Page 26 of Paint Our Song

“I’d be doing it for me.” He grins, meeting Calvin’s eyes. Calvin stares at him, unblinking. “Not being able to work on my art makes me feel awful, so I might as well. I’m serious. I can do it for free.”

“No way.”

Miles rolls the lollipop around on his tongue, thinking of a way to convince him.

“Stop that. It’s distracting,” grumbles Calvin.

“Stop what?”

“Stop deep-throating that lollipop.”

Miles almost chokes on the damn thing from shock, and when he gapes at Calvin, Calvin looks back at him with seriousness on his face, though his cheeks are red.

“W-what the hell?” Miles splutters.

“Give me that.” Calvin snags the lollipop right from his hand, tossing it in the trash can across the deck. It goes straight in, because of course Calvin also has perfect aim among his ever-growing list of talents.

“Hey!” Miles protests. He’d probably be more outraged if he weren’t so impressed. “Jesus. Gotta say, I didn’t know you had such a dirty mind.”

Ignoring him, Calvin asks, “How much for the painting?”

“I said I’d do it for free. Email me the photos you had in the green room, and I’ll need your shipping address so I can mail it to you.” Still dismayed about the loss of his sweets, Miles mumbles, “At least that answers my question.”

“What question?”

“Whether you’re also into men.”

“Because I called you out on the ridiculous way you eat candy?”

Feeling bold, but mostly because of pettiness, Miles says, “Because it made you blush, actually.”

Calvin makes a surprised noise and scrubs a hand over his face. Then he looks up at the sky as if regretting all his life decisions up until this point. After a very loud exhale, he says, “Moving on. Dothe painting for me, and I’ll help promote your inn.”

What?

“You?” Miles asks, surprised. “Are you sure? You don’t like posting. You never even post your face… Your last post was instant noodles.”

“Hey, the Cup Noodles Museum is a fun time,” Calvin grumbles. “I don’t have to post photos of myself.”

Which, damn, is not exactly what Miles wants to hear.

Calvin asks, “Won’t photos of your inn and the lake be enough? What’s your number?”

He can’t believe this is actually happening. Miles awkwardly fumbles as he tells Calvin his number. Calvin types in the number, presses the call button, and Miles’s phone vibrates in his pocket. He almost drops it. Miles wipes his sweaty hand on his pants and then saves Calvin’s number. He types in his name, considers it, and then backspaces—then he saves it as ‘Cat-vin’, because that sounds stupidly hilarious to him.

***

The first text message, unexpectedly, comes from Calvin.

Miles receives it on a random morning, right after he’s met with Megan and she went through her proposed campaign for the inn. There’s a photo attached to the message—a golden retriever, beaming, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. It’s incredibly cute and Miles grins at the single word Calvin typed under it.

Cat-vin: You.

Me: is that your dog????

He doesn’t care if the absurd amount of question marks proves Calvin’s point—that he has golden retriever energy.

The response comes an entire hour later.