stock the kitchen.
You did notice the bill total earlier, right?
” Of course Mo had noticed how much the cart of alcohol had cost, he just hadn’t thought anything of it.
Now that he stopped to think about it, though, he guessed most people probably couldn’t afford a drinks bill with four figures.
Adam bankrolled his family holiday get-together.
Paid for the food, hosted the annual hockey game.
And he didn’t seem to doubt that he should—no, not should, would.
There was no sense of obligation for him.
That might come with resentment. No, Adam had means that outstripped any of his relatives, so of course he’d host and cover the bills. To do otherwise would be unthinkable.
Wild.
“Your parents don’t care?”
“What?”
“That you pay for everything?”
“Why would they?”
“Um, because their kid is paying for stuff?”
Adam shrugged. “They’re not asking me to. It’s not like they couldn’t get together elsewhere, but they know it’s easier on me to host. They’re doing me a favor, honestly. They save me so much money by looking after the house during the season.”
Mo needed to lie down. He needed to think.
He needed to process this. He couldn’t imagine trusting his parents that much, or believing they had his best interests at heart, nor could he imagine spending so much time with them, or wanting to.
God, they barely even did Christmas dinner together.
Mo couldn’t picture “gathering” like this even if he’d had siblings.
He thought his parents were too close because they lived in the same city, and the drive to them definitely took longer than ten minutes.
No wonder he’d been chafing this morning. Mo didn’t have a framework for this.
He didn’t have time for this crisis, though, because the garage door opened.
“Are they driving your cars too?” he asked without thinking.
“What? No.”
Just parking in his garage. Which they had the remote for.
That didn’t make him feel better.
“Why do you look like you’re having a nervous breakdown?”
Mo heaved a sigh and sat up.
It had been so easy to hate Adam, once upon a time.
When Mo was young and determined to find fault with everyone, and Adam was another cookie-cutter hockey player, now with barely-visible-to-the-naked-eye rainbow sprinkles.
They weren’t even good sprinkles—subtle shades, no icing keeping them in place, trying to blend in with all the other players.
Mo, who could never blend in even when he tried—and he had tried—had hated him for that.
Now it turned out Adam didn’t fucking need sprinkles.
He’d had an idyllic childhood. He liked his family and genuinely wanted to spend time with them.
The flash and substance were all in the goddamn dough.
Next to him, Mo felt tawdry. One of those store-bought monstrosities covered in petroleum frosting that crumbled into dust on the tongue.
If they’d actually been dating, Mo would have already known all this.
Then again, if Mo had already known about Adam’s childhood and family, he’d have understood how incompatible they truly were.
No one—no family—as stable and wholesome as the Murphys would be interested in the hot mess that was the Du Ponts.
“Promise me something,” he said as he finished dressing.
Adam tilted his head. “Okay?”
“Next time you bring a boyfriend home to meet your parents for the holidays…” He stood and put a hand on Adam’s chest.
Adam furrowed his brow. “Yes?”
“Pick a room with a little more privacy.”
The chaos continued. Mo was pretty sure Adam was monitoring him like a bomb that might go off and explode into a sparkly butt plug reference.
Every time Mo got close, Adam asked for help washing dishes or suggested they go for a walk or otherwise got Mo somewhere he could vent without consequences.
The first time it happened, he used the cover of making a charcuterie platter in the kitchen while everyone schmoozed around the tree.
Mo pulled a pair of nitrile food gloves up to his elbows, gave Adam the crazy eye, and told him to bend over.
Adam made him one of Auntie Pattie’s vodka crans and let him queen out with the sausage while Adam sliced cheese.
It was… nice. Different. Adam didn’t seem to expect him to change. No one mentioned his odd mid-conversation departures.
Unfortunately, there was no getting around the commentary when Ted arrived early in the afternoon on the twenty-fourth, because Ted was close to seven feet tall and built like a sexy Dorito and Mo’s self-restraint had limits.
He shook hands with Shauna, Ted’s girlfriend, first, and then watched Ted’s hand absolutely swallow his own, looked over his shoulder at Adam, and accused, “You didn’t tell me there was a bigger model! ”
Shauna, who only towered over Mo a little bit now she’d kicked off her boots, cackled and slid her arm into the crook of Mo’s elbow. “I like you. Let’s be friends.”
If anyone could match his energy, it would be Shauna. Mo could already tell.
“You two are not allowed to play on the same hockey team!” Adam tried to complain, but his smile gave him away.
“I can have Ted, though, right?” Mo fluttered his eyelashes.
After the unceremonious tree-topping, it was time for the cursed event.
Mo gave up trying to count the number of Murphys and Murphy-adjacent people present.
Someone had dragged some battered wooden benches that looked like they’d been stolen from a church circa 1942 out next to the rink, and they all piled on to lace up.
Duncan, apparently, had the enviable task of refereeing this catastrophe in the making; he wore a fluffy black-and-white striped hoodie so large, it fit easily over his winter coat and still hung to his knees and sported a bright copper whistle around his neck.
“All right, I want a nice, clean game,” he said cheerfully, and his family booed him. He pulled two knitted hats from the pocket of the hoodie, one in red and one in white. “By popular request, this year’s team captains will be Adam”—uh-oh—“and Mo.”
They played rock-paper-scissors to see who’d choose first. Adam won and picked Chuckie.
Foiled, Mo straightened his spine and picked Ted. He might as well follow through on his threat.
The game was hockey only in the loosest sense of the word.
No one bothered to rotate on or off, and there were easily sixteen people on the ice at once.
The rink didn’t have lines to call offside, or dots for face-offs, or boards to crush anyone into—more than once, someone found themselves cursing as they stumbled right off the ice and into the snow.
No one played goalie; instead, they used mini nets to limit the score.
Also, if Mo remembered right, in regular hockey, it was illegal for your fake boyfriend to pick you up and throw you over his shoulder so he could get the puck.
Mo wasn’t even sure what Duncan’s function was until half an hour elapsed and he blew the whistle. Play stopped as he yelled, “Game’s over, get your grog!” and Mo realized he’d been making some kind of hot boozy punch over a propane burner.
He held back as everyone crowded forward. The kids had a hot-chocolate version, complete with a drink-doctoring station made of a sawhorse topped with two-by-fours and that hosted whipped cream, sprinkles, and cookie bits.
Was it always like this? Loud and happy and warm despite the frigid outdoor temperatures that chapped Mo’s skin regardless of how much fancy moisturizer he applied? These people didn’t just love each other, they liked each other.
And they liked Mo and noticed him holding back. It made sense for Adam to come out of the fray with an extra mug—but then his mom did the same, laughing when she saw Adam had beaten her to it, and then Shauna came next.