Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (29 page)

It occurs to me halfway down that if I land wrong and hurt myself, it’ll be the biggest jackass move of all time—talk about a pointless career-ending injury. But all that tells me to do is stop thinking about it. I trust my body to do the things it needs to, and what it needs to do right now is get me down the stairs and into my truck.

The clock in the truck blinks at me: 9:53, 9:54. I’m not going to make it to the airfield by ten, no way. I run a red light at an empty intersection and speed down the two freeway exits.

It’s 10:06 when I park in the airfield lot, grab my bag, and run to the charter building. Thank God: the plane is still sitting there on the tarmac, the stairs are still down. And Fisher’s standing at the base of them.

“Thanks,” I pant as I get close.

He reaches out and smacks my cheek ruff. “God damned rookie mistake,” he snarls. “That’s the sort of thing that’ll get you fined, that screws with team chemistry. We need everyone on the same program. Get on the damn plane.”

For a moment, I want to slug him back. But I lay my ears flat and run up the stairs. My seat next to Charm is open. I head for it amid catcalls from the team: “Glad you could make it,” and, “Hey, your dick made us all late,” and shit like that.

Charm elbows me as I sit down and says, “Long good-bye to Mrs. Gramps?”

“No.” I reach for my phone to turn it off and see that there’s a message there from Lee. My thumb hesitates over the button. The doors are closing now for takeoff, but we can use our phones for a while still. And hell, it’ll be murder on me if I spend the whole flight wondering what the message was. So I call it up.

Did you just break up with me over text message?

Fuck.

Did I? I look at the message I sent him last night, drunk and angry. I don’t think that’s a breakup message. Did he want it to be? I stare at the words and feel my anger rise up again, but here I can’t throw the damn phone.

Why would he go right to breaking up? Sure, I was angry, but I assumed he would be the one coming back to talk things out because he always talks. Now he’s talking about breaking up and I guess I can see where it comes from, but I don’t know how to react. I don’t want to break up, I don’t want to lose him, but I don’t know what to say to him that he won’t twist around and throw back in my face. So I type,
Let me just get through this game.

Then I turn off the phone, because I don’t really want to see his response. We’re going to have to have a conversation, and maybe that conversation will end well and maybe it won’t, but it’s got to wait until I get this other thing off my plate.

Charm’s being really quiet, so I look at him and he’s got a big melodramatic face on, staring down at my phone. “You’re breaking up?”

“Shut up!” I look in front of us, but it’s just a couple O-line players and they’ve got headphones in. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Okay, well.” His expression changes. “I know some good clubs in C.C. if you want a distraction.”

The plane turns and then goes into its takeoff run. I lean back and close my eyes, pressing a paw to my head. “Right now I just want to listen to music and have a big glass of water. Or a Bloody Mary.”

“Can do!” He raises his voice over the rumble of the engine and the shaking of the plane as we climb in the air. “Hey, Gramps here is hung over! Can we get a glass of water?”

Of course we can’t, because we’re taking off, but the whole plane breaks into laughter. Zillo says from two rows behind me, “I’d have stopped you drinking if I’d known!”

“I’d have stopped drinking if I’d known,” I call back.

“I tried to tell you about that,” Strike says, but I ignore him. Of all the people, I don’t want to deal with him right now.

At least now they all think I was just drunk. “Thanks,” I mutter to Charm.

He shrugs and grins. “For what?”

We escape the ground and soar skyward, and the comments die down. I put headphones in and turn on my music and close my eyes. When the flight attendant brings my water, I drain it in one gulp and ask for more.

An hour later, there’s bright sun and hazy air that welcomes us to Crystal City before the pilot does. The plane hits the ground with a series of jolts, and Coach stands up before we’re finished taxiing.

“Welcome to Championship Week,” he says, ears up and a smile on his long muzzle. “For the next week and a half you’re going to be eating, sleeping, and breathing football. We have a chance to do what no Firebirds team has ever done, and we will need your full concentration and participation to do it. Practice starts today with a light workout, then we’ll scrimmage on the weekend. Next week, light practices and film study, and full-contact practice Thursday. Friday and Saturday, conditioning and more film study. Sunday, we’re going to go out and win a championship.”

