Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (49 page)

“I don’t know what else you could have done.” I glance at the clock. It’s not even midnight. “You’re back early.”

“Yeah.” He stares at the ceiling.

Slowly, it comes together. “Did you…meet anyone tonight?” He doesn’t say anything. “You went out to a club, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t go well?”

“It was fine. These C.C. clubs, they’re all stuck up, you know.”

I try not to grin. “Did you even get in?”

He turns and glares at me. “I got in.” Then he settles back and admits, “At the third club.”

“Oh, jeez.”

“None of the girls there were all that hot. And they weren’t interested in me either.”

“Whoa.” I lean forward. “Hold the presses.”

“Shut up,” he says amiably.

“So you lost a championship game
and
you couldn’t hook up after?”

“Shut up.”

“Is this like the worst day of your life?” He throws a pillow at me, but his aim sucks and I don’t even have to dodge. “I guess we’re both dateless tonight.”

I say it jokingly, but it brings my mood back down. He turns onto his side. “How are things going with you and Mrs. Gramps, anyway?”

I shrug and point to the phone. “He texted me before the game, and I just texted back. I guess we’ll talk when I get back to Chevali.”

“Good. I like him.”

“Yeah. I do too.”

We sit there for another few minutes, and then Charm sits up. “Well, fuck,” he says. “I’m not gonna sit around here all night feeling sorry for myself. Let’s go see if Brick and those guys are playing FBA ’09.”

I can’t think of anything else to do, so I get up, too. We walk out and listen for the sounds of video basketball, and when we find it, Charm knocks on the door. It turns out it’s not Brick; it’s a bear and a sloth from the offensive line, plus Rodo and the backup running back, an elk. Apart from Rodo, I don’t know any of the guys that well, but Charm gets us in and we sit with them and take our turns playing when a spot opens up.

We talk about the game, of course, with a little jawing back and forth from the offense guys to me, the lone representative of the defense, though Rodo takes my side for some of it. He was pretty quiet during the game, but did catch three balls for twenty-eight, which is okay. Better than nothing. And most of their jawing isn’t at me, because I did get that one sack. It’s more at the cornerbacks and how they couldn’t keep the Sabretooths guys down when it counted.

The conversation is friendly until I jaw back at them and say, “We scored as many touchdowns as the offense did. You guys couldn’t get anyone open but Strike.”

“Fuck that guy,” Rodo says. “Hope he’s gone.”

I turn. Rodo’s rubbing the top of his head around the base of his antlers, which I’d guess are going to drop soon. It makes me think of the stags in the crowd, the ones whose antlers were gone already. I wonder what they thought of Polecki’s coming out. I decide I don’t give a fuck. “What, Strike? He’s been great.”

“You didn’t hear?” I shake my head. “Oh, he talked to the media after and said we didn’t get him the ball enough. Said if Ty had lateraled to him on that last kickoff, he thought he could’ve done something with it.”

“Really?” I wonder if that’s the comment I heard or if Strike kept talking in the same vein afterwards, because what I heard sounded a litle less provocative than that.

“Ty did a fucking awesome job,” Charm calls from where he’s playing against the elk.

“No shit.” Rodo scowls.“We don’t need some rainbow jackass telling us how to play.”

“That asshole just do what he do,” the sloth says, lounging back against the window. He’s a big guy, and out of uniform, I can see that he keeps most of his fur trimmed, except for a mane around the back of his head and down his back (I assume from the way his wife-beater bulges out).

One of the bears joins in. “Yeah, where was he this game? When we needed him?”

I glance at Rodo, quiet amidst this exchange, because he should know how hard it is to shake coverage, but he just stays quiet, scratching at his antlers. Strike had a hundred-some yards and a touchdown. That’s not “where was he when we needed him?” That’s delivering.

The bear and sloth keep going back and forth. “If he gonna mouth off, he should back it up.”

“Easy to talk a big game.”

I look down at my paws, extend claws from the left to scratch the back of the right.

“Friend of mine from the Devils called after we traded for him,” the elk says, without taking his attention from the game. “Laughed at me.”

“I got a friend on the Manticores. I should tell them how awesome he is.”

I’ve made fun of teammates before, but not in quite as mean-spirited a way. “Hey, you know, he did score us a few touchdowns in the playoffs.”

Rodo raises an eyebrow at me. The elk doesn’t pause the game, but turns his head slightly. “Sure,” he says, “against those teams, it was easy.”

“Really? So, like, C.C.’s and Hellentown’s corners totally suck. That right, Rodo?”

“Don’t drag me into this,” he says.

