Page 38 of Playing His Game

Two weeks into their arrangement, Adam still hadn’t figured out the rules of Mo’s car thing.

It couldn’t besolelyabout flash or expense, because Adam had googled the weird tiny car Mo had in his garage and determined it was an old East German model that was basically made out of cardboard. Likewise, the dusty, lifted Jeep didn’t scream money (although the engine did make a lot of noise).

Tonight, Mo pulled into Adam’s driveway in the Cayenne, which Adam had internally dubbed the Douchemobile, to pick him up for his planned date.

Adam was friends with a lot of hockey players, and a lot of them had ridiculous cars. None of them had purchased a Porsche SUV and then painted it a lurid iridescent purple in order to attract as much attention as humanly possible.

But at least Adam fit comfortably in the passenger seat. And Mo was only three minutes late picking him up, which was timelier than Adam expected.

Adam closed the door and reached for the seat belt. “Hey. Are you going to tell me where we’re going now?”

“Like you did?” Mo pushed his sunglasses up his nose and backed out of the driveway. “No.”

Adam probably should’ve seen that coming. “Right.”

The past two weeks had passed, if not smoothly, then at least without major event. As they had agreed, Mo had become a fixture at Canyons games. As Adam had agreed, he didn’t ask Mo to go out with the team afterward. He would’ve said they’d reached a sort of ceasefire, except that Mo had also taken to sending Adam screenshots from Grindr with captions like:

look at all the d I am missing out on :(

Adam deleted those immediately. The last thing he needed was to try to have to explainthat. Mo could probably spin it without batting an eyelash, but Adam would rather walk into the desert without a hat. Swearing off hooking up with other guys had beenMo’s idea, not that Adam had objected. He hadn’t put this much effort into dodging a potential scandal just to go through the media circus infidelity accusations would bring.

Besides, the pictures made him feel weird. Not that he was jealous! Mo could look all he liked. Adam would just prefer if he kept the looking to himself.

“It’s paint ’n’ sip,” Mo said a second later.

Adam glanced over. The words had come out with a deliberately casual air—the tone Mo used to provoke a reaction. “Oh, Mads does those sometimes. Sounds fun.”

Mo made a strangled little noise. “She actually asked me if I wanted to go to this one, but I said I already had plans with you. She said, ‘Okay, have fun, maybe next time!’ What does thatmean, Adam?” His fingers tapped nervously against the steering wheel.

“That she wants to make friends with you?”

Mo made the sound again.

“If you didn’t want to be friends, why’d you give her your number?”

This time, Mo responded with a gusty sigh that made his lips flap like a flag in the breeze. “It’s not that I don’t want to be—she’snice, okay? I mean, maybe her choice of weeknight activity is a bit odd?—”

Then why didyoudecide to go to paint ’n’ sip?Adam suspected the answer would bring nothing but headache, so he didn’t ask.

“—but she’s decent. I don’t know, what if we get along and then she hates me when we break up?”

What a weird thing to worry about. “I’m pretty sure she keeps in touch with one of Hallsy’s exes.”

“Okay, but presumably, Hallsy and whoever this lady was wereactually dating!”

Adam blinked, taken aback for a moment. “Were you planning on telling her we weren’t?” Because then he’d have to explain to Jorts, and Jorts would… ugh. Jorts would look at Adam like he’d decided to wear a hair shirt for luck.

Mo exhaled loudly through his nose. “Never mind.”

A minute later, they pulled into the parking lot of a cheerful strip mall. Only the Mexican-themed bar on the end looked open; bright strings of bulbs illuminated the patio, where two long tables had been set with miniature easels. Mo waited pointedly on the sidewalk for Adam to join him, then flashed a falsely smitten grin and laced their fingers together before tugging Adam to the host station.

He leaned on it sweetly, batting his eyelashes like he wasn’t three inches shorter than the woman at the desk. “Hi there. Reservation for Mo, two for the paint ’n’ sip?”

The host glanced down at her tablet and then looked up and smiled. “Of course. Why don’t you go find some seats at the table—any open chair with a canvas is fine—and I’ll send Vicky over to take your drink orders.”

One of the tables had nearly been taken over by what was, based on the sashes and tiaras, a bachelorette party. He hoped for their sake this was a different group than the one that had put the video of him and Mo on the Internet. The sounds of cheerful laughter carried on the breeze, along with the scents of citrus and tequila. Faint strains of pop divas from the nineties played from hidden speakers.

Definitely a night intended to cater to women—and obviously something Mo wanted to lean into. He pulled Adam over to the second table, between a fifty-something woman drinking a pinky-orange cocktail and a blond with aWine MomT-shirt.