Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (45 page)

Chapter 30 - Answers (Dev)

It takes me a while to figure out what’s happening, because nobody wants to put on the TV, even after I say my dad told me to watch it. A couple seconds after we get it on, Vince runs into the room with a laptop in the crook of one elbow and a phone cinched against his ear with his shoulder. He’s talking into the phone but stops when he spots me and yells, “Miski! Get out here!”

“I don’t know what’s going on!” I yell back.

“Polecki just said he’s gay.” The locker room goes dead silent. “In front of seventy thousand people. Get out here! They want your take on it.”

The murmurs start around the room. “Polecki?”

“Fifty-five.”

“The coyote? Shit.”

“He’s good.”

“Did he feel you up when he tackled you?”

Charm elbows me. “You only did it in a room of fifty people,” he says. “This guy did it in front of seventy thousand.”

“Seventy million including the TV,” Ty points out.

I’ll say one thing, it’s taking our minds off the loss. “What did he say?” I ask Vince as I pull on a shirt and follow him out.

“I’m working on it.” He gestures me forward, types something on his laptop, and yells into his phone, “Send the fucking video over!”

The media room is much less formally set up. Coach is in there talking to two reporters about Aston’s arm as Strike listens. “…complete confidence in him going forward…” The wolf turns his head and sees me and Vince. “Uh…” His brow furrows and then he shakes his head. Strike, beside him, flashes me a smile and a thumbs up.

“Yeah,” Vince says into the phone. “I got ’im. Let them in when you’re ready.”

“What’s happening?” one of the reporters says.

“Hang on.” Vince taps some keys on his laptop. He points to the podium. “Miski, get over there. They’ll be here in a minute.”

“Who will?” Coach says.

“Polecki—fifty-five—just came out,” I tell him as I take his place at the podium. “I guess. That’s what it sounds like.”

“No shit.” His ears go back and then come up again as the two reporters scramble to ask me questions. “Well, if it means I don’t have to sit here and talk about this game anymore, I’m all for it.” He walks toward the exit, but doesn’t leave; he just stands at the door and watches. Through the door, the shapes of Charm and Gerrard and Pike are visible, and others shifting behind them.

Strike, of course, stays sitting at the chair by my side. “Came out on the post-game, huh? Brilliant. The guy knows how to pick his moments.”

The two reporters jostle. “What do you think about—” “Did you know about—”

I start to talk, but Vince stops me. “Fair’s fair,” he says. “We’ll let you ask first, but let’s wait ’til everyone gets here. I don’t want Miski to have to repeat himself. Here, I got the video.”

The sound on his laptop isn’t great, so we all cluster around. It’s a video of Polecki, the coyote still panting from the game, the “55” gold on his navy blue uniform, as a beaming Runningwater gives way to him.

“This should be the best moment of my life,” he says, “and I have to thank all the fans here for supporting and believing in us this year. We haven’t played a better game than we did right here today, and part of that is because of the level of competition we faced. The Firebirds are a great team, and you will be seeing them in championships for years to come.” There’s a less enthusiastic cheer, but still pretty loud. I feel a nice swelling of pride in my chest.

“And there’s one Firebird in particular who has inspired me. I’m sure you all know the story of Dev Miski, who came out earlier this season and has played inspired football while dealing with all the fallout from that. I want to thank him especially for the game he played. I know how hard it must be to concentrate on football with the scrutiny of the media all over your private life.” He takes a breath, and I do, too. I’m used to the attention focused on me, but it feels strange to be called out at a moment like that, when he should just be excited about his championship. And there’s tension too, because I know what’s coming, and he’s put me in his story, made me responsible for part of it. “It’s something I have run from my whole life. But my colleague on the other side of the field has made me feel ashamed of running, so I won’t be doing that any longer.” The crowd is silent except for scattered cheers. “I’m gay. I’ve known for as long as I’ve been playing football. I just want to say that, and I don’t want to take away from this moment for my teammates, though I know there will be questions.”

