Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (27 page)

He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “Mostly.”

“Terrific.” I shake my head. “You know, if you’re going to have a gay BFF giving you relationship advice, you ought to take it.”

“Hey, it went okay. She said I could call her again. Sometime.”

“I guess it was okay if she was already thinking about cubs.”

He snorts. “We didn’t talk about cubs. She’d mentioned them on our second date, but I thought…you know, that kind of thing is way down the line and maybe I’ll be tired of journalism by then.”

“I hear you.” I stretch out my legs and sigh. “It sucks. It just sucks. If I could turn that part of me off…”

“Then you wouldn’t be you. Listen, Lee, you can work through this kinda thing.”

“Really?”

“I dunno. That’s what people tell me.” He swings a hard turn and heads for the freeway. “I guess there’s some people want to be in a relationship more than they want to be themselves. But you never struck me as that kind of guy.”

“No,” I say. “I guess I’m not.”

“Me neither.” We merge onto the freeway. “Doesn’t mean I don’t miss her. Not as much as Cim, but it’s more recent.”

“You only had, what, three dates with her?”

“Yeah, but they were comfortable dates. She talked about her work and I talked about mine and I felt like I could really talk to her. It wasn’t just that she was a good lay.” He turns to look me in the eye. “But she was a good lay.”

“Watch the road,” I snap.

He snorts. “I got it, I got it.”

“I don’t care how she was in bed,” I say. “Dev was good, too. Better than good.”

“Okay, stop the reminiscing right there,” he says. “You can stay on my couch, but yeah, I don’t need details about the sex life.”

“You started it,” I say.

“You told me you wanted details,” he shoots back.

“That was…last week,” I say.

He drives along in silence, and I keep my muzzle shut and try to think about anything other than Dev. It’s hard when every other building we pass has Firebirds flags or pennants, when the office building skyscraper you can see for blocks away has “GO FIREBIRDS” with one letter in each window, a giant message meant to scream across the city and inspire thousands. It’s not their fault that the message has a different meaning for me, but I still wish I could erase it.

It also doesn’t help that I don’t have much else going on in my life. I could talk to Father, but that would remind him—and me—about his recent divorce. I could talk to Mother and get frustrated about the Families United thing again. I could talk to Hal about that case, but as much as I want to vent to him about it, I don’t want to risk him writing up a story that exposes Dev’s brother as the lawyer. That’d be all Dev needs, for that story to hit the press. He’d hate me so much after that…

It hits me without warning. I double over in the seat, pressing my paws to my face, and the sobs shake my body. “Whoa, hey,” Hal says. “We’re almost there.”

I try to get out the word, “Sorry,” but it isn’t understandable through the choked breaths and high keening moans my body is making. I fight hard to get control of myself, but that thought, that Dev would hate me, that hits me worse than anything else. I can’t stand the possibility of that.

The tears subside, but I’m only holding back a future flood, and I’m not sure for how long. “I’m okay,” I gulp. “For the moment.”

“Hey, y’know,” Hal says, “when Cim left, I…” He shifts in the driver’s seat and stares fixedly at the road. “I did that more’n once.”

“I’ll try to keep it private,” I say.

“I got scotch back at the apartment.” His ears swivel toward me. “But I dunno, do gay guys get drunk when they get dumped? I don’t have any ice cream.”

I half-laugh, but it comes out as half a sob, too. “I don’t want ice cream. I don’t know what I want.”

That’s a lie. I know exactly what I want. I also know I’m not going to get it, not today, and probably not for at least one week and—Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday—four days, counting today.

Of course it’s not over. But the last few months have been pretty rocky. We’ve affirmed our commitment to each other and both done stupid things—me more than him, yes. So maybe a week prepping for the championship will convince Dev that it’s not worth the trouble to have a too-clever idiot fox for a boyfriend. Or maybe he’ll realize how much he misses me. I sure hope to God it’s as much as I miss him.

Wait, maybe I don’t. I don’t want him to screw up his mindset for the championship. No, if I know Dev, he’ll just focus on practice and let everything else go by the wayside until the game is over. At least, that’s what I’d tell him to do.

Not that he’s made a practice of listening to me. Not lately.

