Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (44 page)

Chapter 29 – Standing Up (Lee)

When the ball tumbles out of Zillo’s paws and the whistle sounds, I just stand there and stare, waiting to wake up. The whole room was focused, some cheering, some just watching silently; now they come back to life as though released from a spell. The lemur turns to the board to tally up the prop bets, and someone turns the sound down a little. It’s still audible, just not overwhelming.

“Well,” Hal says. “Least that was better than ’85.”

“Better?” I can’t parse that. “I feel like my heart’s been ripped out.”

Peter nods at the screen. “You know that anyone in this room would kill to be in the championship again, right? Even if we end up losing? Just getting there is so rare.”

“I would too,” I say. “Rather taste it than never know what it’s like, right?”

“Right. Excuse me a second, I’m going to collect on my prop bets.”

The commercials end and the TV cuts back to the triumphant Sabretooths. I don’t want to watch this. “Yeah, I’m going to, uh, get a beer.”

Hal walks with me into the other room and cracks open a beer with me. “Hell of a game,” he says.

“At least there’s that,” I say.

“And your boy got a highlight for sure. That was a pretty sack. People will remember that.”

“They will,” I say. “And they won’t blame him for that last play. It was the coach’s call.”

“Right. And they’ve got a bright future. Defense is looking good, and maybe Strike will stick around another year.”

“They’ll be a tough out in the playoffs. If they stay healthy.”

“Even if they don’t make it back next year, they’ll be back in two or three. They’ll always be in the mix.”

We say these kinds of things knowing they’re supposed to make us feel better, knowing that they’re not going to do much. But it’s better than watching the other team celebrate, or watching the downcast Firebirds interviewed.

We’ve only gotten a third of the way through the beers and platitudes when a couple people in the room outside start shushing the crowd. Everyone goes silent, and Hal and I look at each other.

Peter sticks his head in the room. “There you are,” he says to me. “Get out here.”

I run out with Hal close behind, and stare at the TV. One of the Sabretooths is front and center, a coyote, number 55. Polecki, I remember before reading his name along the bottom of the screen.

“…had not intended to use this stage for that purpose,” he’s saying. “But as the game was winding down, I heard a teammate call Dev Miski a ‘faggot,’ and even in the middle of the greatest moment of my life, I felt like a coward. I wish I had had the courage to do this before the game, so that this would be recorded as the first game in which two openly gay players faced each other.”

What the fuck?
I stare at the screen and feel my jaw drop.

“But it will have to be just the game in which the first openly gay player played, and the game that gave the weaker one the courage to step up and join Devlin Miski in coming out to the world, with confidence that you will still support me,” and here he has to pause, because the crowd roars, and he starts to speak again, but they’re still cheering and cheering and they won’t stop, and his eyes glisten with tears as he says, “Thank you. Thank you.”

His voice cracks, and I feel matching tears in my eyes. His teammates stand behind him, McCrae holding the MVP trophy in one arm and draping the other across the coyote’s shoulders, all the others crowding up to pat him on the back and they’re all smiling and tails are wagging and it takes him a good thirty more seconds before he can keep talking.

“Thank you.” He turns to his teammates. “Thank you all, and thank you most of all and most heartfelt to Devlin Miski, who I hope is watching—or maybe will see this on tape later—” His teammates laugh. “For showing me that pride is not just for parades. That it was time to make a change, and that I was the one who had to make that change for myself.”

The cheers are not as loud as they were at first, but they’re still there. I wipe my eyes, trying to be discreet and masculine about it and failing, I’m sure. Peter, next to me, says, “Holy shit,” and other people around the room are echoing the sentiment. More than one of them are looking at me, including Jocko.

“All right,” Polecki says, and wipes his eyes, looking
way
more masculine than I just did. “That’s enough about me. Someone else talk.”

