Page 14 of Paint Our Song (Cloverlily #1)

G abby: You need to go to the roof.

The vague text spooks him. What does it mean, he needs to go to the roof? Is Mom alright? Miles last saw her at lunch, and it’s already late in the afternoon. She said she was going to work on her garden, and now he gets this message from Gabby? Fuck.

He practically sprints to the roof garden. When Miles pushes the door open, he’s met with a sight he never expected.

Calvin is… helping Mom with the garden?

Mom’s bent over a planting bed, wearing her new gardening gloves and dipping her hands in the soil. She’s talking to Calvin and seems to be instructing him, pointing at a spot on the soil. Calvin, nodding, is crouched on the ground and holding a small potted plant. He’s not wearing gloves like her, and his hands are full of dirt, and even his jacket is dirty, as if he forgot about his hands and wiped them on it. Miles’s heart jumps. Turns out, a night of terrible sleep and avoiding him for half the day did nothing to stop his rapidly growing crush.

Gabby’s sitting by the table, a tumbler in her hands. As soon as she spots Miles, she winks.

“Hi, honey!” Mom calls when she notices him. Calvin’s attention snaps to him as well, the corner of his lips tugging up to a slight smile.

“Hello,” Miles says. He walks up to them, still out of breath from how he rushed here. “What—what are you doing?”

“Calvin is helping me transplant my tomatoes.”

Miles blinks. Okay? What even led to this? “Mom, you can’t ask a guest to work on your garden.”

“Why not? He volunteered.” She tuts, and Calvin nods. He grins at Miles in a way that makes his stupid heart flutter again. Just like that, Mom waves him away and turns back to Calvin. They talk in low voices that Miles can’t hear.

“I thought something was wrong,” Miles hisses at Gabby. She laughs, and Miles notices that Calvin’s guitar is on the table behind her. He must have been up here playing on it, and Miles can only assume that Mom found him here and made him help her. Or maybe he did volunteer. Either way, it is really peculiar.

“Or it’s very right,” Gabby quips.

“How deep.” He steps toward Mom and Calvin. “Can I help?”

Mom shakes her head. “No, you’re very rough and destroy my plants. Unlike your friend here who has very gentle and precise hands. It must be all the guitar playing.”

“What?” Miles’s jaw drops, outraged. “I’m a painter, Ma! My hands can’t be that horrible!”

“If you say so, honey. ”

Calvin lets out a soft laugh, and Miles turns back to Gabby, eyes wide. He’s pretty sure they’re making fun of him, and he’s not so sure he’s onboard with this whole thing. “Weird,” he mouths at her.

Mom talks a lot as they work. She tells Miles about how she’s learned that Calvin has more than a dozen guitars. When he’s playing at a concert, he uses an electric guitar; when he travels on holidays, he brings an acoustic one. He has bass guitars too, though he doesn’t use them all that often. She also tells him about how the rest of his guitars are in his parents’ garage right now. She says she never even realized there were so many types of guitars, and that pro-musicians could usually play multiple instruments.

“Calvin has a Bachelor of Music in Theory and Composition, did you know that?” she asks Miles.

Yes, he did know that. Because he’s stalked the band’s Wikipedia page. “How long have you been talking?”

“Long enough. Sweetheart, I think this should be the last plant.”

Miles turns to Gabby again and mouths, “Sweetheart?”

Since they’ve deemed Miles and his definitely not rough hands useless, he sulks and waits until they’re done. Calvin and Mom work on the garden until the skies turn an orange hue and the sun gradually sets.

Mom claps her hands together and puts her gloves away, and leads Calvin to a small faucet near the exit door. Miles watches with a strange fascination as they wash their hands, still talking in low voices. What are they talking about now? Calvin’s family tree? He wouldn’t put it past Mom to ask every detail about him.

“My shift’s starting.” Gabby takes a sip from her tumbler and gets up.

Smiling, Mom tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and her eyes flicker at Miles. “I’ll come down with you. I need to check on the kitchen.”

Miles steps forward. “I’ll help—”

“No. Stay here. You’ve been running around all day, and you should rest.”

Miles realizes Calvin hasn’t said much until this point. He seems much quieter when in a group. It’s a wonder Mom was able to get so much information out of him. “You should ask Calvin to let you listen to the new song he’s working on.”

His jaw drops. “You let my mom listen to your song!?”

Calvin raises an eyebrow at him.

