Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (25 page)

“
Maybe you could be,” I say. “Maybe she just didn’t have enough patience. Maybe her dad—or her mom—didn’t give you enough of a chance.”

“
She gave me a—she gave me plenty.” He clears his throat. “You get any quotes from Miski about the game?”

I think back to things Dev said about the game that are safe enough to quote. I mix some of them around in my head and come up with a bland one. “He said, ‘Anytime someone goes after one of my teammates, they’re gonna have to answer to me.’”

“
Shoot, that’s kinda what he told ESPN already. Nothin’ about what the boar said?”

“
Sorry. He just said it doesn’t matter what people say, he’s going to pay attention to what they do.”

“
Hm.” Keyboard clicks. “That’ll work. Thanks.”

“
Glad to help.” I watch a pair of weasels, one white, one brown, chatting happily with each other as they walk by. “Mister Kinnel—”

“
Call me Hal.”

I pause. “Mister Kinnel, did you think about leaving Cimarine?”

Two loud trucks go by. I press the phone to my ear. When they’re gone, I’m about to ask him to repeat what he said, but then he clears his throat. “To get the jump on her, y’mean?”

“
More like...” My stomach growls. “More like, you knew you weren’t what she wanted any more. Like it’d be best for her if you left.”

“
You thought about leaving Miski? Guessed maybe he was gay? But you liked the fame?” I don’t say anything. He exhales. “I thought about it. Sometimes.”

“
But you figured there might still be a chance. If you stayed.”

“
Yeah. Course, she wasn’t gay. Makes it easier. Once y’know, I mean.”

“
You’d think so.” I lean back against the glass. My stomach growls again. “I need to find some breakfast.”

“
Wait,” he says. “Are you coming to Chevali again anytime soon?”

I step out of the store entryway and merge with the crowd, just another guy on his cell phone hopefully talking too softly for people to hear him putting on a husky vixen voice. “I have no plans to.”

“
Well, damn. I might just have to get myself up to Hilltown, then. Sounds busier up there than I remember it. I’d like to take a look around.”

“
I’m downtown,” I say. “And I have to get going.”

After breakfast and a trip to the bagel place, back in the hotel room, I check in with work.

“
Hey,” Alex says. “How’s the vacation? Where are you?”

“
Port City. I, uh,” I tap my cast against my leg. “Sprained my thumb. Pretty bad.”

“
Ouch. Doing what?”

“
Biking. Hit a bump, put my paw out to steady myself.” Biking should be an athletic enough and yet believable activity for the office, where they know I don’t do much outdoorsy stuff. “How’s the office?”

“
Paul won the belching contest.”

“
So what else is new?”

“
One of my guys is out for the season with an ACL tear.”

“
Fuck.” You hate to see that happen to anyone, but especially a college kid. Recovery’s better these days, but if you’re not a top-tier prospect, you risk losing any shot at a pro paycheck. “Sorry.”

“
Happens. Your guys all okay?”

“
Yeah. I need to get my assignments from Morty. He in?”

“
Think so. Hang on. See you back here next week.”

He transfers me to Morty, who asks the same questions about my vacation and, thank goodness, no questions about the Today Show. The games I have to do are up near Freestone, a few hours drive, so I tell him I’ll just stay in Port City and rent a car on Friday. And that’s it for work for the day.

I’m watching TV without really watching it when Dev walks through the door. He points a finger at me as I look up. “Don’t say anything,” he says.

I turn the set off. “I extended the stay. So we don’t have to be out by noon,” I clarify, when he frowns. “I need to go to a game here the day after tomorrow, so I’m just going to stay.”

He stands still, watching me. He’s quiet, looking not quite as depressed as he was after he lost the playoff game back in college. Finally, he says, “My plane’s still at five to noon.”

I reach up and rest my paw on his arm. “I thought you did a good job. Those questions weren’t fair at all.”