He gives up the mike to Bridger, the fox, who looks back at him and says, “Jesus Fox, dude, how do I follow
that?
”

There’s laughter, and he starts in thanking his family and the team, and I stop paying attention. Jalili and Cormier and few of the other guys I talked with come over to me, as Peter’s saying, “That’s amazing.”

“About fucking time,” I say, and they laugh. “No, I mean it. I felt like—I know Dev isn’t the only gay player. I know it. But none of the rest would say anything, and I just wondered, what the hell are they waiting for?”

“To win a championship, I guess,” Jocko says. “Nobody’s going to fuck with Polecki, not after the game he had.”

“They cheered for him, too,” Jalili says.

“He just won them a championship.” Peter grins. “He could’ve confessed to the Robbins murders and they would’ve cheered him.”

“Thanks,” I say.

He holds up his paws. “Not saying it wasn’t sincere. Just that he kind of stacked the deck.”

“When the other side holds all the cards,” I say, “sometimes you gotta do that.”

He nods, and Jalili says, “So what now?”

“Well…” I think for a half-second she means about me and Dev, then I mentally slap myself. “I dunno. Maybe more players will come out in the off-season, when there’s less attention and less heartache and strife about it.”

My phone rings: Father’s number. I excuse myself and walk to the back wall to pick it up.

“I saw,” I say.

“Pretty interesting,” he says. “How does this change things for you two?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to Dev yet.”

“But you’re going to?”

“Yes.”

“And your mother?”

“Yes, yes.”

“All right. So, what do
you
think?”

“I think it’s about effing time. Everyone in the league seems to be scared of something happening, even though nothing happened to Dev, and well, who knows? I’m sure people will say it was easy to come out when you’d just won a championship, but you never know how crowds are going to react. A couple people could start booing and the whole crowd could turn.”

“I don’t think that would happen. Not anymore.”

“Maybe not, but…” I search for words. “It’s like this childhood fear that never goes away, of being the outsider, and even if you know with your mind that people aren’t going to turn their back on you, it’s so hard to give them the perfect opportunity to. I rag on these guys for not coming out, but I understand it.”

He hmms into the phone. “I do, too. I’m surprised he chose that stage. I can see where it would be safe, like you say, but I can also see how he’s going to be ripped for making the celebration all about himself.”

“I think his teammates knew,” I say. “At least, some of them did. They didn’t look too surprised. Maybe they told him it’d be okay.”

“I guess we’ll find out as they all get interviewed to death. Oh look, speaking of, the reporters have found Devlin.”

Dev’s up on the screen. “Looks like it.”

“Well, I’ll talk to you later. Let’s watch it.”

“Thanks, Father.”

I watch Dev answer questions, holding my phone. I wonder if I should call Kodi now, or wait until later. Maybe having his phone ring right away would be too suspicious. I’ll wait. But as I’m thinking that, my phone lights up again: Brian’s number this time. I send it to voicemail, because fuck him. I am done with him.

Jocko catches my eye as I put the phone away, and excuses himself from the people he’s talking to. We meet by the wall, and he puts a paw out. “Congrats.”

I shake paws, and tilt my head up at him. “On…?”

“Chevali plus three,” he says. “Our bet.”

“Oh. Thanks.” I search his expression. “You know that even people who are really smart about football will get those bets wrong like a third of the time.”

“Then I guess you’re lucky, too,” he rumbles, and it almost looks like he winks at me.

The wink makes me uncomfortable, though, because all his comments about college kids being hot and me and Morty “after hours” come flooding back. So as he starts to turn, I say, “Um, Jack? Jocko?”

“Jocko’s fine.” He looks back and then shifts his big barrel chest to face me again. “What’s up?”

Faced with the moment, I quail for a split-second. I can live with a bigot, I think, I can make it work, I’ll do it for the chance at this job…and then I think about Polecki up there on the screen, and Dev, and the chances they took. I breathe in. “I used to work for a guy who didn’t know a lot about gay guys,” I start.

