Tigers & Devils (24 page)

“That’s what I was implying.”

The pedestrian crossing started beeping, and we all swarmed over towards the island in the centre of the traffic. There was no sign of my tram yet, but I hoped it wouldn’t be too long.

“You can hate me right now,” Roger said, “but there’s a part of you that knows I’m telling the truth, and you don’t want me bringing it up because that means you’ll have to

TIGERS AND DEVILS | 165

think about it some more. And that will destroy this little Disney fantasy you’ve currently got in your head.”

Fuck him. I knew it wasn’t a fantasy life; I was the one goddamned living it. All I could do was stare at him coldly.

“Got nothing to say?” he asked.

Thankfully, I could see my tram at the next stop, slowly making its way towards ours. “Thanks for your support,” I said. Not the best comeback ever, but there was enough venom in my tone to press the point.

He leaned in to me so he wouldn’t be overheard by the other waiting passengers.

“Good luck watching your boyfriend preen with his beard on TV next week.”

Wow, that was remarkably bitchy for a straight man. I didn’t say anything, and Roger stood there staring sadly at me for a moment before walking away. I can’t say I thought there was an air of finality about this confrontation, but as I got onto the tram and watched him through the window as he made his way to Fran’s building I certainly felt like things would never be the same between us again. But I’m melodramatic that way.

Later that night when Declan rang I let it go to the answering machine. Despite me telling him that we should talk, I didn’t think I could share how empty I felt right then. In the morning when he called again, I would fob him off and say that I was tired after work and slept like the dead and be evasive about answering questions about Roger. I was a hypocrite, and all I wanted to do was Rip van Winkle my way out of this whole mess which I had just made worse.

AND suddenly, September was upon us.

Only the most important month in the AFL calendar. The Brownlow Ceremony takes place the same week as the Grand Final, and the two teams competing in the final usually don’t attend because the coaches want them concentrating on the game at hand rather than falling prey to one of the biggest booze-ups of the year. This meant that Declan was freed up; as the Devils were near the bottom of the ladder they were effectively out of the semi-finals, and he could spend more time in Melbourne preparing for the ceremony and finalising the details of the surgery he would have just before Christmas.

Having him around more was a salve for me, as Roger and I hadn’t spoken since our confrontation on Swanston Street. Declan was disappointed that our estrangement was being taken this far, but he knew he couldn’t budge me to do anything about the issue. Likewise, Fran was experiencing the same thing on her end with Roger. And as Fran had foretold in our lunch together just after that disastrous Saturday night, it was beginning to affect
our
friendship. Although we pretended otherwise, we just happened to become more and more busy at our respective workplaces, and our lunches became less frequent.

“You know, you don’t look so good,” Declan said one day.

“What?” I asked, distracted by a packet of coffee beans that refused to open.

“You look all pinched, as if you’ve just sucked a lemon.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’ve got to go and see your friends.”

“And you have got to sit there, shut up, and look pretty.”

“Don’t be an arsehole.” He threw the newspaper at me, and it went wide off the mark, crashing uselessly to the floor.

“You better not go back on the field with a throw that wide,” I chastised him, trying not to look like I had noticed his weapon of choice was the real estate section. There were glaring red circles marked around listings of apartments with prices that were more than five times the price of my home.

“Good way to try and change the subject,” Declan grumped.

TIGERS AND DEVILS | 167

I finally managed to get some beans into the grinder and hit the button to pulverise them into oblivion. “What was that? Sorry, can’t hear you over this!”

He resorted to giving me the finger.

“Really mature,” I scoffed as he scrambled out of his chair to grab the newspaper again. He gave me a look which more than let me know who he thought the mature one out of the two of us was.

Work was becoming really busy, so I wasn’t exactly lying to Fran when I used it as an excuse to fob her off yet again. It was only a month until the Triple F began; Nyssa and I were scrambling with last-minute deals to grab sponsors, finalise dates and screenings, and deal with a change of one of the venues. Somehow I didn’t mind it as much, because I knew that most nights I was coming home to Declan. I was becoming
domesticated
. Normally that might have made me baulk at the thought, but scarily enough it just made me give a Cheshire Cat grin.

