Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (26 page)

That’s about enough for me. I get out and dry myself with the towel, and since this motel doesn’t have a fur dryer, I sprawl on the bed on my stomach, naked, letting my fur air dry. Showers really do revive one; after the soak and the sunshine, I feel a lot better.

I take out my phone to text Dev something like,
I shouldn’t make decisions in the middle of the night. I’m sorry
. But the phone beeps as soon as I pick it up with a text message from him.

Fine. Stay there.

I stare at the words. It’s not the middle of the night for him, it’s clear morning and he’s read my note, and he agrees.

I don’t feel clean anymore, just damp. The sunshine is harsh and glaring now. I’m lying naked on a bed in a motel room, and there’s just me, all alone.

*

“Hi,” I say to Hal, an hour or so later, and my voice cracks a bit. Only because it’s been so long since I talked to someone, and I didn’t sleep very much.

“Hey, Miss Farrel,” he says. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I was wondering.” I take a breath. “I was wondering if I could stay on your couch for a few days.”

There’s a long silence. “I gotta say, that’s about number two on the list of things I never thought you’d ask me.”

“Yeah, well. Me neither.” I swallow a sob that threatens to come out as an embarrassing squeak, and exhale instead.

“Just a fight, I hope?”

“Me too. I don’t know. I just…he needs time alone to get ready for the game.”

“That’s probably it.” He fidgets on the other end of the line. “You know, lots of guys going to their first championship…that’s a lot of stress, a lot of pressure. Guys deal with it in different ways. He’ll probably call and apologize in a couple days.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe. So how about it? I can stay here in the hotel if I have to, but…”

“Oh, hell, Lee,” he says. “I just been dumped too. I mean—I sure as hell would appreciate the company. And the couch folds out into a bed, or you can have my room and I can sleep in the office.”

“No, I don’t want to put you out…” I press my fingers to my eyes again, and rub the dampness into the fur on the bridge of my nose. “We can work that out when I get there.”

“You need a ride?”

I sit and think about it. I need to walk back to our—to Dev’s place and get my stuff first. I could just drive over to Hal’s, but I’d have to get directions and my mind doesn’t want to deal with that.

“You need a ride,” he says. “Let me get cleaned up and I can be wherever you are in an hour or so.”

“Thanks,” I say, and give him the name of the motel. And then I sit down and just hold the phone in my paws.

I keep turning it over and over again, wanting to call up Dev’s message and read it over, to examine it for hidden meanings and somehow read into it that he doesn’t really not want to see me again. But the words are burned into my mind, and the only reason for me to look is out of some hope that reality has warped and the words have changed, or that my mind doesn’t remember them clearly, that the cute blue designer bubble of the new phone’s message program might have changed what was really said. And I know better.

Maybe he’d meant it in a light-hearted way. But then he would have followed it up because he’d be afraid I’d misunderstood. He was angry enough last night that I don’t think I’m wrong, when I think about it with my head.

We will talk again. We will have to. My imagination plays that scenario out in excruciating detail, a stage play in one act. Tearful, regretful Dev versus haughty, angry Lee. Tearful, regretful Lee versus proud but regretful Dev. Angry, shouting Lee versus angry, shouting Dev. The variations cycle around and around, none of them making me feel any better, none of them giving me a constructive way to move forward. Melodramatic Lee, that’s me.

That sounds like Brian talking, which twitches a long-dead reflex to talk to him…but no, I’ve left Brian with the equivalent of
Fine. Stay there.
Twice now, in fact. That was different, though; even the first time, our lives were already apart, and there was nothing further for me to do but not talk to him. Otherwise I would be calling him right now, waiting for him to tell me that there are more boy fish out there in the big gay sea, that I’ll have that big hole in my heart and under my tail filled in no time, that I’m better off without Dev.

I know that’s what he’d say, because he’s said it before about my other boyfriends and he’s as much as said it already about Dev. He’d only be disappointed that Dev didn’t punch me in the jaw on my way out; that would complete his self-righteous Cassandra complex.