“We’re here,” Hal says. “Think you can make it inside?”

I hadn’t registered that the car stopped. “I’m fine.” I get out and retrieve my bag from the back of the car, and then look around Hal’s neighborhood.

It’s low and sandy-colored; the tallest building is three stories, and that’s the one we’re stopped in front of. All up and down the street are sandy stucco walls and iron-railed balconies, some with bicycles leaning against them, others with pots of cactus and climbing vines whose waxy leaves shimmer even though the sun’s behind a bank of clouds. At the corner is a 7-11, beside it a liquor store. Down the street at the other corner is a taco grill, and across that intersection is a small shopping plaza with Starbucks and other small businesses.

The building we’ve parked in front of us feels a little more alive than its neighbors. Bright flowers dot the cacti, and hanging decorations from the windows and balconies add more color to the desert-toned street.

Like the Firebirds pennants on the third floor balconies to the left and the ground floor patio toward which Hal is leading me. He shoots me an apologetic look, lowering his ears. “I can take that down if you want,” he says. “I kind of passed them around the building after the Boxers game.”

I shake my head. “No, leave it up.”

We walk around the patio, down a small passage into shade and chill that smells of earth and mildew, and Hal takes out a key to open door number 13. “Lucky,” I say.

“Always been.” He grins and pushes the door open.

Whenever you visit someone’s place for the first time, the smell hits you first. It’s Hal, and it’s many layers of him. I know his scent pretty well now, but it’s different when he’s relaxing, when he’s stressed, when he’s sad, and all those little subtle things hit me all at once.

I stop, step to the side to let him push the door closed, and set my bag on the floor. He sees my nose twitch and we have that slightly awkward moment of intimacy where I’m now getting to know him better than I have before. It’s not just the scent, of course; it’s the long leather couch with tattered armrests; it’s the movie poster on one wall and the two prairie paintings on the wall facing me. It’s the olive-green carpet with the light layer of shed fur on it, soft under my paws, and the rack of movies on one wall and the big TV and the coffee table with the Stella Artois bottle on it.

“Nice,” I say, because you have to, and because it is.

“That’s your couch,” Hal says, “unless you want to sleep on an air mattress in the office.”

“Which would be less disruptive?” I follow him around the couch to a short hallway that ends in the bathroom.

He gestures into a small room, about half the size of Dev’s bedroom, with window shades open to let the light in. The walls are covered with framed articles and magazine covers, the desk piled with papers that almost obscure the large monitor on it. “I can move the laptop out of there,” Hal says, “and that’d give you more privacy. Been writing a lot of stuff in the bedroom or living room anyway.”

“You know you can get flat-screen monitors now that take up like a third of the space?” I crane my neck to look inside. The floor is clear in a large circle around the chair, though the wall just to the right of the door is covered by a huge bookshelf and books are stacked in front of it. There’s a smell of salsa and cheese that comes from a wastebasket full of food wrappers. “I think this’ll be fine, if you don’t mind. I really appreciate it.”

“Sure. I’ll set up the air mattress. Just toss your bag in there.”

I drop my bag on the floor, where it lands awkwardly and looks out of place. I stare at it and lean against the doorjamb. This all feels like a bad dream, except that it’s not dreamlike at all. The filtered light through the open window, the smell of books, the taupe-colored walls, the crack in the paint right at my eye level in the door, and the touch of air on my tail, all of these are too insignificant to be unreal.

This is just a waystation, I tell myself, just a temporary stop. I shut out the rest of my thoughts while I help Hal set up the air mattress. He takes the laptop and some notes out of the office and dumps sheets on the bed with a towel. “I don’t keep a set schedule,” he says. “So shower whenever you want.”

“When you’re not in there.”

“Heh. Yeah.”

“Thanks. I’ll make up the bed. Later.” There is still in the back of my mind a nagging thought that Dev will call and tell me to come home before the end of the day. I have to shove those thoughts aside, because otherwise I won’t be useful at all today.

He keeps watching me. “Okay. I have a couple calls to make, and then I was just going to go down to the taco stand for lunch.”

“You don’t have to change plans or include me in them. I can walk around on my own.”