“You don’t need to defend him.” The sloth taps two of his long claws against each other.

“I know I don’t need to,” I say, “but I thought we all bought into this ‘team effort’ thing.”

“He didn’t need to say that about Ty.” Rodo speaks up then.

“He’s an asshole,” I say. “I’m not arguing that.”

“You get along okay.” The sloth eyes me from under shaggy eyebrows. “He like you.”

“Yeah, fuck knows why.”

“Maybe he don’t like girls so much.”

The room generally laughs; even Rodo smiles. Charm turns to look my way with one eye. “So what if he doesn’t?” the stallion says.

The laughter quiets. Most of the guys glance at me and then look away, uncomfortable. “Hey,” the sloth says. “Is not a big deal. But…”

“But he says he likes girls,” the bear says. “So maybe he’s hiding something.”

The elk says, “We don’t talk shit about you when you’re not here.”

“Good,” I say. “I don’t talk shit about you guys either.” But the camaraderie that I felt walking in with Charm is dissipating.

“You don’t shit on your teammates.”

“I also don’t score touchdowns that make people cream their pants,” I say. “That guy helped us out, and yeah, he’s an ass. I’m sorry it’s harder for you to ignore him, but just close your eyes and think of him scoring and get the fuck over it.”

“He didn’t score, that’s what we’re saying.”

I stare back at the bear. “Did you miss the part where he ran into the end zone? Because that looked like a score to me.”

He shifts, grumbles. “Guy talks like him, he should score twice.”

“Yeah, well.” I stand up. “I didn’t get to McCrae on the last play either. So maybe it’s my fault.”

“Hey now—”

“You got a sack—”

“—caused a fumble—”

“—got us a score off that—”

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I’m saying that we win or lose as a team, right? That’s what Coach is always saying. Doesn’t matter what asshole thing we do or don’t say after. Doesn’t matter if we like girls or not.”

The room’s silent. “Sorry,” I say. “Charm, I’ll see you back at the room.”

“You don’t have to go,” the elk says.

“Thanks,” I say, “but I don’t want to piss on anyone’s party. I’ll see you guys on the plane.”

Charm looks like he wants to leave with me, but he’s in the middle of a game. I raise a paw to let him know I’m okay, and step out into the hall.

It’s empty, and when I step away from the door, the noise of the video game fades into silence. I press my paws to my forehead and breathe in deeply.

Lee would tell me that standing up for Strike was the right thing, but I didn’t even think about him while I was doing it. I just thought that after all this, after all I went through, I didn’t want to stand around and be part of talking behind someone else’s back. I just wish he wasn’t such an asshole. It’d make him easier to defend.

But you don’t do the right thing because it’s the easy thing. You do the right thing because it’s the right thing, and because you want to be able to stand up and walk out of a room knowing that you’re the kind of person you can be proud of. And if you can be proud of yourself, then other people can be proud of you: parents, teammates. Boyfriends.

I don’t feel like going back to my room right away, so I go down to the bar and order a drink. I recognize a group of my teammates sitting in a corner, low-key, but I don’t seek them out. The bartender slides me across the martini I order with a grin. “Drowning your sorrows?” he says, and then, when I slide a ten across the bar, he shakes his head. “You guys played a hell of a game. On the house.”

I push the ten toward him. “Then that’s your tip,” I say.

“Well, thanks.” He shakes his head again. “Who are you?”

“Miski,” I say. “Fifty-seven.”

“Oh.” He’s an ocelot or a jungle cat of some sort; the light’s dim and his scent is confused with all the alcohol and it’s hard to tell. But his ears flick back and then forward. He stands up straighter and pushes the ten back at me. “Then it’s my pleasure to serve you, sir.”

I tilt my muzzle and raise my eyebrows. “Well,” he says. “I’m a football fan. My boyfriend is too. So we were pretty inspired by you. And Polecki coming out now, too… seems like you had a lot to do with that. Did he tell you before?”

“No. I just met him for the first time. He seems like a good guy.”

“Good.” He beams and flicks an ear, and as he lifts a paw, I see a silver ring on one finger. “Good. I hope there’s more. It’s just…it’s really inspiring to us.”

I sip the martini. It’s pretty good. “So you knew I was a Firebird,” I say, “but you didn’t recognize me? We’ve only got a few tigers on the roster.”

“Sorry,” he says, his ears going back again. “I know you guys are staying here, and when you walked up, I just saw a Firebird. I didn’t connect that to the guy who came out ’til you said your name.”

A smile grows on my muzzle. “Well,” I say, “I am a Firebird.” I raise my glass to him. “And you make a hell of a martini.”