We all cheer, raising fists in the air. Even I feel better. He turns to sit down, and one of the coaches says something to him. He turns back to us. “Oh, right. Tuesday is Media Day. You’re all going to have time on the podiums with the reporters and you’re going to get asked maybe two good questions and a whole lot of stupid ones. I only have one order for you: don’t say anything about the Sabretooths unless it’s about how good they are and what a challenge this is. I don’t want anything pinned up on their locker room board Sunday morning to get them fired up. Got it?”

“Yeah, Coach,” we chorus.

“Bunch of fucking children,” he says, but his tail wags as he sits down.

I reach for the phone automatically and then shove it back in my pocket. I don’t want to see what he responded. I don’t want to see that he didn’t respond. So I can wait. There’s nobody I need to call here in C.C. unless I want to call Keith up again and see if he can recommend a good gay bar.

No. Football, just football. That’s what my life is going to be for the next week. I follow the guys off the plane and onto the bus, inhaling the curious mix of millions of scents and ocean and chemical haze that I’ve come to know. I look outside at the dusty pastel buildings of Crystal City and squint into the sun. I walk into the Ambassador Hotel without looking to either side, and Charm and I get our room assignment and go unpack.

“So what’s happening?” he asks.

I stare at the clothes I’ve unpacked. I have enough pants and shirts, but I completely forgot to pack underwear. I’ve got some Ultimate Fit gear left in my bag from the last road trip, but that’s it. “I need to go shopping.”

“I mean with you and Mrs. Gramps.”

“What the hell do you care? You never had a relationship that lasted longer than a raunchy teen comedy movie.”

“Not true.” He points a finger at me. “Once I took a girl to see ‘Yearbook 2’ and
then
I fucked her. But that’s me. You were all into the relationship thing.”

“Relationships end,” I grumble.

“Sure, sometimes.” He grins. “I dunno, you guys seemed to have it figured out. You fight, you don’t fight. Opposites attract, right? Ain’t that what that song says?”

“Songs don’t know shit.” I play with the phone.

“Well, what’d you fight about?”

“Oh, come on,” I say. “You’re giving me relationship advice?”

He lounges back on his bed, hands behind his long head, muscular legs extended across the sheets. “I got lots of experience keeping relationships short,” he says. “So I figure I’ll just tell you to do the opposite of what I normally do. Right?”

I turn the phone on. It takes a moment to connect and get a signal. “Can’t be worse than the advice I’m giving myself, I guess.”

“Okay. What you gotta do is tell the truth. When he asks if you’re going to call him, say yes, and actually do it. Oh—and always give him the right phone number. Definitely don’t give him one for a fur-dye salon in Dry Gulch. That’d send the wrong message.”

“Thanks.” I watch the message indicator pop up, and the voicemails. Maybe one of the voicemails is from him. I open the text message first and read it.

“So what are you going to do?” Charm asks from across the room.

I turn the phone off and drop it on my bed. “I’m going to play football,” I say.

“I mean about Mrs. Gramps.”

I don’t feel like listening to any of the voicemails now. I drop to the bed and close my eyes. “I’m not doing anything about him. He can do whatever he wants.”

Charm doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. I think he’s dropped the subject, and then he says, “Well, if you don’t care what he does, then you should…definitely call him up and see what he’s doing. Maybe invite him over.”

“Shut up, kicker,” I say.

“You know, maybe you should just play football,” he says.

“Thanks.” I lie on the bed with my eyes closed.

There’s another pause. “You know it’s eleven-thirty in the morning, right?”

“Shut up.”

Chapter 13 – Temporary Housing (Lee)

Wednesday night when I get Dev’s garbled probably-drunk text, it takes me a minute to decipher it. “Marble”? Wait, “maybe”?
Maybe
he’ll see me when he gets back? It makes me furious and desperate all at once, and I lash out back at him because I can’t believe he would say something like that. And because I go all quiet staring at my phone after it beeps, Hal watches me with his ears perked and finally says, “It’s from him?”