“And me,” Gabby chirps. She bounces over to Mom and hooks an arm around hers, and they make their way toward the door. “It’s really, really nice.”

When the door shuts behind them, Calvin says, “Stop pouting.”

“I’m not… but I haven’t listened to your new song. It’s not fair.”

“You can listen to it when it’s out.” Calvin puts his hands in his pockets and looks away, toward the lake. “If it’ll ever be released, that is.”

Okay, Miles is definitely pouting now. “How’d you end up getting dragged into my mom’s gardening?”

“Oh… I was playing my guitar, and she came here. We talked a bit and then she asked me if I wanted to help her transplant tomatoes.” Calvin shrugs. “So, I said… yes?”

Miles chuckles. “Do you want to play more? I can leave, if you want. Since you’re so determined on not letting me hear your song.”

“No, I’m done. Do you want to go grab dinner?”

“Yeah—wait, no.” Suddenly, he remembers why he had sought Calvin out last night. “I haven’t shown you the sketches for your commission. Can I go grab them from my house?”

“Oh.” Calvin nods. “Yeah. Sure.”

He’s not sure why, but Miles rushes all the way home. Miles is panting when he gets to his room, though he likes the exhilaration. He grabs his sketchbook from the desk and wipes sweat off his brow. There’s too much energy in him, and he needs to burn it off before he heads back to Calvin.

It’s not until he’s crossing the street toward the inn that he realizes that Calvin’s leaning over the parapet, watching him from a distance.

Fuck. His heart races again. As soon as he gets inside the inn, he sprints toward the elevator, and Gabby yells at him from across the room to slow down.

“Why were you in such a hurry?” Calvin asks, when he reaches the roof. He’s sitting with an elbow on the table and moves his guitar slightly—to make space for Miles’s sketchbook, he presumes. While the skies weren’t totally dark yet, Calvin had turned on the hanging lights while Miles had been gone. They cast a slight glow to his profile.

“What, you’re the only one who can exercise?” He puts the sketchbook down on the table, right next to the guitar, and takes a seat beside Calvin. His heart’s still beating too fast, and he doesn’t know if it’s from all the stupid sprinting he did or because of… well, Calvin.

Calvin snorts. “That was your exercise?”

“Okay, relax. Not everyone gets up at the break of dawn to jog around the lake.”

“You’ve seen me jogging? I’ve never seen you around that early.”

“A few times. I get up early because breakfast service is one of the more hectic times of the day.” He’s seen him from the pier, too. Drawn him from it, even.

“We can jog together if you’d like.”

“Pfft. No thanks.”

“You don’t like jogging? Do you go to the gym regularly?”

“No?” Thank god for Dad’s genes, honestly. He’s able to look fairly fit without having to make much of an effort. Though he does go to the gym, sometimes. There’s one in his apartment building back in the city. Still, he doesn’t work out as consistently as Calvin does. That depends on a type of discipline that Miles will never have.

Calvin’s eyebrows furrow, and his gaze flickers over Miles’s arms, then his chest. “How do you look this good, then?”

“Genetics, I guess. My dad was also—wait, you think I look good?”

Silence. Calvin narrows his eyes, then grabs his sketchbook, suddenly determined to ignore Miles’s very valid question. Laughing, Miles reaches over and flips the sketchbook to the pages where he has the sketches for the commission.

Calvin looks over the pages quietly, and it causes a sour sensation to settle in Miles’s gut. He wipes his clammy palms against his jeans. Miles is often anxious when showing clients his sketches, but it’s way worse this time around.

“I like this a lot,” Calvin says, voice soft, as he settles on a page that’s different from the one Miles sent him yesterday. In contrast to the earlier sketch, this one has each of the bandmates more distanced from each other and doing their own things. The vibe’s still cozy and the surroundings are similar—a messy room with crowded furniture, and their personal items scattered around—but Chase is lazily sitting at the foot of the couch, Gil is leaning over the back with a lazy smile, Calvin’s on his phone on a separate chair, and Theo’s standing near him, seemingly talking to the group with a huge grin.

He only sketched this to show Calvin what his different options were. He didn’t think he’d actually prefer this. While it does show their personalities individually, it seems much less intimate than the others.

“Oh.” Miles nods, taking the sketchbook from him. Strangely, Calvin doesn’t seem so at ease. It makes Miles want to pry, makes him want to ask more questions because he feels like there’s a story here he’s not seeing. “Anything about it you want to change?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s great as it is. You can make it into a print, right? I can give copies to them?”