The Brownlow threatened to deflate my mood, but I tried not to give in to it. Only a few nights before the actual ceremony, Declan came over and told me something I wasn’t expecting to hear.

“Jess thinks the two of you should meet.”

I sank onto the couch. I think I would have been less shocked if he said the Pope was coming over for dinner. “What? Why?”

He shrugged laconically. “Maybe she wants to prove her gay status to you so you won’t feel that she’s trying to steal your man.”

“She didn’t say that!” I spluttered.

“Not in so many words, but it was what she implied. Although she did chuck a fit when I told her you thought she wanted to harvest my swimmers.”

I whacked him on the shoulder. “You didn’t!”

He couldn’t keep it up for much longer and burst out laughing. He clutched his shoulder, wincing slightly. “You have a mean right hook when you want to.”

“Yeah, ask Tim sometime.”

He kissed me. “So you’ll meet her?”

“Why
does
she want to meet up?”

“Because she’s my friend. And she just wants to clear the air between the two of you.”

“There’s no air to clear.”

“Well, it will make her feel better.”

I opened my mouth to say something, then thought better of it and quickly shut it. Declan, of course, didn’t miss it. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Bull. What were you about to say?”

168 | SEAN KENNEDY

“Just….” I sighed. “Did she meet with your other partner when she went to the Brownlow with you before?”

“No,” Declan admitted. “But then, she didn’t have to.”

“Why?”

Declan coloured slightly. “Because he was already going to be at the ceremony.”

I’m pretty sure my mouth dropped open. “He was a footy player?”

“Yes. What, do you think I’m the only queer in all of AFL?”

Statistically, of course he wouldn’t be. But it was also hard to imagine that there could be more, to reconcile against the stereotype we had all been conditioned to believe. And certainly the presence of gay players wasn’t exactly advertised, much less acknowledged.

“Don’t ask me who it is,” Declan said. “He’s extremely closeted. He would hate other people to know.”

“Is that why you broke up?”

Declan nodded and looked away.

“Is he also the one who cheated on you?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

Righteous indignation on his behalf burned through me. “That’s not very closeted of him, is it?”

“Well, it’s easy to fuck around on the sly,” Declan said bitterly. “It’s much harder to try and have a relationship.”

“Why did you stick around?”

“I really don’t like thinking about it.”

“You can talk to me. You
should
talk to me.”

“I don’t like thinking about it because it reminds me of what I put up with at the time,” Declan said, finally looking at me, and I didn’t like seeing the pain reflected in his eyes. “It doesn’t make me think very highly of myself.” He paused and dropped my hand. “Or what you might think of me.”

“Hey,” I said, grabbing his hand back, and with my free hand rubbing the back of his neck. “I think
very
highly of you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We all do stuff we’re not proud of when we’re with other people.”

“I think at the time I didn’t know I could have anything better.”

Boy, had I been there. “You think I haven’t done that as well? Everybody does. It’s what human beings do in the fucked-up name of love.”

“I thought I loved him at the time. Looking back, I know it wasn’t love.”

I burrowed in closer to him. “He didn’t deserve your love.”

TIGERS AND DEVILS | 169

That moment would have been the perfect time for either of us to say those words to each other. It hung in the air between us, and I could tell he was just as aware of it as I was, but the moment passed, and a new, nagging thought came to my mind.

“Dec, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“It may make me sound like a dickhead.”

His gentle snort made me laugh. “That’s never stopped you before.”

“Yeah,” I admitted, “but I don’t like looking like a dickhead in front of you.”

“Really? Then you should stop being one.”

“Fuck off. And stop bringing up Fran and Roger.”

“I didn’t even mention them.”

“I know what you were getting at.”

He pulled me down so my head rested in his lap, now a therapist’s couch. “Come on, tell me what’s troubling you.”

Where to start? Besides the fact that he had reminded me, although I didn’t
need
reminding, of the Fran-and Roger-shaped hole in my existence.

“Why me?”

“I thought we’d already covered that?” Declan asked, confused.

“No, not in relation to Jess.”

“What, then?”

“What do you see in
me
?”

He sighed. “This is an old argument, and I hate repeating it.”