Getting angry at Brian helps a bit. I stop leaking tears, at least, and stand up and walk around the room, still holding my phone. There’s a little bit of time before I want to walk over to the apartment, so I try turning on the TV. It comes up with a news story on the championship game, and I turn it off again. Lying back on the bed and staring at the ceiling seems like a good option.

All that occupies my mind for the next ten minutes is thoughts of Dev, orange with black stripes, smiling, putting his arms around me, yelling, stalking into his bedroom, saying, “I love you” on the phone, in person, with his eyes, with a touch. My throat tightens and I have to squeeze my eyes shut again. Like thunderclouds massing above, I know that there’s a big cry coming. Do I want to subject Hal to that? I may not have a choice.

I brought little to the room; I leave nothing behind save for a bit of shed fur. It would be nice to leave my sorrow and regret like a stain on the bed, a dirty towel on the floor. But all I leave behind is a little of my scent. I wonder whether the maids will be able to tell my mood from it, and I wonder whether more people leave behind stains of tears, or stains of sex. I would like to hope it’s sex, but I believe it’s probably tears.

Outside, the air has remained cool even though the sun is up. I flip my tail back and forth as I walk, because it forces me to sway my hips and I had always thought nobody could be really sad if he were sashaying down the street. But here I am proven wrong. I only get a few steps before the swing goes out of my hips and my tail, because I approach the corner of the apartment building and am struck with the vision of all my stuff piled in boxes on the sidewalk.

My steps slow, my tail droops. I don’t want to see the pile if it’s there.

But of course it won’t be there. Dev doesn’t have time to throw out all my stuff. Not unless he really wants me gone, can’t stand to have me around any more. Things aren’t that bad yet. I tell Melodramatic Lee to shut up.

Still, I avoid looking at the sidewalk more than half a block ahead of me, watching anything else: the other pedestrians coming and going, the pattern of bricks in the sidewalk (they all seem to have cracks), the stores just opening their iron folding gates. Jewelry, coffee, sneakers. Across the street, past the slow crawl of cars, there is another coffee shop and a takeout spaghetti place Dev likes. It’s all such a normal morning that it makes me feel even more alienated. None of these people had their boyfriends basically kick them out of the apartment, even if only temporarily. None of them would understand why my throat tightened again, why I had to look away from the spaghetti place.

When I cross the last street, I have to look up. The sidewalk in front of Dev’s apartment building holds people, parking meters, garbage cans. No box full of Forester memorabilia, no wall paintings or plants or stylish collared shirts sitting alone and abandoned on the curb. I exhale, and walk a little more quickly toward the parking garage.

Dev’s truck is still there. I lean against one of the bare concrete pillars and try to plan a next move. My two options are: wait here until he leaves, or wait somewhere else and come back later, whether that’s around here or at Hal’s place. I don’t like the idea of waiting here stalkerishly, and who knows how long it’ll be before he leaves, but also I don’t want to leave and have to come back.

The door to the upstairs opens with a bang, swinging free and slamming against the far wall. I shrink back behind the pillar as Dev stalks out, duffel bag over his shoulder, and makes a direct line to his truck, away from me.

His tail lashes. He’s clearly upset. My first thought is,
I hope he’s okay to practice
. My second is,
H
e still loves me
.

He throws his duffel bag in the passenger side of the truck and then stops, lifts his head. He sniffs the air.

My scent feels as thick as fog to me. I pull back and lean against the pillar, tail tight around my legs. When I glance down, I see loose shed fur floating in the air beside the pillar. Will he see it? My heart thumps. I want him to see it. I want more than anything for him to come over right now, find me here, grab me and shake me and tell me I am a stupid fox and take me upstairs to hold me and never let go.

Another car pulls into the garage, but even its rumbling can’t drown out my heartbeat. I keep my ears perked straight up as it passes.

The fur drifts to the ground and lies there, still.

A door slams. Did Dev get in, or—

An engine starts. I think it’s his.

And then whichever car it is pulls out, drives away, and the garage goes silent. I edge my head around the pillar so I can see the empty space where Dev’s truck was parked.