“Yeah!” Miles beams. “It’ll take me some time to actually finish it, then I’ll scan it and send the files back to my gallery. They should be able to mail you the prints. You can ask them to frame it too, if you want.”

“Awesome.” Calvin meets his stare. “Thank you. How much do I owe you?”

He blinks, confused. When he realizes he’s serious, Miles lets out a huff of a laugh. “Your social media posts are more than enough.”

“But I’m not even paying for my room.” Calvin frowns. “I’m not paying for anything, actually.”

“Well, yeah, because you’re helping us with our marketing. The inn’s paying for it.”

“And the painting? The hotel’s paying for that, too?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Miles says, smiling.

Calvin asks, “Are my posts even helping?”

“Yes! Definitely! It’s translating to bookings, too. Didn’t you notice there’s more people around?”

“I did. Megan didn’t seem too pleased that I didn’t want to take more selfies, though.”

Miles shrugs. “It would ruin your aesthetic. I was surprised enough when you took one with me the other day because you don’t post selfies.”

“Huh? No, that’s… What aesthetic?” Calvin gives him a look. “Taking selfies is weird.”

“Your band’s in front of a camera all the time,” Miles points out. They’ve done photo shoots before. Theo and Chase both do lives on their social media on the regular, and they even have an official channel. Miles has watched their press releases before, and even if Calvin’s always been the most quiet one out of everyone, he must be used to it—somehow.

Calvin frowns. “That’s different. Those are taken as a group, and I’m only a part of it. Why would I post a picture of myself? Nobody would care about that.”

“I would,” he mutters .

“What?”

Realizing he didn’t actually say that in his mind, Miles panics. “What?”

Calvin looks confused. Fortunately, he drops it. Miles sighs with relief when Calvin points at Miles’s sketchbook. “Can I look at the rest of the pages?”

“They’re only practice sketches,” Miles says with a shrug. “Nothing serious. Warm-ups and doodles, that kind of stuff.”

“So, can I look?”

Miles grins. “Can I listen to the song you’re writing?”

His cheeks redden. Calvin puts a hand over his mouth and mutters something incoherent, and guilt seeps within Miles for teasing him… even if it was a genuine question disguised as a joke.

“I’m kidding, go ahead,” Miles says. With a glare, Calvin opens the sketchbook.

“What do you do with these?” Calvin asks, going through the pages.

“Nothing. They pile up,” Miles says.

“Seems like a waste.”

“I keep the ones that I really like.”

Calvin studies the page the sketchbook is currently opened to. It’s of a flower field, with two ladies in sundresses holding hands and laughing. Calvin goes through more of the pages, and Miles listens to the soft sounds of the pages being flipped.

Then Calvin’s shoulders stiffen, and he abruptly looks up at Miles. “Is this me?”

Miles freezes. It’s the painting he made of Calvin, back in the garden. The same one Mom had seen yesterday and had looked at way too long, with an expression that said too much.

Fuck. He forgot about that.

“Um.” Miles rallies for an excuse, anything that makes him not seem like a crazy, obsessed stalker. “No?”

“Miles,” he says, way too calm.

“Oof. Yeah. Yeah, that’s you.” There’s no use to denying it. It’s clearly Calvin.

“What’s this for?”

“It’s for nothing,” he says, as casually as he can. “You looked good. The garden looked good. So, I drew it.”

Calvin’s quiet for a moment too long.

“It’s nothing,” Miles repeats, grinning widely. His cheeks and ears burn. “Just a fun thing I wanted to do. You can keep it, if you want.”

“I won’t.” He flips the page again, coming to sketches of different types of flowers. “I get it. It’s hard to describe, but sometimes I get the overwhelming want to write a song about what I see. That night was nice, with the bonfire and all.”

It wasn’t the bonfire; it was all him. He was the life of it, and everything else was an afterthought.

Calvin flips the page once more, and there are the sketches Miles had been working on the night before. Right there on the paper are Calvin’s different expressions, and Calvin rubs his nose. His ears are pink.

Miles closes his eyes and sighs. Fuck. “This is really awkward.”

Voice too soft, Calvin says, “…All good.”

He closes the sketchbook though, not bothering to look through the rest of the pages, even if Miles knows there aren’t any more drawings. That had been the last page he had worked on. Miles wills away the way his heart sinks, because he’s pretty sure he just broadcasted his now very obvious crush on him.