Tigerland (9 page)

I
N
THE
end, Dec released a brief, congratulatory statement through CTV, praising Heywood for both his time on the field and his potential to become a role model for the LGBTQ community. It went viral within an hour, with all the news stations and websites picking it up—which also got us some great publicity for CTV, and some snide commentary about the obvious nepotism involved in gaining the exclusive that everybody else in the industry would have killed for.

Declan left not long after recording his piece, with Abe and Lisa in tow. When I got home later that night, he was alone and on our balcony. A couple of empty beer bottles sat next to him, and I shoved them aside to climb on the banana lounge and rest my head on his shoulder.

“How are you?” I asked.

He swigged down what was left in the beer he was holding, and I heard it clink as he set it down. “Fine. What exactly do you think is going on with Abe and Lisa?”

His attempt to steer the conversation away from himself was transparent, but I thought I’d play along for the moment. “You got me. You hung out with them today. What do you think?”

“That’s why I asked you. I have no idea. When they’re with each other, it’s like they’re back together in every way except actually
being
together. Like, they’re not really doing any couple-y affectionate things. But they still seem like a couple.”

“I guess they’re just trying to work things out. It’s bound to be awkward at the start.”

“It wasn’t for us,” he reminded me.

“We were only broken up for a few weeks. It’s been about eight months for them. Plus, we weren’t even technically broken up. You were just being an idiot.”

He laughed. “
I
was?”

“Yeah.”

His lips brushed against my forehead. “I guess I was. But so were you.”

“I was at the start. And you were in the middle. But in the end it all worked out, and that’s why we’ll be together forever.”

“That sounds like a threat,” he teased.

“You bet it is. Now are you going to tell me how you really are?”

“Tired,” Dec admitted. “Everybody wants my bloody opinion at the minute. Work, my parents, my sister—even my brothers, and they hate asking personal stuff. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing, I’ve gotten about seven invites to go on different shows, Fran and Roger stopped by—”

“Bugger! I missed them?”

“Fran was in fine form. I know she wanted a blow-by-blow account of everything Greg and I had ever done.”

“Dirty bird!”

“Not the sex stuff. Even Fran’s not that bad.”

Thank fuck for small mercies. “That’s privileged information even I haven’t ever gotten.” I tried not to let a slightly whiny tone break from me.

“I always thought you didn’t really want to know.”

“And you’re right, I don’t. But I also don’t want to read it in his autobiography.”

“We don’t know he’s writing an autobiography.” Dec shifted slightly, and my head sagged more into the crook of his arm. “He didn’t even read a frigging book when we were together—none that I saw, anyway.”

Maybe that was one thing I had on the guy.

Because everybody knows book reading is rated so much more highly than sport prowess.

“He was lucky you turned down the offer that was made to you to write one.” Even though I knew Dec would never have outed them as a couple, or even hinted at Heyward being a fellow traveller, you would have had to imagine Dec even writing an autobiography in the first place. He was so private he made J.D. Salinger look like a Kardashian in comparison. Publishing houses offered to throw Scrooge McDuck-level of moneybags at him for it, but that didn’t play any consideration in Dec’s decision—which, incidentally, was made about four seconds after the offer was first pitched.

“He called.”

I tensed up immediately, and it would have been obvious, as I was squashed into a single banana lounge with him. “
Heyward
did?”

“Yeah. While Fran and Rog were here. And that’s
not
the only reason I’m telling you.” He added that last bit quickly, just in case I was thinking of accusing him of it.

“What did he want?”

“Oh, to catch up. Two words you never want to hear your ex say to you.”

“I think technically it’s one word, as it’s a noun in that usage.”

“Whatever, I don’t want to do it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But I think maybe I should.”

I wanted to smash one of those beer bottles against the wall and take to the streets with the broken neck as my weapon of choice, looking for Greg Heywood to have an old-school style rumble (my knowledge of which was obviously taken from
Grease
and
Rebel Without A Cause
). But I swallowed to try and take the dryness out of my mouth and calmly said, “If that’s what you want.”

Dec laughed, but it was bitter. “You’re saying I shouldn’t go.”

“I didn’t hear me saying that.”

“I didn’t have to be a mind reader to catch it.”

I wasn’t going to debate the point. “So, are you?”

“I wanted to talk to you first.”

“You’re kidding, right? You wanted to check it out with the little woman, just in case he had a hissy fit?”

“Notice how
I
didn’t say that?”

“I only had to catch it,” I replied, throwing his words back at him.

“Don’t start.”

So I shut my trap. Considerable restraint, I know.

“Of course I’m going to want to talk to you about it,” Declan said, more gently this time.

“It’s your decision in the end.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Then do it,” I goaded him. And the thing is, I
did
want him to go. It was for the best, especially as he could find out exactly what Greg was planning to do in The Great Coming Out Extravaganza.

“Do you really mean that?”

“Yes.” I heard the bark in my voice, so I repeated it, much softer this time. “Yes.”

The stubble on his chin rasped against my skin as he kissed me. “I love you. And you have nothing to worry about.”

“I know.”

But it wasn’t Dec I was worried about. I still didn’t trust Greg at all—and, hey, that was my right. The last time Dec had really spoken to him, Greg had tried to win him back. Now that he was free from the closet he might be even more emboldened.

Of course, I could also be wrong.

I often was. 

W
E
USUALLY
had the telly on in the mornings as background noise to making breakfast and getting ready for work, listening in to the news and weather in between bites of toast or gulps of coffee.

