Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (53 page)

“
We’re getting it,” Gerrard says. “We’re getting it.” He yells across to the practice guys. “Pick it up! Come on, show us something!” They growl and yell back, and get set again. And we stop them. They only get past us maybe once in the last ten series we run.

Afterwards, we hit the showers again. None of ’em gives a shit whether I’m in there or not. The only time my sexual preference even comes up is Wednesday night, when one of the practice squad linemen, a bear, is talking to the cheetah wideout who was passing the ball (you can’t ever get one of the actual QBs to do extra practice). The bear’s got his massive paws out in front of his chest as they’re coming out of the shower. Happens to be right by my locker when he’s saying, “...but Charisse, I dumped her when I met Keri, I mean, two fucking sizes bigger.”

He catches my eye. I grin at him, and he nudges the cheetah. “Dude,” he says to me, “whatever starts your engine, but I need a good pair of tits.”

“
You checked out Hector lately?” I jerk a thumb toward the other lineman, a boar still in the showers. They guffaw, and the bear gives me a thumbs-up.

“
Hey,” I say, “Solid blocking.”

“
Thanks.” Serious now, he nods at me. “You guys are the best in the league.”

I shrug. “I know a couple coyotes in Crystal City’d argue that.”

“
No, really.” The cheetah moves on, leaving the bear. “I learn somethin’ when I practice against ya. Stuff we don’t get in the usual practice, y’know?”

“
Thanks.” I pull my pants up. “That’s all Gerrard, though.”

“
Anytime you guys wanna practice, lemme know. I’ll stay ’til midnight, whatever.” He extends a paw. “Jake.”

I smile and shake. “Dev. Good to know ya.”

“
Yeah.” He starts to walk away, and then says, “hey, and, anyone gives you shit about fucking dudes, you let me know.” I stop, shirt in one paw, and can’t help grinning. “Serious,” he says, and he is. “Fuck that shit. We a team.”

“
Thanks, Jake.” I extend a paw again, and he grasps it eagerly.

The memory of that exchange keeps me in good humor most of the way home. I call Lee from the car and tell him I’m going to call Mom that night. If most of the football team can come around in under a month, why can’t Mom and Dad? I feel optimistic, even though I know it’s stupid.

I pass up dinner with the guys so I can get home early. I don’t say it’s to call my Mom. Doubt sets in as I’m eating takeout burgers on my couch, as the moment of the call gets closer. I think about Jake and his support. I think about the coaches and the rest of the team. I think about Gerrard inviting Lee to his house. When I take a deep breath, my ribs barely register a twinge.

The phone is warm in my paw. The ring goes on for a long time, and then the silence goes on even longer. It rings again. My heart’s beating faster. Lion Christ, don’t be so worried about it, I tell myself, for all the good that does. There’s a click, and the sound of breathing.

“
Are you calling to tell me you have made your decision?”

The temperature in my apartment seems to drop ten degrees. My fur prickles. “I’ve told you my decision. I want to talk to Mom.”

“
There is nothing you can say to her that you cannot say to me.”

“
Oh, there’s a bunch of things.” I breathe faster. “You made it clear you don’t want to talk to me.”

“
It is not that I don’t want to talk to you.”

I cut him off. “Really? Because walking out of a restaurant says that loud and clear.”

“
If you thought that telling the newspapers would make us take you back...”

“
I didn’t do that,” I snap.

“
But you told your fox.”

“
Of course.”

His voice is icy. “So. He told the papers.”

Shit. “I already talked to him about it. I took care of it.”

Dad growls. “This is personal, family business. It is not for the world to know.”

“
I play in front of millions of people every week. Like it or not.” I find myself more passionately believing what I’m saying. “People are interested in my life. You’re part of that too.” I can’t believe I’m defending Lee.

“
Interested is one thing. Prying is another.”

“
Nobody pried into—look, put Mom on the phone.”

“
You do not need to—”

“
If you don’t, I’ll just call back tomorrow when you’re at work.”

