Page 59 of Unrivaled

Maybe that was for the best, though. Then Max would have to get over it.

That was what Hedgie thought he should do. El was on the fence, possibly because her pregnancy hormones had made her extra invested in his sex life. “Grady Armstrongis the guy who edged you for half an hour in his hotel room in Toronto?”

Hedgie made a horrified face and put his hands over his ears. “El!”

Max sighed gloomily. “Yeah.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t see it. Good for you, though.”

Apparently Hedgie heard her through his earmuffs. “El!”

“What! I’m the sex confessor friend. You’re the relationship advice friend. This is not my territory. Shouldn’t you be asking if there’s a chance Grady likes him back or something?”

“That guy doesn’t like anything.”

None of this was helping Max sleep.

He needed a plan. Once he figured out what to do, he could stop thinking about it.

So, okay. He could wait until Grady got traded and deal with that when it came. But Max didn’t have that much patience. He could go back on his word about keeping their sex life strictly off-the-ice next time they played each other, and Grady would get pissed off at him and break it off. Except Grady kind of had a point about it being shitty, and Max had been the used party in relationship-adjacent scenarios before, and it had left a bad taste in his mouth. Plus that seemed like a coward’s solution.

Straight-up asking Grady about it was a hard no. With any other guy, Max could put himself out there. But Grady? No. Max couldn’t imagine doing that and then having to play hockey against him, knowing Grady knew about Max’s feelings and didn’t reciprocate them and was too good a person to chirp him about it.

Which left one option.

All he needed now was for his body to cooperate.

Decision made, Max finally succumbed to the painkillers and fell asleep.

GRADY GOThome from the road trip on Wednesday. On Friday he had a date.

David was a handsome guy in his twenties, maybe slightlyyounger than Grady preferred but with a mature personality. He was artsy but not pretentious, and the graphic tee and skinny jeans he wore fit him well.

On the app, he’d asked Grady,Do you trust me to plan this? Just go with it, you’ll have fun.

If Grady never had to plan another date, he’d die a happy man. Someone else wanted to take the initiative? Sign him up.All right. I guess I’ll see you Friday.

David had gotten them tickets to see the immersive Van Gogh exhibit. It wasn’t something Grady would’ve chosen on his own, but he enjoyed it anyway, and David’s lively, casual-but-not-dumbed-down talk of postimpressionism and the use of color and imagery was actually interesting. Besides, he was funny and engaging and didn’t seem to mind that it took several prompts to get Grady to express an opinion on art beyond “I like it.”

David laughed. “Yeah, I’m getting that. But how does it make youfeel? What does it make you think of?”

“Sunflowers?” Grady said. But he owed it to himself and David to dig a little deeper than that. He was supposed to be trying to connect with the guy, after all, and he’d put thought and effort into this date. “Uh, August, maybe? Like, sitting at my mom’s kitchen table the week before school went back in, with the sun streaming in the window. She always had flowers on the table in the summer, but she wasn’t great about pulling out the wilted ones, and they’d sort of flop over after a few days.”

He thought maybe David would laugh again, or point out some way in which Grady’s answer was flawed, but instead he smiled quietly. “There, see? We’ll make an art critic out of you yet.”

But Grady kept his thoughts onStarry Night Over the Rhoneto himself, even if it was silly. The two people walking together in the foreground with all of the beauty of the universe behind them—paying no attention—and somehow all he could think of was that little splash of red on the woman’s dress, and how it reminded him of Max’s lobster tattoo.

The second half of their date was eating Philly cheesesteak sandwiches from a food truck, walking down the street toward the parking lot.

“The duality of man,” David said, wiping a smear of sauce from the corner of his mouth. “Fine art and food trucks.”

Grady felt uncharacteristically philosophical. “Man cannot live on cheesesteak alone.”

David laughed. “Don’t let anyone else in this city hear you say that.”

Grady offered to drive David home—he didn’t drive, he said, and used a bike rental program to meet Grady earlier. They made small talk in the car. It felt nice, natural. David was objectively attractive, clever, engaging. He was a little more femme than Grady usually went for, but Grady liked it. It suited him. All Grady’s friends were jock types, but he was pretty sure David would charm them too.

But he didn’t feel the slightest spark. He didn’t want to hold his hand or kiss him or have sex with him, though he wouldn’t mind another guided tour of some art.

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