Page 22 of Unrivaled

Barny wasn’t going to surprise them.

Grady glanced at his phone for what felt like the third time in ten minutes, and Coop laughed. “Am I boring you? Or do you have something you want to share with the class?”

For a second, Grady debated whether a confession about his love life would be more painful than contemplating their team’s chances this year.

Sadly, it wouldn’t.

“I had a date yesterday.”

Coop snorted beer up his nose. Grady glowered at him for the unnecessary drama while he cleared his nostrils. “Sorry, uh, you were saying. A date?”

At least he didn’t say what he was obviously thinking, which wasGod, why?

Yeah…. Grady had been open with him about how much he hated dating, if not the actual reason why. He’d had more than his share of heartache. The more people he let get close to him, the greater the chances he’d get hurt.

He might as well answer the unspoken question. Coop would find out sooner or later. “It was Jess’s idea.”

“Uh-huh,” Coop said, kind of faintly, like he didn’t quite believe what he’d heard or had somehow missed that Jess could talk Grady into anything.

Grady grimaced. “She wants to ditch me for the holidays to spend time with her girlfriends and won’t go if she thinks I’ll get lonely.”

“Will you?” Coop asked mildly.

“I don’t spend enough time alone to be lonely.” If he wasn’t practicing, playing a game, working out, or eating with the team, he was probably asleep or close to it. He could definitely handle three days of R & R at Christmas.

When Grady didn’t elaborate, Coop said, “Why’d you go along with it, then?”

That was harder to explain. It wasn’t as simple asI like sex. If he wanted sex, he could find someone willing. Now that he had a little experience with Grindr, it’d be laughably easy. How hard could it be to take a decent dick pic?Maxcould do it.

Grady tried not to think about the fact that he hadn’t deleted that photo.

“Jess won’t go on her trip if I don’t.”

“Okay. So you went on a date. And?”

“Well,” Grady said dryly, “no one died.”

This time Coop had paused before taking another sip of his beer, so he didn’t spray hops everywhere when he snorted. “What happened?”

“It started out okay. He was nice to chat with. It seemed like we might have some stuff in common. He played baseball in college, so he had some understanding of the kind of discipline and time commitment it takes to play a sport professionally. And he was cute. Nice. Decent sense of humor.” Didn’t send a single unsolicited dick pick. “He wanted to go out for ice cream. Apparently there’s this local place he wanted to introduce me to. I thought, okay, it’s still the preseason, I can have ice cream.” A little extra fat and sugar wouldn’t kill him.

Coop’s impassive mask was slipping, which told Grady that he should’ve nixed the date, or done more research or something, because it seemed obvious to Coop how this could go wrong, and Grady hadn’t even told him anything. “And?”

“And it wasn’t even ice cream. There was palm oil in the ingredients. It tasted awful.” If Grady was going to go off his meal plan, it wasn’t going to be for fake ice cream that wasn’t even made out of dairy. Cream wasliterallyin the name. “So I had a few bites and then I threw it in the garbage.”

“And?”

Damn it. “And I figured that would be the end of it, but this guy—Brian—he wouldnotlet it go. Like, ‘Oh, did you get brain freeze, were you not as hungry as you thought, do you want to try another flavor?’” He let out a noise of frustration. “He was taking it really personally that I didn’t want any more shitty ice cream. So finally I snapped that the ice cream sucked and I wasn’t going to waste my sugar allowance on food with a mouth feel like motor oil.”

Coop didn’t bother trying to cover his laugh. “Okay. Not the most polite, but he had it coming, if he was pushing.”

“Yeah.” Grady sighed. “Except it turns out the place is his family business, and it’s dairy-free because they’re all lactose intolerant.”

“Oh, buddy. I don’t think he’s gonna call you.”

Grady didn’t think so either. Clearly he could not date someone who thought palm oil was an acceptable ingredient in ice cream.

But he hadn’t meant to offend the guy. It was hard not to see this as a test that he’d failed. Even if he was only looking for someone to spend the holiday with for Jess’s sake and not a lifelong love connection.

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