The guys behind him don’t look surprised, except for Yates, the other coyote linebacker, whose bug-eyed “WHAAAT?” reaction is so comically over the top that it has to be fake. McCrae comes up and wraps an arm around Polecki’s shoulder. “Really,” the coyote says, “I hadn’t intended to use this stage for that purpose…”

A crowd of people surges into the media room as we watch the rest of it. My throat gets tight at the cheers for him, how loud and enthusiastic they are. Maybe it’s just sympathetic reaction to his own emotion, maybe it’s the support and acceptance, colored though it is by the giddiness of a home crowd that’s just seen its team win a championship. Still…it could have gone wrong. I watch his teammates laughing around him, slapping him on the back, and I don’t see any with Colin’s sulky expression. Are things changing? It’d be nice.

Vince closes his laptop. “There you go,” he says. “Miski, I’m sure they’re going to want to interview the two of you together, but I insisted you stay in our media room for now.”

“Okay. Hey, can you get someone to grab my phone out of my locker?” I ask him.

“Sure.” He points to the two reporters who were here first. “Answer these guys, then whatever order you want. You,” he beckons to Strike, “c’mon.”

“I’m Dev’s friend,” Strike says. “I’m staying as a show of support.”

Vince looks at me, and after a moment, Strike does too. I know why Strike feels he needs to be there—to keep himself in the spotlight. But at the same time, he is supporting me, and as selfish as I know his motives are, I can’t bring myself to alienate any friends right now. So I just turn to the first two reporters and say, “Go ahead.”

There isn’t really a lot I can say about this, so it only takes forty minutes to answer all their questions: No, I didn’t know about Polecki. I am glad that I inspired him to come out. I think he was very brave. I plan on talking to him soon.

Strike actually stays pretty restrained. In fact, he only talks when one of the reporters asks him about his experience playing with a gay teammate, and that’s right when Vince comes back with my phone. Strike goes on like he does, of course, but I’m grateful for the break. I don’t know if Ogleby reads texts, but I can’t talk to him yet and I don’t want to wait. I just type,
Get me Polecki’s number
, fingers tapping delicately across the cracks as fast as I can, and I send it off to him. The message indicator is lit up with text messages and voicemails, and two more texts come in just in the time it takes me to type, saying, “
Any comment
…” and “
did you know about
…”

I turn off the phone and answer more questions from the reporters in the room: I don’t know how this will change. I do expect more athletes will come out. Do I still wish I hadn’t come out?

Do I?

“Of course he doesn’t,” Strike says cheerfully when I don’t answer immediately, but the reporters kind of ignore him, still staring at me.

I take a breath. “I was under a lot of stress when I said that. I’ve apologized since then. I am very glad I did. I’ve had—there have been a lot of challenges since then, but the changes I’ve seen have been very encouraging. My teammates have been supportive and so have most of the fans. I get e-mails—” I assume I do. Lee always looked at them. I pause, wondering if the e-mails have been piling up while we’ve been apart or if he’s looked at them and sorted through them. “But overall it’s been a great experience and I’m glad that I’m now the first gay player instead of the only.”

They laugh. I relax. The questions get easier, and a few of them are about the game. Strike says we will be back in the championship game, and says that once he gets integrated into the offense better, we’ll be unstoppable, something like that. While he’s talking about how he had a good seam on that last return if only the ball had come to him, Coach comes up to the podium, and Gerrard and Aston and Jaws come into the room as well. Most of the subsequent questions go to them, so I step aside except for when there’s a question about my sack and I get to say how great it felt to get the only sack on McCrae. I talk about how talented he is, and how I’m looking forward to seeing the film of the game so I can really see his quickness and decision-making in play.

The questions shift away from me just as my phone buzzes. I see a text message from an unfamiliar number.
Hey, it’s Aran Polecki. You want to grab a drink? :)

Holy shit. Ogleby came through. Fifteen minutes later, when they let us go back to the locker room, I text back.
Sure, just getting away from the press.

Yeah, I’ll be in the middle of it for a while yet.

I imagine.

How long are you in town for?

I pause.
Don’t know. Don’t really have any plans for the next three months.

Know the feeling. :) I’ll text you in a couple hours.

