Chapter 14
Mo never considered himself the nurturing type. Where would he have learned it?
But at some point, he must’ve picked up something from someone, or else the skills he cultivated putting cars back together translated into fussing over humans, because he found himself at Adam’s whenever Jorts wasn’t there to play guard dog.
Mads didn’t text him. Mo couldn’t tell if that made everything better or worse.
Adam had good days and bad days, or more accurately, he had good hours and bad hours.
Sometimes, he could sit up straight and keep his eyes open long enough to teach Mo how to play cribbage—of course he loved old-man math games—and sometimes, he could only lie flat on his back with his eyes closed and the lights off, and didn’t even have the focus to listen to Mo read.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” he’d asked snippily during one of his more miserable moments, laid out with a cold compress over his eyes while Mo watched a TikTok of someone reassembling the transmission of a classic Thunderbird.
Mo didn’t bother to hit Pause, or even look up. He only had one AirPod in; it wasn’t like he needed to focus. “Not really.”
But the moment the words escaped him, they took on some sort of life.
They plagued him at inopportune moments.
Not when he was reading to Adam or trying to find a recipe he could tolerate that would also fill his protein needs, or when he was fighting for his life not to get skunked at cribbage by a man who had actual brain damage, but when Adam was resting or showering.
Or when the Canyons came back into town and the looming specter of Jorts banished Mo from the house.
There was nothing objectively wrong with Mo’s place. He just didn’t want to be in it.
“Am I boring?” he asked Sage during one of their weekly catch-up calls. “Like, is that what happened? Did I skip the rest of my twenties and all of my thirties and now I’m a middle-aged sad sack with no hobbies?”
“You literally just yapped at me for ten minutes about Formula One.”
Did following that count as a hobby?
“I don’t think you’re a sad sack. I think you’re being intentionally dishonest with yourself, but considering how bad you screwed the pooch, I don’t blame you.”
“Hey!” Mo protested, stung. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He suspected he knew exactly what they meant, but he didn’t want to admit it to himself.
“Girl, don’t play dumb with me.” They reached for one of the makeup products next to their phone.
They leaned toward the mirror to apply the lipstick.
“You spent four months fucking the same guy while pretending to date him in order to escape your parents’ wrath and wait out the year before your big payout.
Now you’re like, ‘Sage, is it ethical to let Adam’s parents get attached to me?
Sage, I know I said I was strictly into this guy’s dick, but I miss him when his bodyguard kicks me out of his house where I’ve been playing Florence Nightingale for days on end even though dick is strictly off the table.
Sage, is it gay if I don’t want to go out to clubs anymore?
’” They made a noise of frustration. “It’s not gay, Mo. It’s giving monogamy.”
So there went the last shreds of his self-delusion. “You’re really in the right line of work. Anyone ever told you that?”
“Thank you.” They pursed their lips and checked their reflection. Makeup on point as always. “Now start over from the top, and this time, do yourself a favor and stop avoiding looking at the truth head-on. And be quick about it because I have a date.”
Mo gaped. “Excuse me, when were you going to tell me that?”
“I was waiting for your inevitable Adam-related breakdown, but if I do that, I’m going to be late and this man is fine. You seemed like you wanted a little nudge. This is a shove into the deep end. Sink or swim, baby.”
Fuck. He took a deep breath and leveled with himself.
Then he cleared his throat. “Yesterday, when I was over, uh, it wasn’t a good day.
The day before, he felt well enough to do a little bit of light exercise and he was paying for it.
Miserable headache, trouble keeping anything down.
” In the past ten days or so, Mo had gotten used to this new, crankier version of Adam.
“Mm-hmm.” They stood and walked out of the frame, presumably toward their closet. “And?”
“And it’s not like it’s fun, you know? Seeing someone like that. And it’s not fun letting other people see you like that either. I get it. But I don’t know. I can’t just leave him alone.”
“Oh, no, of course not. The rich athlete certainly couldn’t afford to pay for in-home care for himself if he wanted it.”
Mo ignored them—not that the next part of the confession was any easier to face.
“So I was just trying to be around, be quiet, keep him hydrated or whatever and let him rest. But I’d be pretty fucking miserable too if I was marinating in my own body fluids.
Finally, he comes back from the bathroom and I ask if he wants a Gatorade and he just—snaps.
‘I don’t get it. My head’s fucked. My deck’s no good to you.
We’re not friends. Why are you still here? ’”
“Ouch.” They came back into view.
