Tigerland (7 page)

“Oh.” That one syllable response sounded as if Dec hadn’t even considered that being a possibility.

“Oh, indeed,” I drawled.

He picked up on that immediately. “You sound mad.”

I scooted over to be closer to him. “Nope, not at all. Just concerned. I don’t want you dragged through the media scrum all over again. It was bad enough the first time.”

“It’s not like we’ve ever been out of the media’s targets, Simon.”

He had a point. “Yeah, but it’s waned recently. If Heyward comes out and starts talking about you, you’ll be caught in a shit storm again.”

“You worried about me, or you?”

I didn’t like the sudden hardness in his eye, and I found myself leaning away from him. “Wow.
You
, first and foremost, of course.”

The glint was gone, almost as quickly as it came. “Sorry. Just….”

“See, it
is
bothering you.” I put my arms around his shoulders and buried my chin in the crook of his neck. His hands closed over mine.

“I guess I didn’t think it would. But now you’ve got me thinking about him dragging me into it all.”

“Don’t I always tell you to never listen to me?”

He chuckled, and it was nice to hear. It was also nice to feel the warmth of his body in the rapidly cooling air of the fading afternoon. “I should have learned by now, huh?”

We both stared out at the river, not knowing what to say next. It seemed this conversation was over.

For now.

D
EC
remained withdrawn throughout the night, and I let him have his space by dragging out my laptop and doing some “research” on his ex. I did so under the guise of it being necessary for work just in case he saw me doing it, but he didn’t. It wasn’t a lie, anyway, because one of the programs I produced, a panel show called
QueerSports,
would undoubtedly be discussing the press conference and whatever it revealed when it aired later on in the week. So I wanted to be prepared. As I pulled up every article I could find on Heyward, Declan sprawled on the lounge watching TV like a zombie, Maggie perched on his chest.

“I guess I haven’t been lucky enough to find that special woman yet,” Heyward was quoted as saying when chosen as one of Cleo’s fifty most eligible bachelors two years ago. At the time, Dec had been amused, and also thankful that he had never been approached to be one during his time in the closet, and thus was spared the indignity of such an interview. “Playing football professionally doesn’t leave me a lot of time for a relationship.”

The classic deflection of someone in the closet. He might as well have been wearing a T-shirt that said, “I like guys.” Other footballers didn’t seem to have a problem mixing sport and girlfriends.

He
was
a good player, and even though he hadn’t reached Declan’s levels of achievement, he had played more games and justifiably won himself a good reputation as a consistent and hardworking member of his club.

It didn’t make me like him, however. I had gotten enough bits and pieces over the year about how he had continually kept Dec at arm’s length, but that he also knew exactly how to manipulate Dec enough so that he was at Heyward’s beck and call. Dec had admitted he didn’t like himself much during that period and put up with it because he didn’t know anything else. The closet is a powerful thing. It makes you accept things you never thought you would in order to preserve the facade that you present to the outside world. The one thing that finally broke Heyward’s hold over Dec was the fact that he cheated on him—not just once, and not just with one guy. Dec was out the door the very day Heyward admitted it.

So, no, I didn’t like him at all.

But I knew what first loves could be like. And Declan
had
loved him.

I stared at the picture currently on screen. Dark short hair, thick full brows, and eyes that were an interesting shade of light brown. He wasn’t bad in the looks department, but he had a smarmy grin that advertised he thought he was hot shit and you should know it as well. It was an easy confidence that usually develops into full blown arrogance.

Still, there must have been
something
there to make Dec love him. Declan wouldn’t love an out and out arsehole. There had to be some good points.

It was just better for me at the moment to believe he didn’t have any.

When my mobile rang, I was about to let it go to voice mail just in case it was Coby again. I didn’t need any further info right now that could make Dec become even more withdrawn. The screen, however, showed a completely different name and one that shocked me, as he seldom rang anybody—usually leaving it up to his wife to do so. I snapped my netbook closed so that Dec wouldn’t see what I was reading and took the call from my brother.

“Hey, you’ll never guess what I found out,” Tim said without a formal greeting.

“You’re excited because there’s a new Ed Hardy store opening in town?” I could tell from Dec’s face that he knew immediately who I was speaking to, although he was puzzled because Tim normally wasn’t the chatty phone type. He always made Gabby call if they were arranging a family dinner or needed to ask something.

“There’s a new Ed Hardy store opening in town?” Only Tim could be excited by such a travesty.

“Fuck, I hope not.”

“Dammit, you got my hopes up!”

Being brokenhearted over the nonexistence of a store that sold leopard-print mankinis didn’t exactly qualify as a tragedy in my book. After all, Shakespeare didn’t say
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your expensive bogan apparel
. “Isn’t one enough?”

“Just because you buy your clothes from Savers doesn’t mean the rest of us should look like we crawled out of a bin bag.”

I was debating fashion with my brother. Should I check to see if blood was falling out of the sky? Next thing I knew, he would be asking me to take him to a musical or wanting to know what an avocado tasted like. “Okay.”

“Look, I’m the one with the news, here.”

“Is Gabby pregnant again?”

“No!” Tim sounded horrified.

“Then what else would have you so excited?”

“Okay, smartarse. I just found out apparently another AFL player is about to admit he swings another way. You know, another way to the norm.”

I decided to let that casual offence slip by, but
what the fuck?
Even Tim was in the know? I glanced over at Dec, who was trying too hard to look like he wasn’t actually listening in to every word I was saying. I jumped to my feet and headed into our bedroom. Not suspicious
at all
.