*

Strike isn’t hanging around with the team anywhere, but he calls me, surprisingly enough, halfway through my second martini. “Hey,” he says. “I’m sticking around C.C. for a bit, going to see Iva, blow off some tension, maybe get a movie deal lined up.”

“Okay,” I say, sipping the drink. “Cool.”

“Figured I probably shouldn’t come back around, but didn’t wanna go without saying g’bye, you know? You’re a good guy. Hope we end up on the same team again sometime.”

“Yeah,” I say, and I’m just buzzed enough to go on. “Why’d you have to say those things?”

“Huh?” He sounds genuinely puzzled.

“About people not getting you the ball, all that shit? I just—I just defended your sorry ass to a room full of people bitching about you. You didn’t have to—” I take a breath. He doesn’t interrupt. “Couldn’t you just say, ‘Good game, they played better’?”

“Sure.” He chuckles. “Paper’s full of players that said that, right? You see where my story was on ESPN? Right below the Polecki thing. That guy’s a genius, I tell you. Made a big stage bigger.”

“I don’t think that’s why—” Lion Christ, talking to Strike gives me a headache sometimes even when I’m sober. “I just mean, you could stay with a team, build up trust, be part of a…”

“A what? A family? That’s sweet. And it’s sweet you stuck up for me, but you didn’t hafta, you know? Just pile on with the rest of ’em. I’ll be okay. Make it to the playoffs with this team or another one next year, one of these days it’ll hit big. Even if it doesn’t, I got commercials, movies…don’t you worry about Lightning Strike. He’s gonna do just fine.”

“What happens when you run out of teams?”

“Then I retire.”

I take another drink. It is a really good martini. “All right. Well, look, I know I haven’t been around as long as you, but…maybe try being a little more mellow next time, huh?”

“I got it all worked out. In a couple years I do the reformed bit, I’ll get a few more years outta that. You take care, Devlin, and let me give you some advice, too.”

Wow, I can’t wait to hear this. “Okay.”

“Don’t leave anything in the locker room. Don’t walk away thinking you could’ve done more. Do it.”

I hang up and sit there nursing my martini. Damn. That was actually some good advice.

Chapter 34 – Families (Lee)

There’s one more phone call before we leave Yerba. It’s the following morning, and we’re at breakfast at a Starbucks. You can’t turn around without hitting one out here. But I hate it maybe a little less than I used to (and now I get a little grin when I go into the bathroom). The pastries are pretty good and I get an orange juice from the cooler, and we’re eating outside on the patio when Pol calls. Hal takes it, and walks a little ways away.

It’s a sunny morning, and even in January it’s still almost sixty degrees at nine in the morning. Birds sing around us, and for a moment I just lean back in my chair and close my eyes, smelling the flowers and the atrocious coffee and the car fumes. I won’t mind living up here, not one bit. But I can’t quite shut out Hal’s conversation, and flattening my ears is so associated with anger that even if I’m just trying to block out sound, it makes me tense, so I need to distract myself. I take out my own phone and pull up the calls, wondering if I should call Dev. I’m not even sure when he flies back to Chevali.

I see my father’s number in the recent call list, and remember that I’d promised to call Mother. A glance tells me that Hal is likely to be occupied for at least another ten or fifteen minutes, and I don’t want the call to be much longer than that anyway. “Sorry, we’re leaving for the airport” will be a good excuse to cut it short.

So I call, and she answers. “Father told me to call you,” I say.

“Yes. Well, I just have one thing to say, and your father thought it best that I say it to you directly, though I told him he could tell you, and quite honestly, I almost wish he would have.”

“Okay.”

She inhales. “This isn’t because of you. Not entirely. But I’m withdrawing from the Families United work.”

I raise my eyebrows, and then do a little fist pump, because she can’t see me. But I keep my voice level. “So why?”

“A lot of reasons.”

“The court case?”

“Not entirely. I don’t believe that has any merit. It’s grieving parents lashing out for someone to blame. It’s the reaction in the group that disturbed me. I think…I think they may have lost sight of the fact that the people they are trying to change are people. When Celia said she would rather see her son dead…” Her voice falters and then returns, stronger. “Whatever you might think of me, I would never wish that of you. Never.”

“Well, um. I appreciate that. Does that mean you won’t be burning any more of my things?”

She inhales. “I am sorry about that. It seemed to make sense when Celia talked about it, and—no. I won’t try to justify it to you. Or myself.”

“I think under the circumstances I was justified in yelling,” I say, though I can’t quite get the appropriate chill in my voice. “But I didn’t feel good about it. I’m—I’m sorry too.”

