Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (13 page)

“That’s why I want to know more about it. What the basis is. The lawyer won’t talk to me, and I can’t even find out who the lawyer is on the other side.”

“It’s an interesting problem. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing it more to get publicity than to actually win the case.”

“The lawyer didn’t seem all that interested in talking to a reporter.”

He chuckles. “You’re a reporter now?”

“I’m apprenticing with Hal. Well, he said he’d help me write out the story when I researched it. He’s busy with some big article on sports injuries.”

“Good luck, then. Hope it keeps you from going stir-crazy. When are you flying up to Boliat?”

“Friday. And then back here on Monday. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a job by then.”

“If you continue on as a reporter, you can go to Media Day if your tiger goes to the championship.”

I laugh shortly. “I wouldn’t dare. I’d ask some stupid question and be featured for years in news stories about the stupid questions people ask on Media Day.”

“I don’t think you’d ask a stupid question.”

That makes me smile. “Thanks for the confidence.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t think you’d say something stupid if you talk to your mother.”

“Thanks for the confidence,” I say again, in a different tone.

He sighs. “And I’m not going to talk to her about the court case.”

“Father…”

“No. It’ll only cause more trouble. Maybe if you promise me that when things cool down a little, you’ll try to talk to her, then
maybe
I’ll help you bring it up.”

“If you talk to her first—”

“Wiley.”

Fuck, why is the right thing to do so hard sometimes? “Fine. When things cool down.”

After we hang up, I pace around the apartment. In a way, I wish I could recall that anger, how pure and clean it felt, without all the underlying guilt. I wish I could just scream about how stupid she’s being, that she can’t see how obvious it is that being gay doesn’t have to affect our relationship, that she’s buying into the agendas of all these people who are uncomfortable with gay people because it challenges their concept of what love and life mean—or, if you believe studies, because they’ve beaten down their own gay urges and don’t want anyone else to be happy.

But no, that’s an easy way out. The truth, when you come right down to it, is that they hate us because we’re different, and therefore we’re scary. They bring up Bible verses, they invent social issues, they talk about their missing grandchildren. They make up stories about us and then use those stories to scare each other. They tell us we were better before we were gay, as though there was a time before we were gay. If only we could give it up, go back to that paradisical time of innocence of our lives, then we would be just fine. But they won’t forgive us our sin, the one that’s coded into our bodies, even though their Lord and Savior supposedly died to expiate our sins.

Thinking about religion doesn’t help. I fume, standing by the window, putting paws up against the glass and then turning away to pace the small, empty apartment again. My tail, which I can normally control, flicks against the couch and the TV.

One of the things we dealt with a lot in college, talked about at the FLAG meetings, was that these hate groups want gays to feel like there’s something wrong with us, like being gay is our fault, a defect in us that stops those close to us from loving and understanding us. I’ve had it hammered into my head that that’s not true, but now that my family has exploded in my face, that worry feels like a hydra that keeps growing heads no matter how many times I cut them off.

We share the responsibility for our fractured relationship, Mother and I; I know that in my head. But aren’t teenagers supposed to be rebellious? Isn’t it a parent’s job to understand that and weather the storm? Father adapted, he met me halfway, he opened his mind and accepted me. Why can’t she do the same thing? Granted, I know I haven’t been the easiest gay son to deal with.

If she can’t accept my lifestyle, then that’s fine. She’ll never meet Dev (again), she’ll never come down here to visit. I can live with that. But maybe I could be a little less in her face about it. Like maybe being a nationally known figure got her fur ruffled. I don’t know what I can do about that, because I want to be more prominent, more well-known. I want to have a platform from which I can tell people to love their gay children.

Do I want her to accept me? Do I not care?

Do I want her to give up Families United so she can accept me? Or do I want it because it’s embarrassing, like a dentist’s kid with crooked teeth?

That’s a long ways off, though, I fear. As bad as things are now, it’ll be a good while before I’m able to talk to Mother at all, let alone the way I can talk to Father. And that should be fine. I didn’t want to for most of the last three years. So why does my paw itch now with the desire to pick up the phone?