The night outside is dark and quieter than Dev’s downtown place, suburban streets where the cubs are in bed by nine and last call is at midnight. Hal’s curtains, plain olive-green, are drawn across the window, giving his living room a cozy close feel. We’re both sitting on his couch watching some dumb action movie, which he paused to let me deal with the text message. My tail curls around my hips and my ears are down, so it’s probably easy for him to figure out something’s wrong. I’d guess my scent might have changed, except I’ve probably had that blue depressed tinge to it ever since I showed up.

I look up at him and nod, shortly. “Did you ever do something you regretted when you were drunk?”

He laughs. “Hell yes.” Then he looks at the bottle in my paw. “That’s only your second. You a lightweight?”

“No. I mean, did you ever do something you didn’t mean? Or did you just regret it because you didn’t want to say it out loud even though you meant it?” The phone is warm and heavy in my paw. I don’t want to hold it any longer, so I put it down.

“Hell, mostly I regretted it ’cause I woke up the next morning with God’s own headache and a screeching in my ears.” He pauses. “Sometimes the screeching was the girl I’d picked up when I was drunk.”

I stare down at the phone. “Ever say anything to Cim you regret?”

“More often than I care to admit. Not when drunk, though. That whole
in vino veritas
thing is a load of shit. Being drunk drops your inhibitions, sure, but it also confuses you. Well…” He leans back in the couch corner. “We had a big screaming fight once when we’d polished off a bottle of wine. It was good, though. We got it all out of our systems and then we were too tired to do anything about it ’cept crawl into bed together. And in the morning I said, ‘I’ll get the aspirin,’ and she said, ‘I love you,’ and…” He spreads his paws. “These things get worked out.”

“You think this’ll get worked out?”

He meets my eyes, still with a slight smile. “Well, let me say this. I never saw a couple did so much to drive each other away and still stay together as I did with you two. It’s a pain in the ass for anyone to be married to an athlete. It’s not just that they live in a different world where they’re gods, and it’s hard to be in a relationship with a god. It’s the travel, it’s the obsession that they have to be the best there is and they can’t let up even for a minute.” His voice softens. “Doesn’t leave a lot of room for thinking about anything else in their lives.”

“Dev’s different. I thought.” I stare at the phone and then turn to Hal’s sympathetic muzzle.

“When he wasn’t starting, maybe. The reserve guys can be pretty laid-back. Collect a few hundred grand for a decade, don’t play that much. It’s a good life. It’s what I’d want to be if I were an athlete. But then you’ve got the starters, the top-tier guys, and well, you know how Ryan Marcher’s on his third wife now.”

“He’s got two championships.”

“Uh-huh. And he didn’t get ’em by being a good husband.”

I pull my knees up to my chest and feel the pressure of tears there again. My throat feels scratchy and the whole length of my muzzle feels too warm. “So there’s no hope, in the long run.”

“Hell, I ain’t saying that. Just saying it’s hard. Dev’s starting, but he’s got this pressure behind him because he thinks if he slips, the team’ll cut him, what with the whole gay thing and all.”

“You think they wouldn’t?”

“I don’t think they’d cut him just for that.” He takes a drink of his own beer.

I don’t know what to say to that. In the silence left by the absence of our conversation and the movie, I hear the low purr of a car outside, and then it’s gone. There’s an insect drone in the background and the smell of cactus flowers. “I hope we’ll talk it out. But he’s not answering.”

“If he was drunk, maybe he passed out.”

“Maybe.” I turn the phone over and over and then set it aside. The bottle of beer isn’t cold any more, but it fills the space left by the phone. I take a drink. “Let’s finish the movie.”

There’s still no text from Dev by the time the movie’s over. I sit on the couch with my tail wrapped around my legs while Hal takes the bottles to the recycling. He comes back and sits on the far side of the couch. “You want to talk about this?”

“What, more? What’s to talk about?”

“I dunno.” He waves a paw. “Thought I’d offer. I mean, if you were a guy whose girl’d just walked out on him, I’d just bring out more beers ’til you passed out.”

I weigh the thought of that. “Doesn’t sound like the worst idea in the world.”

“Yeah, if you weren’t staying in my office maybe.”

“What, you’d rather I drive home?”

He laughs. “I’d call you a cab. You could throw up there and I wouldn’t have to deal with you in the morning.”