“Well,” Hal scratches behind one ear. “Truthfully, it’d be nice to have some company around. And if you don’t mind, I could bounce some of these story thoughts off you.”

I nod. “I’d like that.” It occurs to me that I have a phone call or two that I could make now, too.

So when Hal goes into his room with his laptop and I hear his muffled voice through the walls, I shut the door to his office and sit on my air mattress.

I take out the phone, where Dev’s message is still up. I clear it so I won’t have to think about it, and then I take a breath. I should call his family. I curl my tail around my hips and take another breath, and another, and I make sure there’s no moisture around my eyes. I can get through this. I don’t even have to tell them about me leaving.

Duscha picks up after three rings. “Hello?” She sounds a little out of breath.

“Hi. It’s Lee.” She doesn’t say anything, and I say, “Dev’s—”

“Yes,” she says brightly. “Hello, Lee. I am sorry, I did not think you would be calling. Did you want to speak to me, or…”

“Yes.” I inhale, steady myself. “I need to ask you a favor.”

I tell her briefly about the Vince King case, which she says she remembers discussing with Dev, though they didn’t know it had gone to court, and she clucks about why people need to sue about everything in this country. But she agrees that it’s tragic, and that’s when I have to tell her that I want to make sure Dev is free to concentrate on winning his football game, I don’t want him to be distracted.

“Of course not.” She sounds puzzled.

“I found out that Gregory is one of the people defending Families United in the King case.”

The phone line is as quiet as Chevali at two in the morning. “Our Gregory?” Duscha says faintly.

“Unless there are two Gregory Miskis practicing law.” Shut up, fox, don’t be snappy with her. “I mean, I didn’t call to find out if that’s a common name, but…” Shit, just get to the fucking point. “I tried to file a brief with the court and they said I have a relationship with him, and Dev’s brother is the only one I, so, um, yes. I think it has to be.”

“This is…” She trails off. “Well, perhaps his company ordered him to do it.”

“Maybe.” I don’t know Gregory a hundredth as well as she does, but she doesn’t sound much more convinced that it’s a mistake than I am. “He mentioned doing pro bono work for his company.”

Back at Thanksgiving, that was. When I mentioned Families United to him.

“I will call him, I will find out…”

“You know him best,” I say, “though I wouldn’t call him, if I were you. But please, please, don’t mention it to Dev. And make sure Gregory doesn’t either. It’d…it’d just distract him, and the championship is so important.”

“Yes.” She sighs. “Sometimes your children go off in directions that you could not anticipate. They are grown up now, and they have to make their own life.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to stop talking to them.” I say it before I realize that I don’t know which of her sons she’s talking about.

“No, of course not.” She gets what I mean, because she says, “Lee, will we see you at the game? Misha is buying our airplane tickets today.”

My throat closes up. “I hope so,” I choke out in what could maybe pass for a normal voice twisted by unreliable phone signals.

I’m being ridiculous, I think after we’ve said good-bye. Dev’s not going to just throw all this away. Once he’s won the championship game, he’ll talk to me and we’ll work things out. We’ll figure out how to make this work with me doing what I need to and him doing what he needs to, and I’ll be seeing Duscha again.

That’s the hope, anyway, hoping that Dev and his family don’t go the way of just about everyone else in my life except for the swift fox in the next room, who is probably only letting me crash here out of kindness and because I don’t have another place to go. I mean, we don’t know each other that well…not really. Inevitably, I’ll do something to piss him off and then we’ll drift apart.

I dial another number when I’ve calmed Melodramatic Lee down a little. Father answers almost immediately. “Let me guess,” I say. “You’re about to go into a meeting.”

“My Thursday morning meeting doesn’t start for forty-five minutes. What’s going on?”

“Well.” I take a breath and then tell him. I spill everything except, oddly, the crucial bit about Gregory, for no other reason than that I don’t want to tell too many people. I just say that I can’t keep the activism out of my life and his, and it was starting to get destructive because we were both edgy about it all the time, and finally I just left to give him peace and he was mad about me leaving.

“Don’t you two have fights all the time?” he says.

“Yeah, but. This is different. It’s not just…I mean, I feel like it’s something different about the way we…about our philosophies.”