Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (48 page)

“
Why do you have to do anything at all?” I cry.

“
I can’t not do something. I can’t just sit and wait. I’m gonna screw up sometimes. I’m sorry. I’ll help fix it—”

“
You can’t fix it.” I grope for words. “How can I ever trust you?”

He winces. Shit. I can see the answer, plain as day. His eyes are so full of hurt I can’t look at them. So I close my eyes and lean against the doorframe.

I’m encased in stillness. Then I feel him move past me without touching. My arms burn with the need to reach out and grab his shoulder, to keep him here, to yell at him or to throw him onto the bed and fuck him again, or just to shake him and make him tell me why he did this. Why, why, why?

“
Why?” I croak.

I hear him turn. He’s halfway to the door. For a minute, I don’t think he’s going to answer. Then he does, quietly, with just a little quaver in his voice.

“
Because he hurt you. He hurt you, and I’m not big enough to kick the shit out of him.”

The door opens. My eyes stay closed. I strain to listen for anything in the silence. The door closes, softly.

Oh, shit. I didn’t think...I didn’t imagine. The raw emotion in his voice brings it home. He really did do it all for me. It was clumsy, and shitty, but he did it for me. And I told him I didn’t trust him. And he walked out.

He’ll come back, though. He has to. He always wants to talk things out. I bet he won’t even get in the elevator. Unless he really thinks I don’t trust him any more. Or that I might hit him. Or that I’d rather go back to my family.

I want to yell through the door at him. Pressure welds my throat shut. I hear the elevator arrive, with a weary clatter. The doors open. Eternity passes before they rattle closed. The elevator starts its creaking descent. Nobody turns the door handle to come back in. Nobody knocks, tentatively. I take a step toward the door and stop. The silence is crushing me.

Part of me would like to slam the door behind me, but I don’t deserve to let that part out. I do let it stab the elevator button repeatedly, as the gears of the massive mechanism grind and turn. Dev’s question echoes in my head: Why? Why?

How could I know they would make up details about him crying? In my head, it was a dry, factual article about his father kicking him out. His teammates would be sympathetic; hell, the world would be sympathetic. I grasp at that image as though I can push it into reality. If I can will it hard enough...

But I can’t. Behind the apartment door, the paper still lies on the floor. Dev is still slumped against the wall.

My paw closes around my phone. I’m itching to call Kinnel, but again, I don’t deserve that yet. I’d just vent my anger on him, and while he may deserve that, I’m going to wait until I’m a little more calm. Get my own house in order first.

That’s one of Mother’s sayings. God, there’s another whole hairball I don’t want to poke at. I actually felt sorry for my father after our talk. Are they going to split up?

Are Dev and I going to split up? I still think I can justify what I did. It was a mistake, but well-intentioned. In the end, though, if it’s a bad enough mistake, does it matter what you meant to do? Isn’t trust the foundation of any relationship?

The elevator doors open. I perk my ears back, for any sound from Dev’s apartment, any last-minute rush to the door to tell me come back, come back, all is forgiven. The elevator waits with me. I sigh and step inside. Without any anger, I push the ‘G’ button. Ground floor. Going down.

The elevator shudders to life. After a moment, it starts creaking downwards. Goddamn tabloids. Goddamn Kinnel. If it had been a fair story, that would have helped, wouldn’t it? Would Dev be as angry if they hadn’t made up those details? The crying, the “little girl” comment? Where did those come from, anyway? Gay stereotyping. Just like the questions at his press conference about looking at other guys, just like that fucking boar and the stallion before him thinking Dev’s a sissy. I drop my bag and try hitting the side of the elevator with my unbroken paw, but the impact is weak and unsatisfying. I fold my arms and glare at the display as if the changing numbers are sponsored by the Weekly News.

We can sue the paper, I suppose, or get Kinnel to write a retraction piece, but that’s not a real solution, and it’s not even the real problem. People are going to write what they write, think what they think. Gay stereotypes will persist, but they are changing (in part thanks to Dev). I just want them to change
now
.

The number five blinks on. The elevator dings and keeps going.

It’s just frustrating to be trapped by those stereotypes when they don’t even remotely fit. We’re not promiscuous, me and Dev. We don’t go see musical theater. He hits people all day long, and he’s really good at it. I take his cock, sometimes without any more lube than a pawful of saliva. I’d like to see some of those tough straight guys do that.

What other people think doesn’t matter, though. What matters is what’s between us and whether it’s completely broken or just scarred. Scars are fine. We’ve already got a lot of those.

I start cataloguing the scars and then stop. The time I lied about Brian, the time I freaked out at him about my parents, the time I pushed his father until my thumb broke. Every time, I’m the one screwing up and he’s the one taking me back. You’d think he’d be used to it by now.

Yeah, my inner voice tells me, but wouldn’t it be easier just to stop screwing up?

Maybe. God knows I’m trying. I rub at the part of my paw pad that isn’t inside the cast. Didn’t even wait to get the cast off before doing something else stupid. I could promise to do better. Again. I don’t really think I can screw this up any further.

Too little, too late?

Hope not. But what else can I do? Dev’s not in any mood to hear me beg for forgiveness. I can’t call the tabloid and have them un-print it. I can stop talking to Kinnel, but then he’ll just expose my identity, eventually, no matter what he says. Besides, I still think having a representative of the media in our corner will be a good thing, in the long run. I just have to tell him next time that he can sell it to anyone but the tabloids. Or he has to write the story himself.

I could’ve explained to Dev that my motivations had very little to do with the result in the paper, for all that that matters. Not that he’d listen to me. In his place, I wouldn’t listen to me either, not right now. But maybe it’ll help later. If there is a later.

There has to be a later, doesn’t there? I messed this up, I can make it right. I can’t see how, right now, but there has to be a way.