I sit down and play UFL 09 against the computer, to take my mind off it. I win, because the computer is lousy, and I wish Dev were here. Curling up against the couch pillows just isn’t the same. At the end of the couch, I can still faintly smell the place where he jerked me off. It’s one of those smells that just touches right at the back of the nose, something so faint it might not be there. Maybe it’s just my imagination. I call my tiger anyway, to say goodnight, and I don’t think he notices any extra urgency in my voice when I tell him I miss him.

But I lie there in our bed, looking up at the ceiling, tail limp between my legs. There’s no tiger weight on me, no warmth in the empty bed, and I feel like I might float away in the night. I pull the blankets around me and turn onto my side, squashing one ear against the pillow. The apartment is silent, no breathing beside me. I close my eyes and inhale Dev’s scent. Smells are memories; I tell myself it’ll only be a couple days before he’s there beside me again. But I wish I could talk to him about everything on my mind, not just the careful distraction-free edit of my life.

Wednesday morning, I get a call from David Rodriguez of the Firebirds. It’s just before nine a.m. and I’m still lounging in bed, but I snap awake quick enough. “Is this a good time to talk?” he starts with.

“Sure.” I rub sleep from my eyes and sit up, dismissing my dreams and the tempting brush of the soft sheets against my morning erection. “Thanks for calling back.”

I don’t have the phone quite against my ear, so his voice is a little distant. “I just wanted to talk to you a little about your thoughts on this outreach position. We haven’t got a lot of the details worked out, so what we’ll need is a self-starter who’s really motivated to bring new out-of-the-box ideas to the table.”

I’m glad he didn’t talk like this when I saw him in person, because I would’ve either laughed or said something snide. “I wonder if you can tell me,” I say, “why you’re hiring for this position if you don’t have a plan in place for it. Is there an urgent need right now for it?”

“Truth is,” he says, “we don’t really have anyone in-house who can create a good plan. This was an idea we’ve been kicking around ever since Devlin’s press conference, and we saw this opportunity to bring someone on board who’s more familiar with the world we’re trying to reach. I’m going to tell you honestly that I don’t know if this is a long-term position. What we want to do to start is a three-month contract and then see how things go from there.”

“Three months. That’s barely time to get a campaign organized and material out.” And it’s also, paradoxically, too much time; I would have to report to Yerba in the middle of that. If they hire me. But I’m arguing academically now. I rub my cheekfur on the right, which is matted down from sleep, and suppress a yawn. “How would you decide whether to continue the position?”

“Oh, three months is usually enough for us to get a sense of how someone’s going to work out in a job.”

“On the field,” I say, before I can stop myself. “If you’re judging publicity campaigns, it takes a lot longer to see how effective they are.”

“Right. Well, like I say, after three months we’ll see how it goes. Could you talk to me a little about your experience?”

So I tell him about my college days, and I make sure to insert in there that when I got the scouting job with the Dragons, my passion for football really took over and I let the activist stuff fall by the wayside. I don’t mention that it’s mostly because of the need for me to be closeted, first as Dev’s boyfriend, and then as a Dragons employee and Dev’s boyfriend.

“Sounds good, sounds good. So would you like to come in and meet a couple of our marketing people? We’re all pretty busy, but I can set up something for tomorrow. I don’t want to commit to next week, because…” He laughs.

“Right. Hopefully you’re all going to be very busy next week.”

“Fingers crossed.”

“Let me think about it and give you a call back,” I say. It’s really hard for me to say no outright, even though I’m fairly sure I’m not going to want to take the position. Anyway, until I see how the interview with Jocko at Yerba goes, I shouldn’t close off any doors.

I get out of bed, make coffee, and catch up on e-mail and the morning news. After that, there’s nothing for me to do but wait. Wait for Emmanuel to call back, wait for Father to call back, wait for Dev to be done with practice. I go out for a walk and then to do some shopping for food and for clothes, because I feel like I need to wear something different and sharp to the playoff game in Boliat. Pants-wise, at least. There’s no question I’m going to wear the over-large Firebirds polo I got from the owner’s jet.