Strangely, having seen him calms me a little. He’s upset too, going off to blow off steam at football practice. If he were happier, more carefree, then I’d be more worried. And of course he was mad when he found my note this morning. He expected me to come to bed, to make up this fight like all the others, and instead I walked out on him. His anger, like my melodrama, will ease in time.

This peace of mind lasts all the way up the elevator ride to the sixth floor. The locks haven’t been changed (of course they haven’t), but the apartment when I step into it is. Nothing is out of place, but the smells that hit me all at once are angry, resentful, and sad. Unable to stop myself, I go into the bedroom and sniff around.

Dev’s whole night is there on the sheets for me to smell. There’s no smell of come, so he didn’t paw himself off in the night. That makes me feel better, but only a little, because what I can smell is sadness and some anger. My own scent is still on the bed too, but fainter, and it is very neutral, and Dev’s emotions overwhelm it.

I sit on the edge of the bed. I put him through all this. I put myself through all this. Does it reveal cracks in our relationship that we can patch, or fundamental differences we can’t overcome? After two years, I would have thought we knew each other well enough to know the answers, but what about me and Brian, ending the closest friendship I’d ever known after three years? What about Father and Mother, ending a marriage after twenty-five years? Is it so odd to think that we might be fine long-distance, but when we merge our lives, we find hidden edges and jagged breaks that pierce each other in tender places?

If it were just me, I would sit here on this bed all day and I would cross my legs and fold my paws in my lap and I would get up when he came back and tell him I don’t want to leave him. If it were only me, if Dev were a bewildered and unaffected construct of my imagination who simply did everything I wished, then—well, then I wouldn’t be sitting here having these thoughts now.

I’m not even angry with him for the direction he’s chosen to take. It would be nice if he pursued the gay rights causes with me, sure. It would be nice if I didn’t feel so restless and useless, or, rather, if I didn’t mind feeling so useless. But that’s not the case for either of us. Dev has football, and I want him to find out how good he can be. I want him to make millions over a career and win championships, and if I had to choose between him having success without me and being an unknown mediocre player with me, I would have to choose his success over my happiness. I’ve never wanted to be an albatross around his neck (one of the more disturbing literary images), which is what I’ve become.

So, thinking of him, I pack a bag for about two weeks. At the end of that, we’ll either be living here again, or I’ll be figuring out a place to move all my stuff.

Hal calls while I’m finishing up the packing. “At the motel,” he says.

“I’ll be back there in about fifteen minutes. Just getting some things.” I hang up and finish my packing. For a good two minutes, I hesitate over the picture of me naked on the bureau. I could hide it from Hal, but that’s not the real issue. The real issue is whether I want to leave it as a reminder of me. But if I take it, then that’s a signal to Dev that things are over, and that’s a message I definitely don’t want to send.

In the end, the only thing I take apart from clothes is my little plush fox in his leather jacket. I go into the kitchen to leave him another message, but when I see my original message crumpled tightly on top of the trash, I reconsider. What would I say to him? He already knows I’m going to Hal’s. He will know I’m taking my stuff when he sees the clothes gone from the dresser, the shampoo and toothbrush and ear swabs gone from the bathroom. I feel an intruder in the apartment, as though it’s Dev’s place again, and even though the bag and the clothes in it are mine, taking them feels wrong.

Come to think of that, should I leave the key? I ponder for a moment and then decide to keep it, mostly because I still own some things in the apartment and I’ll need to get at them. So I close the door behind me and I lock it, and I don’t slide the key back under it.

The first thing Hal says to me when we get into his car is, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”

“We can talk a little,” I say. “I can’t not think about being an activist for a cause, and Dev needs someone who can think about nothing but football for at least the latter half of the season.”

“Ah. Career. Kind of like what I went through.”

“Is it?”

He pulls away. “Yeah. Pol said she’d always be second place to the journalism, and she didn’t like that. Not for her so much, but if we got cubs, would they be second place too?”

“Wait, you talked to her again already?”

“I, uh, called her last night.”

“Sober?”