He tenses up in his shoulders. I wish he had a proper tail so I could see if it was curling or relaxed. I forge on. “And he was kind of an asshole about it sometimes. But that’s cool. I just want to know, if I take this job…are you going to be constantly asking if I like a guy because he’s hot, or asking if I’m having sex with random guys I like to spend time with? Because if you are, you know…” His eyes widen slowly as I talk. “…then that’s gonna be a problem.”

“I knew a gay guy,” he says, his voice low. “Usedta come to the locker room and open up his muzzle for anyone.”

I’m guessing that “anyone” included him, but I am not prepared to go there. “Uh-huh,” I say, and just then I catch sight of Jalili. “I know a straight guy who fucks anything on two legs. Anything female, that is. That mean I should ask you if you had sex with Jalili over there? I mean, you guys know each other, right?”

He opens his mouth, angry, and then snaps it shut. “I’m married,” he says.

“Yeah, well, if it were legal, I might be, too.” This is less true than it would have been at any other time in the last three years, but tossing that “might” in there makes it at least not an outright lie.

We glare at each other, and Peter and Hal come over, Peter holding a laptop. “Hey, look at this,” he says.

Jocko points at me. “I think this guy just called me an asshole.”

“I didn’t mean—” I start.

Peter talks over me, barely reacting at all. “Told you he was a quick study. Here.” He shoves the laptop at me. “Check this out. The article on Polecki is going nuts. Two hundred comments already.”

Jocko looks over my shoulder as I skim the comments, which range from “way 2 go!!!!” to “fuck you faggot stealing the spotlight.” But there are fewer of the latter type, and they have a lot of responses telling them to crawl back into their cave.

“I can’t believe it.” I shake my head and hand Peter the laptop back. “I mean, here I was all set to be depressed the whole way home.”

“Huh.” Jocko scratches his muzzle. “Maybe sometime you can teach this asshole about how gay guys work.”

“I didn’t mean—” I start again, and he waves me off.

“Just fuckin’ with ya.” He laughs. “I am an asshole.”

“Well, I have it on good authority that I’m kind of a prick,” I say. “So I think we’ll get along fine.”

Hal sighs and buries his muzzle in his paws, while Peter and Jocko look puzzled, and then stare at me. “Well,” I say, “if you’re going to hire a gay guy, you’ll get some off-color jokes.”

“Fine,” Peter says, “but not in any official communications, okay?”

Jocko snorts. “That was an internal e-mail, it just got copied to the wrong people.”

My grin widens. “I think we’ll get along great.”

The bear looks down, and then he extends his paw again, and when I take it, he shakes it firmly and with more energy than the first two times that day. “Looking forward to it,” he says. “By the way, new guy brings bagels every Friday.”

“Until when?”

“Until there’s a new new guy.” He grins and lifts a paw. “See ya.”

So that’s it. I did it. Warmth builds up in my chest, confidence and pride, as I keep my ears straight up. Hal punches me on the shoulder, and I shoot him a big smile.

Peter shifts his laptop to his other arm. “Of course,” he says, “we haven’t made a firm decision yet, but unofficially, if Jocko’s okay with it, I don’t see anything standing in the way of hiring you. This thing with Polecki…well, I think it’ll help a lot to have you on board. There might be room for outreach after all—not to the community, but within the team and to college prospects.”

I nod. “If there are gay college players…”

“And if they’re any good, we don’t want ’em going to Chevali or C.C. automatically. Got to make sure they know they’re welcome here.”

“They should be welcome anywhere,” I say.

“Yeah.” Peter grins, showing all his teeth. “But you’re going to be working here.” His eyes sparkle and in that moment, I want to work for him more than anything in the world—except one thing.

Hal knows what that one thing is, too. As Peter leaves, the swift fox murmurs very softly, in a fox-whisper at my cheek ruff, “You going to call him?”

I look at the TV. Dev’s long gone, but the anchors are still buzzing about Polecki. I think about my tiger—
my
tiger—sitting sad in his locker room, or being besieged by phone calls from reporters. “I don’t know,” I say.