It feels weak and not quite right to say. But it also feels better than I’d expected when I forced the words out.

“I still wish you could see that you would be much happier with a nice vixen, a family. But I don’t wish you were…” Again, her voice falters.

As nice as it is to hear my mother tell me she doesn’t wish me dead, I think once was enough. “Mother. I’m happy in my life. And I think I’m doing good.”

“I know you think that.” A little sharpness returns. “And I heard on the news that there’s another football player now besides that tiger.”

That tiger
. I want to yell at her and I want to hug her and I can’t do either of them, so I just clamp my muzzle shut and say through gritted teeth. “Yes. It’s a really cool thing.”

She makes an exasperated “tchah” noise. “However, I was pleased to see that one of the championship players did praise the Lord in his celebration, and several of them joined him in prayer. More than two, I think.”

“So you’re leaving F.U.” I focus on the positive and not the religious claptrap. “Are you and Father…?”

“No. I don’t think you should expect that. We are still separate people and still, I think, different. But…” She slows, becoming thoughtful in that way she used to do when she actually thought about things. “I don’t know that I need Families United in the way I thought I did. I think…I think I was scared of being alone.”

“Now that I can sympathize with,” I say.

“You said you would know more after the game. About…how things stand.”

She’s still sharp. “Not quite this soon after. But thanks for remembering. I’m staying with a friend—a good friend.” I reach out, tentatively, with another olive branch. “Do you have other friends?”

“Some friends, some family. I have your father to talk to, even though we don’t talk as much or as deeply as we did once. And…”

The question hangs unspoken. I breathe in the flowers and the coffee and the dampness in the air that tells me that it rained overnight. The sky is clear but for a few clouds now, and the sun is bright on my fur. “You have me. As long as you don’t push the religious sh—stuff.”

Hal closes his phone and walks back over to the table. Mother says, “I’m not going to stop trying to make you live a better life.”

“And I’m not going to stop trying to redefine what you consider ‘a better life.’”

“Well.” She sounds more relaxed. “I suppose we don’t have to talk all that often.”

Hal sits down, taking a sip of coffee and turning his ears courteously away. I feel good about this conversation, warmer than just the sunlight accounts for. “We don’t have to.” I look up at the clouds as she sighs. “But maybe we should.”

“Maybe we should,” she echoes.

I flick my ears even though Hal’s telling me there’s no hurry. “Sorry to cut this short. I have to get to the airport now.”

She asks where I am and I tell her I’m in Yerba for a job interview. She wishes me well, and I thank her and tell her I got the job, and then say I’m glad I made her give up the religious wacko group. She starts to get angry, and then when I chuckle, she just says good-bye, with another one of those “tchah” noises.

“You have that grin you get when you’ve won an argument,” Hal says as we walk to the rental car.

“It bothers me that you know me that well,” I say.

He taps the side of his nose. “What happened? If you can talk about it.”

“Oh, you know my mother was part of this fundamentalist group for a while…” I tell him briefly about Mother’s changing views as we get into the rental car, warm and stuffy from the sun. We roll the windows down and the air rushes through my fur, into my face, cool and fresh.

Hal jokes that even when I’m not trying, I’m being an activist, and that just solidifies the feeling that was already growing. For the first time since walking out of our apartment—Dev’s apartment—I feel like I have a direction, a purpose. I have a job, which I got with my own skills and took on my own terms, and I’m more pleased than I should be about Mother’s change of heart. I think I played a big part in it, if not just by being her son, then at least by pointing her to the King case. But if she didn’t do it just for me, then that’s even better. Not everyone in the world has a gay son, so if I can convince her to leave that group, then maybe I can convince other people too.

And maybe I can do it without getting Dev’s brother involved. Just write up the facts of the case, make Vince King a cause. His family might be interested in talking to me—probably not, but you never know. I’ll have to tell Dev about it sometime, but not right now. It’ll come in its own time, and he and I will figure things out as well. At this moment, the air smells sweet and fresh, and while the absence of Dev is a black cloud, the rest of my sky is clear and bright.

It’s a pretty big black cloud, though, like one of those thunderheads that comes rolling through the sky in late spring back in Hilltown. I call up Dev’s number on my phone and send him a text:
Miss you
. The words come easily and honestly, without any worry about how he’s going to take it or whether it’s the right thing to say. They sit for a moment as the message program sends them up to the satellites and on their way to my tiger, and then the program tells me they’ve been sent. I put my phone away and close my eyes, and lean out the window to feel the sun on my ears.