He exhales and flops down beside me. “Lion Jesus, they were assholes. Everyone was smirking at me on the way out.”

“
Did anyone hit on you?”

He focuses on me. “No. Wait. No, I don’t think so.”

“
Okay, good.”

That gets a smile. “Jealous?”

“
Well,” I say, “everyone knows you’re gay, now. I’m gonna have to fight them all off.”

“
You don’t have to worry about it, fox.” He lashes his tail. “I wanted to punch that stag in the nose.”

“
I’m glad you didn’t. That would’ve been worse. Although it would put to rest the myth that gay people are sissies.”

He flexes his biceps, and that sparks another memory. “Oh,” I say. “I saw your commercial.”

After I tell him about it, I have to stop him from calling Ogleby and firing him then and there. I point out that he’s still getting paid for it and that it’s not all that bad. The timing’s unfortunate, for sure, but he looks great in the commercial and hopefully it’ll lead to more endorsement deals and more money.

“
Why do you care about the money, all of a sudden?” he asks, staring at me.

“
I always cared about money,” I say, trying to dodge his unexpected perceptiveness. “I mean, I’m going to keep staying in these hotel rooms, so I need to make sure you can keep paying for them.”

“
Oh, speaking of.” He pulls his wallet out of his suit and hands me three hundreds. “For the room. You should probably get another one under your name. I’ll check out of this one.”

I stare at the money. All sorts of symbolism run through my head, making me not want to take it. I can afford to pay for my own hotel room. I could probably get work to pay for at least part of it, if not the whole stay. But I don’t want to argue with Dev, so I reach out and take the cash from him.

This fucking day is just getting better and better. I’m tired from getting up at five, I got lost on the way to the station, and the people getting me ready for the show just treated me like an annoyance they had to deal with. And I don’t even wanna think about the show itself. Then the guy in the cab on the way back is a wiseass, and a Port City Devils fan on top of that, and I come back here to find out that I’ve starred in a softcore gay porn commercial. I kinda want to fuck Lee, because he’s about the only thing right about this day, but he’s all dressed and I have to leave for the airport in an hour. If I’m enough of a prick that we get into a fight, we could have angry sex or make-up sex. If I just press him, I’m sure he’d have those pants off in a minute. My sheath gets nice and warm-hard at the thought, but the whole day just weighs down on me. I don’t have the energy to do anything else. I can’t believe it’s only nine-thirty.

Lee tucks the money away into his pocket, his ears kinda flat like they get when he’s thinking too hard about something. “I know it sucks,” I say. “But you don’t want to have to deal with all this, do you?” I gesture at the TV.

There’s a bit of a tense moment, and then his ears come up. “No,” he says. “You’re right.” And he kisses me.

I hold his head, kissing back, and there’s a moment there, a heart-racing moment in the way he feels against me and his scent in my nose and his tongue in my mouth. It goes beyond ‘the only thing right about this day’ to ‘holy fuck, yes,’ and almost makes me change my mind about getting undressed. But when we separate, he’s just got his ears half-up. Relaxed, not aroused. “Listen,” he says, “it’s a stupid interview. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about the commercial. You just take care of playing football.”

The knot in my upper chest eases just a little. “Easy for you to say.”

He looks more vulpine when he grins than any other fox I know, and when he grins the way he’s grinning at me now, I feel a tingle up and down my spine. It could mean
uh-oh
, or it could mean
something exciting’s going to happen,
or it could mean
I’m the luckiest tiger in the world
. I snort at him, not knowing what else to do, and he says, “It’s easy for you to do, too. Just think about me like I was this morning.”

“
Even when I’m showering?”

He stretches his grin a bit. “Whatever you need.”

I sigh. “I don’t think we have time for me to get what I need.”

His uninjured paw brushes my side. His blue eyes sparkle. “You’d be surprised what we can do in half an hour.”

“
Yeah, but we’d have to shower after.”

“
I wouldn’t.” He winks. “I’ll just go check into the hotel smelling of tiger.”