“Well, you keep spilling little secrets every now and again, and they throw me for a loop. When I think about the guys you’ve had, and what you
can
have, I have to wonder, what was it about me?”

Declan groaned and shook his fists in the air before taking a deep breath. “You seemed interesting. Different to everybody else I knew. Plus, you had a mouth on you. You weren’t shy about saying what was on your mind.”

“You mean I was a mouthy bastard.” Not exactly the basis for mutual attraction I’d hoped to hear.

“Yeah. But I like that about you. I told you before, I’m not used to getting that kind of honesty from people most of the time. Especially strangers. Usually it’s only my family, Abe, and Lisa.”

“I guess I can kind of understand that.”

Declan grinned and stroked the side of my cheek. “Plus, you’re hot.”

My face grew warm. I was embarrassed, because I really couldn’t believe
that
. He pulled me up so that we were face to face. His breath was warm against my neck as he sucked on it lightly. “You look even hotter when you’re mortified.”

170 | SEAN KENNEDY

I made some strangled noise of disbelief, and he pulled away to look straight at me.

“Hey, I find you irresistible and sexy. So shut up, and believe it.”

I didn’t want to play the self-esteem card
again
, so I let it slide. His hands rested upon my hips, and his right thumb coaxed its way under my shirt to stroke the skin beneath it. “And the more I got to know you, the more I liked. So if you’re making me do this, you have to tell me, what was it about me?”

“Where to start?” I leaned my forehead against his. “You were totally different to what I expected.”

“And that was good?”

“You defied my own prejudices.”

He laughed. “You sound like such a wanker.”

“I
am
a wanker, remember?” I paused. “Plus, you were hot.”

“Dickhead.”

“I think you must have really nice parents,” I said, out of the blue. It was a surprising statement, even to me, and I was the one who said it. He gave me a strange look. “What makes you say that?”

I shrugged. “Because you’re such a good guy. Face it, Dec, you’re in a sport where if you’re good you get treated like a god. And there are a lot of guys that let it get to them, and they believe it. Your parents must really keep you grounded.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I guess they do.”

Wow, another awkward silence. Because I suddenly realised that I would really like to meet his parents and see who had brought Declan into the world and made him the person that he was. And I think he would have liked them to meet me. But it wasn’t possible, blah blah blah.

“So,” I said, desperate to break the silence. “Jess, huh? When?”

WHEN
turned out to be the actual night of the Brownlow. Do you want to know what one definition of bizarre might be? Driving to your closeted boyfriend’s pretend-girlfriend’s house to watch them prepare for a faux date. This was a time when I really needed my friends to help me. I tried calling Fran’s mobile, but it was switched off. They were probably at a movie. Or maybe they had found a new best friend already. Nothing would surprise me anymore. I wanted to speak to Roger so badly, but seeing as this whole Brownlow controversy was the reason why we weren’t talking any more to begin with, I didn’t expect I would find a sympathetic ear in him. That only left Nyssa, and she didn’t even know for certain that I was dating anybody so there would be too many land mines to navigate before she would be able to focus on the problem at hand.

TIGERS AND DEVILS | 171

So that found me on a stranger’s doorstep, still wondering whether I should just turn around, go home, and hide under the bed.

Unfortunately, the decision was made for me. Somebody must have heard my car in the driveway and was opening the door as I stood there equivocating. The woman who answered the door was our age, relatively short, with blonde bobbed hair that suggested she should be posing against Art Deco furniture and doing the Charleston with a long cigarette holder dangling from her artfully drawn lips.

“Simon?”

“That’s the name on my birth certificate,” I said perkily. She opened the screen door to allow me in. “I think you need a drink.”

“That would be great.” And that was perhaps the finest introduction I had ever been given in my life.

She ushered me into the lounge. “Oh, I’m Jess, by the way.”

I shook her hand. “I kind of figured.” No need to say I had Googled her the day before and felt my gut drop at the pictures of her with Declan over the years. They made a lovely couple, and a few pictures had captured them looking at each other with a familiarity that argued a long-term relationship to those not in the know.

“Dec’s still getting ready.”

Oh shit, compliment time. “You look great, by the way.”