“
She will not pick up.”

“
Yes, she will.”

He doesn’t respond to that. Then I hear him growl Mom’s name. A moment later, I hear her voice. “Devlin, what is it?”

“
Mom.” She waits. I work myself up to saying what I wanted to. “Mom, can you...I really want to come home.”

“
I want you to come home,” she says, softly.

“
Please...talk to Dad.”

“
Devlin, you must see reason. Your father just wants the best for you. This thing, it will not lead to happiness.”

“
You don’t know that.” I squeeze my brand-new phone. “It already has led to happiness.”

“
Not for us.”

“
You already have a grand-cub from Gregory. I’m sure he’ll give you more. What else do you want?”

“
We want to be a family.”

“
So do I!” I shout it into the phone, then close my eyes and try to breathe more regularly. “So do I. So you can—”

She breaks in, her voice whispered and urgent. “I am trying to talk to your father,” she says. “It will take time. Please, be patient.”

“
How much time?”

Her voice goes back to its normal register. “Really, it will be easier for everyone if you simply give up this fox. You must grow up.”

I understand that she can’t talk freely in front of Dad. That just infuriates me even more. Why the hell can’t she just stand up for me? What’s so hard about that? I push away the vague memory of Dad’s remark about hitting girlfriends, and growl. “I am grown up,” I say. “Now it’s Dad’s turn.”

Before she can say anything else, I hang up the phone. The urge to throw it across the room is overwhelming, but I keep it in check. I just throw the phone into the cushions.

I leave it there for the rest of the night. Call Lee? Maybe. He had something he wanted to talk to me about. Maybe it would take my mind off this. I text him:
Sorry, talked to parents, really frustrated.

He replies quickly.
Need to talk?

What would Lee say? He’d tell me to focus on football, like he has so many times. Like there’s nothing I can do about my family. Or he’d talk about whatever he wanted to tell me. Still, it’d be good to hear his voice. So I call him.

“
Hi,” he says. “You okay?”

“
Yeah.” I growl the word out. “You had something to tell me?”

He pauses. “It can wait. What did they say?”

“
Mom told me to grow up, that she’s trying to work on Dad, but she can’t really talk around him, and it’s all wrong. It’s like everything’s falling apart.”

“
It’s not,” he says, soothing.

“
No,” I say. “It’s just me, isn’t it?” The apartment feels small and confining. I stalk from the door to the window and back. “Mom wanted to help, or did she? What can she really do if she’s afraid to talk in front of him? Is she just gonna wait until he decides to change his mind? Dad never changes his mind once it’s set.”

“
Never say never,” Lee says, but I barely hear him.

“
Gregory wanted to play baseball instead of doing the debate team. Dad harped on him for years even after he gave in. We had these friends, black bears, and the older one was caught shoplifting. I wasn’t allowed to say a word to him after that. Eight years, Lee.”

“
This is different,” he says patiently.

“
You know he still hates foreign cars? Ivan does all the foreign car work in the shop. Foreign cars! Seriously!”

“
You’re not a car,” Lee says. “He didn’t like you playing football, either, did he? But he was really proud of you at dinner.”

I pace more quickly. “I just need to talk to him again. If I can get in his face, force him to confront me again... He can’t walk away from me every time. I’ll call him right now.”

“
Don’t!” Lee sounds alarmed. “Give yourself time to cool down.”

I make a strangled noise. “Fox—”

“
For me?” His voice gets a little purr in it when I sigh. “You know I’m right.”

I do. Even so, when we eventually hang up, I scroll to my parents’ number in my address book. I stare at it, then snarl at myself and throw it back at the couch. There’s beer in the fridge and a video game I can lose myself in. I have practice tomorrow and that’s going real well. It’s definitely better for me to just chill, play some UFL 2009, and go to bed. I shouldn’t call them back.