Then again, that’s how I got into this mess: by not leaving things alone. Always pushing, always changing, always going a little too far until things are fucked up beyond repair.

Ding. Four.

This elevator is fucking slow. Dev really needs to move to a new place. Even if I don’t go with him. That thought scares me. It feels like a hole in me, because I’d just thought of it as something I’d do, something I’d be part of. What the hell would I do if I didn’t have him to talk to every night, to look forward to coming down to visit?

I’d have my job, which I’ve been neglecting this weekend. Haven’t written up a single game yet. Going around to all those college games, I’d be reminded of him every time I saw a tiger in uniform, every time I saw a defensive back get a good jump on the ball, every time I saw someone with potential who just needed a little push to realize it. How long could I keep that up?

It’s football. I still love football. Even if it’s all tied up with Dev, now, I still love it. I could throw myself into scouting the college kids.

Wow, that sounds bad. But I think about King, the pain he showed in the e-mail, the pain he was taking out on the other team on the field. Gay college athletes—I could help them, couldn’t I?

Whatever happens with Dev, I’ll get by. I’ve rebuilt my life before. I threw out the whole idea of graduating, I threw out the idea of being an activist, I threw out the idea of having a public relationship.

Of course, when I did those, I was doing it for Dev. Maybe not exactly the graduating thing, but I adjusted my life for him. He made adjustments for me, too. We were willing to change for each other, no matter how rocky the process. We had great fights, and better make-up sex, and there’s nobody in my life that I trust more. There’s nobody in my life I even trust half as much.

Ding. Three. A ferret shambles into the elevator, squints at me, and settles herself in the far corner.

Could I say the same about him? He jumped right away to thinking I was doing something with Kinnel, which I guess isn’t so unreasonable after the thing with Brian, but still, I promised to do better about
that
, and I have. Would I want to stay in a relationship without trust?

Yeah. Trust. That’s what’s missing. If Dev would only trust me, I could explain all this. But if he’s not going to make the effort, if he’s not going to even give me a chance...sure, he’s just had a bad day. Losing the game, still reeling from his father’s asshole move, I’m sure he wasn’t in the best mood to hear about his boyfriend completely selling out his family.

Fuck.

I’ve always thought we could work things out. Maybe this time, we won’t.

I could find some gay guy in Hilltown. The message boards are full of them. I could start over, build a foundation of trust. We could settle down, have lots of comfortable sex and conversations about musicals and sports. I could meet his family, already comfortable with his lifestyle. He’d be a fox, maybe. He could meet my father.

But I can’t picture being with a fox. Or an otter, or a wolf, or a coyote. Or any tiger other than the one I’m slowly dropping away from. I’ve never opened myself up to anyone else the way I have to him. He takes my sarcasm and turns it around, challenges me to be a better fox. A
ma-e
, Kinnel would say. Nobody else ever did that. My parents tried to make me into what they want me to be. Brian tried to make me his partner in activist subversion. Dev makes me what I want to be, only better.

Ding. Two.

And who am I, when it comes down to it? I exist apart from Dev, even though we affect each other strongly. This tabloid mess is my fault, and pushing off on Dev some vague worries about trust issues is just dodging the point. The point is, I’m the kind of person who sometimes does things he wishes he could take back. Dev’s learned that over the years.

I know who he is, too. The flares of temper, the time it takes him to get through things (I could probably stand to take more time to think things through, if it comes down to that), all that is part of who he is. What I love. If he’d accepted my explanation right away, let me talk him down, he wouldn’t be Dev, and something would be subtly wrong. He needs the time to come to grips with things, and I need this time to figure out myself.

Which leads me to Kinnel, who is also trying to figure me out. Maybe I’ll call him next week, if Dev and I do split up. He still couldn’t use my name, but that anonymous story would be okay. Maybe he could turn it into a whole series on how not to handle a relationship. I mean, yeah, I am who I am, but I don’t have to be quite so much who I am. Not when it fucks up other people.

The elevator settles to the ground floor. The ferret shuffles forward.

I rest my broken paw against the elevator wall, staying in the elevator just a moment longer. The doors will take forever to close anyway. My hard cast comes off next week, so I’ll treat that as a new beginning. Think about everything, don’t push yourself, don’t push other people, don’t be so reckless. I know that at least I did the right thing by telling Dev right away. If I hadn’t told him now, I would’ve told him later, and this moment would have been even worse.

I can think that, but I have trouble picturing how it could have been. I’m standing here not knowing if I’m going to see him again outside a TV screen. I guess he could’ve hit me. I almost wish he had.

But no, I feel—I hope—we can fix this. I’m just being melodramatic. Aren’t I?

A thought occurs to me, and I lean my head back against the back of the elevator. I’ve just given him the excuse to break up with me and go back to his family. They’ll be sure to let him know how right they were about me. ‘You see,’ his father will say, ‘this fox is no good.’ He might not believe it at first, but he won’t have an answer for them. He’s probably on the phone with his mother right now. I hope he is. That’s what he should be doing.

Sure it is. What he should be doing is growling at me, telling me I fucked up and that the next time I do it he’s not going to fuck me for a week. I want him here so badly, even furious, even untrusting, as long as he’s
here
.

My head is pounding. I should just hit the button for six and go back upstairs. I should tell him we can work this out, that I’m not going to run away, that I’m not going to give up, fuck if it’s not my choice, it takes two to break up, right? I know I can say the right thing if I just have the chance. I can find the words.

But that dream is no more real than the article I’d wished Kinnel had written, like the contrite Mikhail in my fantasies accepting me without question. I used up all my words. I don’t have any more.

The pounding gets worse. I lift my unbroken paw to my temple, but the noise is outside, not in my head.