The morning after Heyward’s press conference our apartment remained silent, punctuated only by the beeping of the toaster and the concentrated hissing of the espresso machine.

Neither of us really wanted to discuss Heyward and how the media would be reacting right now. We knew we would be dealing with that issue at work. With both of us employed in television, Dec specifically in AFL coverage, it was not going to be a news story we could avoid.

So we pretended everything was normal, even though we usually spoke to each other a lot more over the dining table. We didn’t even pick up the paper. Instead, I picked it out of our mailbox in the lobby and threw it into the bin. I didn’t even open it up to see if anything was in it.

Maybe I was being paranoid, but I could feel some scrutiny from fellow commuters as we made our way over the bridge. Dec was a celebrity of sorts, so he always got some attention, but Heyward had brought him back into even more prominence. Declan, hiding behind his sunglasses, seemed nonchalant, but it was always his default visage. He was much harder to read than me, whose default visage was a twisted grimace.

“Are you okay?” he asked as we reached our separation point—where he headed towards the Docklands studios and I continued on to catch my tram to the other end of Collins Street.

“Bee’s knees, baby.”

“Uh huh.”

“You?”

“Bee’s ankles?”

“See you tonight,” I said, leaning in for a quick peck.

When I looked back, he was watching me walk away. He raised his hand, and I waved back. When I turned again, he was finally on his way as well.

I decided to walk. I was nowhere near the level of Dec’s celebrity, but as his partner I got a fair share of press. I didn’t want to put up with any stares of recognition on the tram, in close quarters where I couldn’t escape.

It was a warm morning for Melbourne, and I was flushed and sweating by the time I reached the office. Coby gave me a cursory look over, his eyebrows impressively raised.

“I hope that’s after-sex glow and not heat stress.”

“Immature,” I wheezed.

“Worse, it’s exercise flush.” He pushed me into my office and poured me a glass of water from the cooler. “That isn’t like you.”

“I didn’t want to get on the tram.”

“Normally you would catch a taxi, then. Or drive yourself, Lazyarse.”

He was right. Way to draw attention to myself by acting out of character.

“I wasn’t thinking straight, okay?”

He opened his mouth, which was already smirking with anticipation at the bon mot he would unleash, but I held up my hand.

“Yes, yes, I know you’re so camp you’re a tent, but stop right there. I’m not in the mood.” I did, however, gulp down the water and held the glass out for a refill.

“Maybe coming in to work today wasn’t such a great idea,” Coby said, bending over the water cooler.

“What else was I going to do? Sit at home and wait for the next wave of assault from the Greg Heyward Publicity Frontline?”

“You could do what my mum does when she’s stressed. Wash down some antidepressants with a bottle of red Lambrusco and sleep through the next few days.”

No wonder Coby was so unflappable and anally retentive. He was obviously rebelling against his mother and her ways. The same reason why I was a Richmond supporter to my red-and-black-from-birth Essendon supporting parents. No kid wants to be exactly like their parents until they grow up a little and realise their parents really aren’t that bad. There were times mine could still annoy the shit out of me, and vice versa, but since Dec and Gabby had come along we settled into a more comfortable reverie—of which I really think Declan was the glue. He even had Tim on his side, although my family’s reverence at his football past was slowly starting to subside, and he was becoming less godlike and more human and fallible to them.

“I might not take that bit of advice from the Judy Garland School of Coping Mechanisms, if that’s okay.”

Coby wrinkled his nose rather cutely. “I don’t get it.”

Nobody appreciates queer history anymore, but I decided to spare him a lecture. “How much is
QueerSports
going to focus on Heyward this week?”

“Are you kidding me? We’re a sports show for queers, by queers. This is the biggest gay sporting story since your boyfriend came out. It’ll probably take up the whole hour.”

Boyfriend?
I think we’d been together long enough for people to stop thinking of us as
boyfriends
. It sounded so naff.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“You can’t avoid the topic, boss.”

“I know.”

“This isn’t even the only show we produce that will be mentioning it.”

“I know.”

“So you have to buck up.”

That
I didn’t know about. Buck up? Were we in Pleasantville all of a sudden? I must have been glaring at him, because he suddenly sucked in his breath and murmured, “Okay, probably went a bit too far there.”

“You think?”

“I know this must be hard for you.”

I wanted to give the melodramatic
you have no idea how hard this is
speech. After all, Coby had never lived my life. And the fact that it felt like it was beginning to happen all over again, like some bad horror movie sequel, was getting to me. Instead, I sucked it up. I built a bridge and got over it, and other crap sayings. I think Coby could read the clichéd speech on my face, though, because he continued with an
I’m going to get fired or killed for this
expression. “But it is your job.”

“Really, Coby? It’s my job? Thanks for pointing that out.”

“It’s not like we can pretend it isn’t happening. You know management would come down on us if we don’t cover it. Especially after sending out a camera team yesterday.”

I nodded.

“Are you pissed at me?” he asked hesitantly.

It was so hard having assistants. Especially because I had no boundaries. They always became my friends, and it meant that when I had to be the big scary boss I could never do it. Coby may not have had the Bambi-eyes of Nyssa, but he was doing his best impersonation of them.

“No. I’m just pissed generally.”

Coby nodded, and wisely decided to leave me alone.

I sat and stewed in my office for the next half hour, making calls and arranging meetings with the “talent” of the shows. All seemed excited to get my reaction, but I danced around the subject or, as my patience began to wear thin, flat out refused to acknowledge their questions.