Goddamn him. I’m all the way hard now, and he knows it. Thinking about him walking around after I’ve been inside him shouldn’t turn me on, but it kinda does. A little of it is the danger, and a little of it is the fact that I know it turns him on. I take a breath. “I don’t want to wait for Sunday night,” I say, with effort. “But I need to go catch the plane.”

“
Sunday night will be here before you know it. And so will I.” He doesn’t look too disappointed, just resigned.

I kiss him good-bye and squeeze his body against mine, and I spend half the cab ride wondering why he looked so self-satisfied on my way out. I spend the other half of the cab ride debating whether I should just cancel the flight, go back to Chevali tomorrow, and go back to the hotel today. The imagining makes for a nice ride, overall, leaning my head against the window to stare out at the glass canyons across the bridge to the airport, where the sun breaks through the clouds as we pull up to the departures area.

At the curb, one of the skycaps takes my bag and says, “Saw you on TV.” He’s smiling, but I can’t tell whether it’s a snide smile or a sincere one, so I just say, “Thanks” in return. I wonder whether he saw the Today Show or the commercial, or maybe both, and I get angry all over again at the stag, but it’s not the consuming anger it was earlier. It’s muted by thoughts of Lee, and then I realize that that’s why he was wearing that smug expression. He knew he’d distracted me enough to get my mind off the interview. And that helps me realize that he was right, that it’s not that important overall.

I take out my phone and text him a quick,
Thanks, fox,
while waiting to go through security.

He responds fifteen minutes later, as I’m at the gate:
11:10 am
You’re welcome. :) Have a good flight
. I weigh the phone, smiling, and lean back. The message indicator is blinking all the time, now, reminding me of Ogleby. I look up at the gate information, the name “CHEVALI” up there in big letters. I thumb Ogleby’s number.

He picks up in mid-sentence. I think he started talking to me before he accepted the call. “—worry about that interview, I swear it looked great, you should hire one of those makeup people, did you get the messages about the sponsors—”

“
Ogleby,” I say, cutting across him. “I’ll deal with you and that commercial later. I’m about to get on a plane. Then I’m going to be at practice.”

“
The commercial was great! They love—”

“
I want you to handle all my calls from now on, okay? Don’t send me messages every time you get one. I’ll call you once a week and we’ll deal with things then. Otherwise I’m gonna focus on football. This is...this is important.”

“
Dev, honey, I swear it’ll only take a minute. The guys from Colman’s Sporting Goods called, Jeff Colman called himself, they want you to come down there—”

“
Once a week,” I say. “I’ll call you.”

“
Sure, that’s great, but can you just—”

“
I’m only doing this because I don’t have time to find another agent. Impress me.”

That shuts him up. I say a quick good-bye, click the phone off, and put it away. It doesn’t take long for me to notice the people staring at me and whispering to their neighbors. I stretch out my legs, link my paws behind my head, and close my eyes, ignoring them. The picture of Lee in my mind makes them all go away. But then I picture the cast on his paw, and I think about my parents watching the commercial, and my chest gets tight again.

The one good thing about the interview is that it got me angry at the stag instead of at my father. When he asked about my parents, I got that none-of-your-business feeling and that reminded me that whatever else he’s done, Dad’s still my dad. Mom’s still my mom. No matter what, we’re all in this together.

I can’t help feeling that I could’ve handled the whole visit better, that I let them down somehow. Like when I was escorting a crying Marcia home, years ago. Like when I’d talk to them on the phone from my dorm room at Forester, when I was starting for an unremarkable football school and doing nothing exceptional, when I was drifting through life. Before I met Lee.

Lee. My fox just couldn’t be quiet and leave well enough alone. He had to be prickly, had to stand up to Dad, had to keep pushing him. I mean, sure, Dad’s social sensibilities are dated to about 1850, but he’s not going to change overnight. God, if Lee could just have left him alone...