In the middle of the day, Brian calls. I ignore the call and don’t listen to the voice mail. Half an hour later, Gena calls to ask about my flight up. She’s going up with the other wives and says they’re meeting Saturday night to have drinks before the game, and she tells me I’m sitting with them.

“All our tickets are in the same place?” I’m walking outside a shopping mall under a cloudy sky, swinging a bag in which I have a nice new pair of khaki-gold pants. Also a couple pairs of tight boxer briefs I found that I hope Dev likes on me.

“Devlin got you tickets with the wives,” she says.

I laugh. “Well, all right, then. I’ll join you for drinks after Dev has to go back to his hotel.”

“And don’t worry about Penny.”

My ears flick back. “Penny who?”

“Oh. Colin’s wife. Angela talked to Daria who kind of knows her and we made sure she knows that you’re one of us. She doesn’t have to like it, but she has to be polite about it.”

Now my ears go back, and my fur prickles. “And she was okay with that?”

“She says she is.” Gena pauses. “Or maybe she wasn’t planning on having a drink with us anyway. There are a lot of wives, and I guess she has other friends.”

“I don’t want to cause any problems.”

“You’re not the one causing the problem,” she says, and that makes me feel warm even though the clouds stubbornly refuse to let the sun through. “Anyway, we figured we’d leave the guys alone on their Saturday night. Whatever routine they have, it’s got them this far, and we shouldn’t mess it up. If there’s a celebration, we’ll be there Sunday for it.”

I think of the routine Dev and I have and swish my tail a little more vigorously. “Is Angela coming?”

“With their boys, yes. Our boys are coming along as well. They’re so excited.”

“I can imagine.” I smile broadly. “Closest I ever came to being this excited about an event my father was in was at a party his office threw for him at his ten-year anniversary.”

She laughs. “They’ve gotten used to it. They went to all the games when we lived in Highbourne, but they got tired of being the big star’s cubs when they got older and the team wasn’t winning as much. Of course, now they’re thrilled that their father’s going to be in one more big game.”

“Hopefully two.”

“ I would hate to go to Peco in the winter. I’m hoping it’s Crystal City.”

I laugh. “That’s where I’d bet if I were you. The Sabretooths don’t have a lot of weaknesses and they’ve stayed pretty healthy.”

“So have we.”

“And we had good backups step up to fill in when we did have injuries.” We wrap up, and I walk on, back to the bus stop. But I’m thinking about the wives, and the stories of the guys, and Gena saying she wanted to leave them alone. Everyone has rituals, of course, but are those groupies I saw in the hotel lobby part of Gerrard’s ritual? Fisher’s? Anyone else’s?

Not Dev’s, I’m pretty sure. That one gay fox—Dev told me about him, but I forget his name—he’s given up on Dev. And unless Dev is indulging the straight side of himself on the same nights he’s indulging the very gay side of himself with me, I don’t think I have anything to worry about. So the gossipy side of me wonders which of the other players are cheating on their wives, which ones would get a rude surprise if their wives interrupted their “lucky” Saturday night ritual.

In the evening, I call Dev. “Drills and drills,” he groans. “Film in between. Study sessions after. They’re killing us with these new plays.”

“You need it. Is it cold there in the Midwest?”

“Not as bad as Hilltown. It’s fine, I’m in the hotel most of the time, and we heat up pretty quick during practice.”

“What plays are they putting in?”

He tells me a little about the plays, which I compare to what I know of Boliat’s offense. “Sounds good. You’re not going to rattle that quarterback.”

“Nah. We’re trying to hassle the receivers and stop the run. That’s about all we can do.”

“It’s not all you can do. You can learn his reads.”

“That’s what this film session was about. Learning where he looks, everything like that. Argh.”

“How’s things with Strike?”

Dev snorts. “He comes over once in a while to show solidarity or something, but he’s actually working pretty hard right now. He still calls out the offense, but just in private. Ty and Rodo grumble about him, but Ty says he’s learning a lot from him too. And he doesn’t bug the defense.”

“That’s not too bad, I guess. I mean, you know what you’re gonna get with him.”

“Wish he’d just shut up and do it instead of having to tell us about it all the time. If I have to hear one more time about his macro-veggie-otic diet, I’m going to choke him on his spinach.”