Mo swallowed and rubbed a hand under his eye. “I mean, it wouldn’t have been my pick of moments to realize it wasn’t the dating part I fucked up. It was the fake part.”
“Sap.”
He shot them the finger.
“So what’d you say?”
“That I thought after I’d helped him to the bathroom and met his family, I got friendship status.”
“Wow. So instead of saying, ‘I want to date you,’ you said, ‘I wanna be friends.’ Girl.”
“I know.” Mo dropped his head to the table with a thunk.
“I’m hanging up on you. I deserve intelligent conversation. And you—” They went silent until Mo lifted his head and saw their fingers waving at the camera. “—figure your shit out.”
Then Sage’s finger dipped south and the call ended.
“Rude,” Mo grumbled into the silent room. Sage had told him to figure his shit out, which he should definitely do. And the place to do it was the garage.
Mo stayed with his head stuck under the hood of the Trabant—an ancient, simple car that had been a tinkering present from Sage’s father when Mo turned seventeen—until his phone buzzed, and buzzed, and buzzed again.
He should have realized that so many texts meant something.
But once again, he was a naive child diving in headfirst, unaware of the jagged rocks at the bottom.
He unlocked his phone and read the first message.
“Fuck.”
Adam sat under an umbrella in the shadow of the building, wearing heavily tinted sunglasses. Jorts had given him a Look when he demanded they go outside—brighter lights still weren’t his friend—but Adam was desperate for a change of scene.
Besides, his symptoms were easing. So long as he didn’t overdo it with exercise or screens, Adam felt almost normal, if a bit tired.
So he’d dragged Jorts outside, where if he couldn’t enjoy the sun, at least he could breathe fresh air.
One of the biggest perks of moving to a non-traditional market for hockey—the un-Canadian winters. He missed the snow and the vibe of winters back home, but if he’d been concussed in New Brunswick, he wouldn’t be sitting outside enjoying twenty-degree highs.
Finally, Jorts broke the silence. “So, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I told you, no headache.”
Jorts slurped his Coke. Adam pulled a face. “That’s not what I meant. Why are you as prickly as a cactus today if you feel so good?”
“I’m not prickly,” Adam muttered sulkily, doing nothing to reinforce the statement.
“Murph.”
“Jorts.”
“Adam.”
“Steven.”
Jorts sighed. “Does this have something to do with the wunderkind? You’ve got the same mopey face you had when telling me about your not-affair.”
“What?” Adam frowned. “I told you about…”
“Not-dating Moritz Du Pont?”
“Mo,” Adam corrected without thinking.
“Yes, you told me all about how you and Mo were never dating, but he still managed to break your heart because you, shockingly, caught feelings for the cute boy you were sleeping with.”
Heat rushed to Adam’s cheeks. “When?”
“The night of your concussion. You told me more than once, actually. Don’t ask me how you got stuck on a topic but couldn’t remember discussing it.”
Oh God. Adam couldn’t decide what was worse—knowing he’d spilled his guts and not remembering, or knowing he’d talked about Mo but not how far he’d gone.
“So is Mo the reason you’re grumpy?”
“He keeps coming around. A lot. And it’s confusing.”
“Oh?”
Adam sipped his water to give himself a moment to gather his thoughts.
The first few times Mo had shown up, Adam was too discombobulated to question his presence.
He’d mostly been grateful to have someone read to him and help him eat and not puke on himself.
But for the past few days, as Adam improved, he had more time to be confused by Mo’s insistence on helping, even though they weren’t dating.
Worse, he had time to be hopeful. Because it had to mean something that Mo was there, right?
“He said we should break up, but then he said we could keep having sex, and now he wants to sit on my couch and read me books while I just lie there. And I started to think, hey, maybe he wanted to fake break up because he also doesn’t want to fake date.
” After all, if Adam had asked Mo to date for real and he said no, he would have wanted to fake break up too.
“Reasonable,” Jorts said into the silence. “Started to think? What stopped you?”
“I asked why he was here. He said we were friends.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, some people might say that a boyfriend is a best friend that you want to write poetry about and sleep with.”
Adam snorted.
“Don’t laugh! Maddison is my friend,” Jorts protested, though he was grinning. “I’m just saying, friends doesn’t have to mean just friends. Unless he said that. Did he say that?”
“No. Yes? I don’t know.”
“Wow.”
“Shut up, I have a concussion. Details are fuzzy.”
“Okay, martyr.”