“I don’t throw up from drinking,” I say. “Promise.”

He eyes me, rubs a paw along the back of the couch. “You want another beer?”

I reach up to rub my throat. “Not particularly. Tea maybe?”

“Right. I’m not sure what you’re expecting, but I got Lipton and that’s it.”

“Just something hot with a flavor,” I say. “Do you have honey?”

He gets up, tail swishing. “I have a jar full of some honey crystals and maybe some liquid.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I say. “Just boil a pot of water and hold the jar in it for a few minutes. It’ll all liquidize again.”

He’s at the kitchen door; he turns and eyes me. “It’s goin’ in the microwave,” he says. “Don’t get all ‘Queer Eye’ just because I’m letting you crash.”

“Why are you letting me crash?” I ask as he disappears into the kitchen.

“Where else do you have to go?” He makes some clatter, getting a pot out.

“Hotel.”

“You’re unemployed and I don’t really think you wanna be living off his salary while you’re working out relationship issues.”

I lean my head on the back of the couch and close my eyes. “I have some money saved up. I just made a thousand dollars for not catching a football in a commercial.”

The microwave starts. Hal comes back to lean against the kitchen door. “You’re a friend,” he says. “How about that?”

“Works for me.” I sigh and play with the tip of my tail. Loose fur drifts away from my fingers, down to the floor. “Thanks. I’m glad to have a friend here.”

“Talked to your dad at all?”

“Yeah. He says it’ll work out, that we’re passionate people.”

“Isn’t that what I said?” The microwave stops and there’s more clattering.

I perk an ear, but the sounds aren’t resolving well. I swallow, and my ears pop. “Fuck, I think I’m getting sick,” I say.

“You better not bring anything from that skanky motel back here. Shoulda called me first thing.” He’s just thrown a bunch of pots on the floor, it sounds like.

“If I’d known it was such a production to make tea, I’d have taken another beer,” I say.

“It’s not a production. I just had to wash this one out, and it unbalanced all the others.”

“I don’t want to come in there, do I?”

“Probably best you didn’t, nah. Give me a minute here.”

So I just lean my head back and wonder if I’m going to be starring in this ‘Odd Couple’ drama for long. I wonder how long it’ll take Dev to get back to me, or if he’ll just ignore the message and call me stupid. I’d like that, for him to tell me I’m being stupid, for him to come get me to take me back. It’s not going to happen; he’s going to be on his way to Crystal City in the morning. But it would be nice.

In my hazy half-sleep state, I imagine Dev’s scent, mixed with the sharp tang of black tea, and when the tea smell gets stronger, I open my eyes and expect to see his smile, his black-and-orange striped muzzle, one immense velvety paw holding out one of the white teacups we bought. Instead, it’s a mug that says “Hang In There” and has a picture of a monkey hanging by one arm from a tree branch, there are coffee stains all around the edge of it, and the paw holding it is a dusky tan color with worn, blunt claws. Hal’s got a nice smile, but he’s not Dev, and for a moment I just stare at him.

“What?” he says. “I told you I had Lipton and that’s all. Don’t tell me you couldn’t smell it.”

“No, I…” I reach out and take the mug. “Just half-dozed off.” I turn the mug to see the “Hang In There” picture. “Thanks for the encouragement here.”

“Well, you know. Whatever I can do.” He has a glass of water for himself, which he sets on the coffee table—an old piece of furniture with a fair number of what Hal calls “war wounds” around the edges. I keep the mug of tea in my paws and inhale. The steam feels good.

And I can’t stop looking at the stupid monkey hanging off the branch and thinking, that’s me. That’s me trying to hang on, and there’s no point really. I’ll never pull myself back up onto the branch. The weight of my situation flattens my ears, crushes my chest. It wasn’t Dev bringing me tea, and Dev isn’t coming through the door to bring me back to the apartment, and sometime in the next couple weeks I am going to have to figure out whether I’m staying here or going to live with Father or maybe waiting until I hear back from Peter Emmanuel to get a place in Yerba, which would be the best option, really, because then I’d at least have something to do.

“You okay?” Hal says.