Meanwhile, Tim was continuing to rabbit on. “But I thought, well, Dec’s already out—”

I kicked the door shut behind me. “You know he’s not Australia’s only gay footy player, right?”

“What are you so touchy about?”

I sat on the edge of our bed. Tim was picking a fine time to start being remarkably astute. “Nothing.”

“Do you know who it is?” he asked.

My silence said far too much for my liking, and by the time I was starting to babble out something,
anything
, Tim was babbling over me.

“Oh, fuck, you
do
! Who is it?”

“I don’t know for sure—”

“And that’s why you’re acting so weird! Whoever it is, Dec fucked him once upon a time, right?”

I disconnected the call, and jabbed at the off button to kill the mobile before Tim could ring back. Smart bastard. And, just,
bastard
!

The bedroom door opened, and Dec poked his head in. “Everything okay?”

“Peachy.”

“You’ve convinced me. Come on, who was it?”

I threw my phone onto the closest bedside table. “Tim.”

“What’s he gotten you mad about this time?” Dec was used to the odd relationship my sibling and I had. We seemed to exist in a childish limbo, having not grown up since we were in primary school, still battling like kids. But we were also unflinchingly loyal to one another—we could give each other as much shit as they could handle, but the gods help anybody else who criticised them.

“He knows about Heyward.”

“Your
brother
knows?” Dec jammed his hands in his pockets and rocked back on the balls of his feet, quickly agitated once more.

“Not all of the specifics. He knows there’s an AFL player about to come out, and when I stayed silent he guessed that you knew him at some stage.”

“Did you text him earlier?” Dec asked, unable to look at me.

The question stung, and my expression would have turned him to ash had he been glancing in my direction. “No!”

“Then how the fuck did Tim know?”

“Gossip spreads fast, no matter how big the city.”

“That’s really philosophical, Simon.” Dec hardly ever sneered, so when he did it took on movie villain proportions.

I jumped to my feet and pushed past him to cut through the lounge back to the kitchen. It was beer time. But I managed to spit out a rejoinder guaranteed to hurt him. “Don’t blame me for your ex-boyfriend fucking you over yet again!”

I was so glad my back was to him when I said that, because I didn’t even want to imagine the look he probably had on his face right now.

But maybe he realised he had been pushing me away all afternoon, and he followed me out.

At the fridge I stood with my back to him as I yanked the top off my beer and chugged about half of it at once.

“Is there a beer there for me?” he asked softly.

I opened the fridge again, and threw one to him. He caught it expertly and easily twisted the cap off. I, of course, had managed to rip the skin on my index finger with mine. Ever observant, Declan foraged in the top drawer beneath the counter and wordlessly handed me a pack of Band-Aids.

“We don’t know he’s going to fuck me over.”

“No,” I finally conceded, ripping a Band-Aid open with my teeth. “We don’t. But you’ve always been more of an optimist than me.”

“Babe, Eeyore’s more of an optimist than you.” He took the Band-Aid off me and wrapped it around my finger.

“Eeyore’s just a realist, and so am I.” I didn’t want to be proved right. I really didn’t. But who knew what the media could find out once they got a whiff of any “scandal”? My brother had already jumped to the correct conclusion, and once the media caught on they would start uncovering any info they could find on the doomed, tragic relationship of the gay football players. Maybe there would even be a ridiculous TV movie made from it, and we would all be played by ex-
Home and Away
actors. I couldn’t imagine anything worse.

Well, that was an exaggeration. I am Eeyore, after all. I could imagine
much
worse.

Trying to distract me, Declan leaned in and kissed me, his laugh bouncing against my skin. Glad that he was out of his funk, I decided to get out of mine. Dec moaned with approval as I set our beers down, all the while still kissing him, and began to steer him towards the bedroom.

“What about your work?” he said, his voice thick with desire.

“Fuck work.”

“I love it when you talk dirty. At least, your version of dirty talk.”

“Doesn’t my dirty talk sound a lot like my normal talk?”

“Funny that.”

Maybe we were trying to prove something to one another. Or to ourselves. But the thing was, we had nothing to prove or justify. As usual, we were holding onto each other while the world seemed to go crazy around us.

It had worked for us before. And it would keep on doing so.

D
EC
and I were in a weird sort of limbo when I left to go to work the next morning. Things were fine between us, but there was an unspoken rule that Greg Heyward was not going to be mentioned in any way—at least not until we knew whether he was the one holding the press conference later in the afternoon.

As soon as I stepped out of the lift onto the third floor that housed our production offices, I could tell there was something in the air. In fact, it seemed to be buzzing. The research assistants had already drawn up on the large whiteboard their most likely suspects for outing. Most were plausible—some were just wishful thinking, like the popular pinup boy of the moment, Trent Mars. Someone had even written Dec’s name down for a laugh, with a question mark beside it. When I walked in, one of the younger assistants who was actually on prac from RMIT jumped up and rubbed it out hurriedly, blushing the whole time. I gave a small smile so I wouldn’t be thought of as the big bad boss. Even after almost two years working here, I still tried to be the boss that was a friend, often with disastrous results when I had to be the boss that chucks a shit because work needs to be done. I knew a boss could never really be a friend, but I kept thinking I could be the one to break that rule and actually succeed at it.

So I fled to the safety of my office.

It didn’t take long for me to be found. Coby threw open the door, bearing coffee.

“Good,” I said. “Give it.”

“Hello to you too, sir,” he replied.

I grunted as I took my first sip. Coby
did
make good coffee. It was one of the first things that made me start warming to him, in the early days when I held a grudge against everybody for not being Nyssa. “They all look busy out there.”