Page 85 of Unrivaled

I think you’re in love with me too.

Max couldn’t say any of that—not when Grady was ghosting him, and even if he wasn’t. Max had made all the moves—the bet, the follow-up, the offer to help Grady learn how to date. He’d shown up at Grady’s house. He’d invited Grady to Christmas.

Never had Grady reached out to him first. Max should scrounge up a modicum of self-respect and wait for Grady to text him this time.

But Max wasn’t very good at doing what he should, so he tried one more time.

i guess were not rivals anymore.

He couldn’t decide if that sounded sappy or pathetic, but he couldn’t spend another minute thinking about it or he’d lose his mind. He sent the text, put his phone on Do Not Disturb, and did his best to go to sleep.

In the morning he crawled out of bed to make breakfast. He didn’t have much of an appetite, but he still had to eat to keep his energy up. He got out the eggs and put some bread in the toaster.

He took out his phone, thinking maybe a new recipe from the internet would make breakfast more appetizing. He was opening the pantry to get the dried chives when the text message icon lit up.

Fucking finally. Weak with relief, Max opened it.

But it wasn’t from Grady at all.Your message could not be delivered.

Could not be delivered.

Grady had blocked him.

Max stood in the kitchen, numb.

The UV garden Grady gave him for Christmas had a bright light that was often still on when Max went to bed, so he’d put it in the pantry, where he could close the door. That meant he didn’t look at it every day. Today, when he put his phone down with a shaky hand, for the first time, he saw tender little shoots coming up.

He grabbed the chives and firmly closed the pantry door.

But no matter how much he tried to ignore it, suddenly the house felt like it was full of ghosts, all of them Grady’s. When he put the bowl he’d cracked the eggs in into the dishwasher, he gritted his teeth, remembering Grady sitting at his kitchen table, researching which model to get. Max loved that dishwasher.

Now he wanted to rip it out.

The frying pan he was using to make breakfast was the same one he’d scrambled eggs in that morning. It matched exactly the one in Grady’s kitchen in Philadelphia.

Gru’s bed in the corner of the living room, just visible from the stove, had been a gift from Grady. Gru was lying on it right now.

Even later tonight, when Max went upstairs to go to bed, he couldn’t escape, because Grady’s memory was all over his bedroom. He was even in the shower.

Max should throw all that stuff out. But Gru loved that bed. And it wasn’t easy to throw away a dishwasher. And that was hisfavorite frying pan, goddammit.

But the UV garden could go. Those tiny sprouts didn’t mean anything to Max. In fact, he wanted them out of his house right the fuck now.

He threw open the kitchen pantry and yanked the cord out of the outlet. Then he grabbed the garden in both hands and carried it into the garage, where he threw it against the floor to smash it into pieces.

But he couldn’t leave it like that. Gru could cut himself. So Max snatched the broom off the wall and furiously swept the broken plastic into a dustbin. Then he dumped everything in the garbage.

By the time he finished, the kitchen had filled with smoke. The moment Max opened the door, the smoke alarm went off.

The eggs he’d left on the stove had melded with the frying pan. There was no saving either of them.

Max’s eyes stung. He told himself it was from the smoke. “Fuck.” He swiped his hand over his face and squeezed his eyes shut.

Then he threw the frying pan in the garage trash too and went to get Gru’s leash. He could try breakfast again after a walk.

GRADY SPENTNew Year’s jet-lagged.

His new captain was a defenseman named Howard Barclay. He was all of nineteen and still had acne and went by the imaginative nickname of Dawg.

---