So I pound digital football players into each other through three beers, and then I go to bed. The beer takes the edge off my fuming. I sleep well enough, and in the morning I get up with an ache where my anger used to be.

We stay late again on Thursday, but that’ll be the last time before the game. We travel tomorrow, and Saturday’s too close to the game to wear ourselves out. After showering, I’m doing the usual running through the day’s practice in my head, but thoughts of my father keep creeping in. It’s not as bad as last week, but the frustration still eats at me. I need to talk to someone. I have a voicemail and a text from Lee asking me to call him, but before I get home I want to talk to one of my friends on the team, just to get another point of view.

I can’t really talk to Charm about serious stuff. Fisher’s in physical therapy now. I like Ty and Pike and Brick, but we don’t chat much. Gerrard, maybe, but he’s all business. He did ask me last week what was bothering me. Then, it still hurt too much. Now, I can’t bring myself to approach him.

He comes over to me, though, at the end of practice. “Here,” he says, handing me a small package.

I open the box. “I’ve got an iPod already,” I say, pulling it out. “But thanks.”

“
This has game film on it,” he says. “We’re gonna be on the road, so I had the coaching staff break it down.” He taps the box with a blunt claw. “The teams we’re gonna be hitting, broken down into folders by type of play. You can’t get to specific players yet, but you should still be able to see enough to help you figure out patterns.”

“
Oh. Thanks.” I drop it in my bag. “That’s really cool.”

“
Use it,” he says. “See you on the plane.”

“
Hang on,” I say. “I’ll walk out with you.”

He tilts his head, whiskers flaring. While I’m packing up my bag, he says, “Whatever was happening...all done now?”

“
Not really,” I say. I heft the bag over my shoulder. “But I’m gonna have to deal with it, right?”

“
You don’t have to deal with it alone,” he says. “I know you can, but...we got a lot of good guys on the team.”

I nod. Maybe he wouldn’t be so bad to talk to after all. So I say to him, casually, “Hey, what would you do if one of your kids is gay?”

His ears sweep toward me. He shrugs. “It’s just part of their life, right? We can always talk about it. Long as they don’t let it affect their career. But you can do that when you’re straight, too. You see Charm? Going to end up with child support in a couple years. Or a disease.”

“
Okay, but I mean, what if they did something you weren’t okay with? Drugs. What if one of your kids did pot or something? And it didn’t affect his work, but...”

He narrows his eyes. “Did you see one of them with pot that afternoon?”

I shake my head. “No, I’m just...” I sigh. “Is there anything one of ’em could do that you’d kick ’em out of the family?”

“
Oh.” He relaxes and studies me. “Family always comes back together. There’s nothing you can do about it now. You’re doing really good this week—no media distractions.”

“
They play that commercial still.”

“
Just let your agent take care of it and keep doing what you’re doing on the field. New Kestle, we can take them. And don’t worry about Corey,” he says as if reading my mind. “They might give him a couple series just ’cause of the stag. You keep playing like this, your job’s safe for the year.”

The pure focus on the game is perfectly Gerrard. I feel his words sinking in all the way home. The apartment, when I get there, feels big enough for me again. Even so, the ache doesn’t go away. I call Lee, but his phone goes right to voicemail. I tell him I’m doing a little better, and I’ll call him from New Kestle when we get there.

Then I sit down to play video games again, but I keep staring at the phone. I never called my parents much this past year. So why do I want to, now that I can’t? Why can’t I just let it be what it is? If I think about the day-to-day life I lead, what’s really changed? Dad might call after a game, but lately, I just felt like shouting at him anyway, especially when he went on about the gay rumors.

I toss the controller down and go outside. On the way down the street, I call Charm and ask if he wants to get together for a drink. He invites me to the bar he’s already half-sloshed at. Honestly. Kickers. I join him, have one beer, and watch him chat up a vixen, a horse, and a pantheress. He makes one remark about finding me someone to hook up with, just to take the edge off. I tell him no. That’s all it takes. Sometimes he really is a good friend.