It’s kind of weird talking to him. Football players are all part of a pretty exclusive club anyway, so we can talk to each other about things that nobody else understands, but now I’m talking to this guy just because he’s gay. I wonder what we’ll talk about. Techniques? How he hid his life from his team? Does he have a boyfriend, too? Or—can I say “too”? What do I say when he asks me about my life?

I think about my dinner with Machaine and how easy it was to talk about relationships and homophobia and…gay stuff. A little weird at first to have that matter-of-fact talk about dating guys and what we find attractive about them, but ultimately it was relaxing. I hope this’ll be the same. Better, even, because we’re both football players
and
both gay, and even if we don’t have to talk about that, I’ll know we can.

Checking the messages, I see one from Lee. The timestamp says it’s the one from before the game. I hesitate over it, because I’m not sure I want to see what he has to say, and then I think, what the hell, I might as well. So I read the message.
All the other things aside, I still believe in you and you’re a great football player. Wishing you the best of luck.

Strangely, that depresses me. “All other things aside.” That’s a lot of shit to put aside. “Wishing you the best of luck.” It sounds like we haven’t known each other for three years, like we haven’t been sleeping in the same bed for months. Will he be there when I get home? Do I want him to be? I should answer him, but I can’t think of what to say. Do I just say, “Hey, how about that Polecki, huh?” Or “Thanks for the wishes?” There’s so much I want to say to him, it’s like trying to run plays around a giant hole on the field, only the hole doesn’t stay in one place; it opens up in front of me and to the side and where I expect it and where I don’t. I can’t ever get a good run up to think about this problem, and eventually I put the phone down.

The locker room isn’t as quiet as I’m used to it being after a loss. People are chattering, and I hear the words “gay” and “coyote” and “Polecki,” and I get the feeling of a lot of eyes on me.

“Hey.” I look up and see Carson beside me, in street clothes. “Circus of a game.”

“Yeah.” I smile at him. “You got that ball?”

He nods. “You played great. Don’t forget that.”

“You too.” We bump fists. “What are you doing in the offseason?”

“Ah, you know. Working out. Playing video games. Golf. Maybe do some work on my grandmother’s property.”

I nod. He doesn’t ask me what I’ll be doing, just raises a paw and walks out.

The room is emptying quickly. I look for Zillo and find him in a heated, low-voiced argument with Colin on the other side of the room. The coyote has his ears up; the fox has his ears back, and when Colin pauses in his argument to glare at me, I am left with little doubt what the argument is about.

Well, that’s okay. I’ve got something to say to him, too. I stalk over to the two of them.

Colin sees me first and steps back, holding up his paws. “You just stay out of this,” he says. “Doesn’t concern you.”

“Really,” I say. “Because you kept looking at me.”

“It’s not.” Zillo stays beside me, facing down Colin. “It’s just about…he’s just…being him.”

“Yeah,” I say. “About that. Can I talk to you in private?”

Colin stares at me as if I’d asked him to bend over and drop his pants. All the traits that I find so attractive in Lee are like a photo-negative in him. The black ears flick with contempt, the muzzle crinkles in a snarl, and his eyes are brown, not the clear blue of Lee’s. Fuck, I have to stop thinking of them together like that.

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” he says, and turns away.

“I just want to talk about Argonne,” I say.

Zillo cups his ears toward me. Colin stops, half-turns, and shrugs. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He’s lying, I think, especially because his tail snaps curled the way Lee’s has been recently—had been recently—I stop that line of thought and wonder if Colin ever stopped to ask Argonne’s name. It doesn’t seem like Argonne would wait to be asked. “Oh,” I say, “I think you do.”

“I told you, I have nothing to say to you. After tomorrow, I won’t have to see you for two months. Hopefully longer.”

“Yeah, well,” I say, “We’ll see how the offseason goes. But you and me need to get something
straight
before we take off. If you want, I can just say it out loud in front of all your friends here.” I emphasize the word “straight” deliberately.

He stops and stares at me, one paw reaching up to hold his cross. The teammates nearby prick their ears curiously, but stay silent. Colin scowls, scans the crowded locker room, and points one dark brown finger into the now-empty showers. “There.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” I tell Zillo. “Catch you after.”