I start to say I’m fine, and my throat closes and I can’t get the words out, so I just shake my head, knowing it’s stupid of me, knowing I shouldn’t start crying again, knowing that there’s nothing I can do about it.

“Aw, geez,” he says. “Sorry about the mug. Look, if there’s…” he pauses.

I wave him away. “Not your fault,” I choke out. “Just…just everything.”

“Look. You wanna get some sleep?”

I don’t know if I’ll sleep, but at least I’ll be alone in the room. So I nod, and he stands up and comes over to me. He rests a paw on my shoulder and helps me up, and the touch is comforting, reassuring. I let him walk me to the spare room, keeping both paws wrapped around the mug as we go.

“Now, look,” he says. “I got a meeting in the morning, but I’ll take it from the bedroom. You need anything, you can pretty much help yourself.”

“Thanks.” I stand in the room and turn to face him. I feel drawn in on myself, my tail tight against my leg, arms close against my sides, ears flat. “G’night.”

He raises a paw and closes the door, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the smell of tea, overwhelming everything in the room. I sit on the mattress and hold the cup, which is finally cool enough to sip. But after one sip, the bitterness of the cheap grocery store tea lingers on my tongue and I set the cup down.

I cross my legs and lean back against the wall. My eyes can’t stay open, but my mind can’t stop whirling. It’s the same old images of me and Dev, of the text messages, of all the events of the last few months going around and around, his resistance to doing any of the Equality Now spots, my inability to stop thinking about it. How could I imagine that any of it would get any better? The end of football season will only be a reprieve. Maybe we can date from February to July and otherwise we’re on our own, until his career is over.

If the world will let us. The news about Gregory wasn’t just an unlucky chance; it is an end result, and that it circled around to crash back in on us is only poetic justice. Just as Dev’s well-meaning walk to my side in that restaurant may have driven my mother to Families United, my own well-meaning standing at his side at Thanksgiving may have driven his brother to them. Even when we try to do the right thing, our actions cause twisted ripples that come back to us black and weighted with the prejudices we’re fighting against. And if I hadn’t gotten involved with the court case, if I’d just let it go, I never would have found out about Gregory. I’d be sleeping next to my tiger right now, he’d have his arms around me, and tomorrow morning after he left I’d be in our apartment—
our
apartment—playing UFL ’09 or prepping for my trip to Yerba.

Hal moves around, getting ready for bed. My ears are stuffed again; the noises are distant and irrelevant to me. I lie down to try to force myself to sleep, through the bathroom noises, the getting-into-bed noises through the wall. Brief fantasies of going in and curling up with him, just for comfort (because sex is about the farthest thing from my mind right now), remain nothing more than brief thoughts; Hal would not be into that, I’m not in any shape to do it, and besides, I don’t want to be the kind of guy who’d crawl into bed with someone else the day I maybe got dumped.

I didn’t get dumped. That’s ridiculous. Dev loves me too much for that. We’ll talk tomorrow, or later in the week, or at least after the game.

The rational part of my mind isn’t the one I feel inclined to listen to, not at two in the morning when Hal’s been asleep for an hour and a half and I’m still lying half under the blanket, tossing and turning as if there’s a magical position that will bring sleep to me, as though it’s not the lack of a tiger in the bed with me that is keeping me awake. My throat is so dry and scratchy that I drink the cold, bitter tea, and then I lie there and wait for the taste to fade.

It takes a long time.

*

I must have slept, but I don’t remember it. I remember turning over and seeing only streetlights shining through the window. Then the room was brighter, light grey. Then it was brighter still, and the next time I looked up, it was morning. Now Hal’s voice comes through the wall in a reassuring murmur, and I lie and listen to the pleasant rhythms, wordless baritone thrumming life into the apartment.

It reminds me of sleeping in on Sunday mornings at home, when I could hear my parents talking downstairs and I knew I’d be called for church in fifteen minutes, ten, five. Until that happens, though, I’m in my own world, curled up here, safe from everything outside. My throat hurts more, and my head feels warm, but maybe that’s just because the rest of my body feels cold. I curl my tail over my stomach and hug it to me like I did when I was a cub, sick in bed. Beside me, my plush fox watches me, and looking back at his glass eyes relaxes me a little.