Safety Net (38 page)

“Andy left last week,” Erick said. “He’s
going to Namibia for a couple of weeks first for orientation, but his
assignment is in Botswana.”

“How’s Dale taking it?” Lowell had
brought the football into the living room and was letting it go and catching
it.

“That’s why I went there,” Erick
sighed. “When I talked to Dale on the phone, he was like, oh, it’s fine,
everything’s great. It sounded like a crock of shit to me. And when I got there,
this place he’s staying. It’s gotta be one of the most depressing places on
earth, seriously.”

“Are there any windows? When he
showed me pictures of the place, it didn’t look hideous, but I didn’t remember
seeing any windows.”

“Yeah. There’s one in the door. And
there’s a tiny one on one wall.” Erick drew a small rectangle in the air. “But
there’s a gigantic tree right there that blocks any sun from coming in. This
place was made for vampires. I told him to move. I think he’ll go crazy staying
there for a year. But it’s super cheap, and he’s not getting enough from the
internship to find a decent place.”

Lowell dropped the football onto
the sofa. “Crap. Poor Dale. I wish he’d drop that internship and come to
Portland with me. Then I could have a roommate to share the rent, find a better
place. And we’d have each other for company.”

Erick raised his eyebrows. “Yeah,
he said you’d been working on him to move to Oregon.”

“You don’t think it’s a good idea?”

Erick smirked slightly. “I think it’s
a selfish idea, but I understand it. I don’t know anyone in Connecticut. I’m
freaking out, too.”

Lowell hadn’t thought his idea was
selfish since he knew Dale would be miserable alone. But he considered it again
and was a little embarrassed now.

Erick slouched back in the chair. “To
be honest, I think Dale’s social life is gonna be better than ours. There’s a
funky girl he met at work he’s friends with and he’s been hanging out with that
Brent guy and his friends.”

Lowell rolled the football across
the sofa cushions. “Did you meet Brent?”

“No.” Erick paused. “I asked Dale
if there was anything there, if they might get back together, with Andy gone. ‘Cause
you know he and Andy decided to break up, right?”

Lowell sighed. “Yeah, he told me. I
can understand why, but it sucks. I liked Andy. He was perfect for Dale. What
did Dale say about Brent?”

“He laughed. Said there was no
chance of getting back together. Brent’s got a boyfriend, anyway. But I guess
Brent’s been introducing him to people, to guys and stuff. Dale said he was looking
forward to dating.”

Lowell frowned. “Really? Man, this
is so weird. Weird to think of Dale, like, going out to gay bars and stuff.”

Erick looked at him askance. “I don’t
think that’s what he meant. I thought it was meeting guys through Brent and going
to movies and dinner.”

“Oh. Well, I hope he can meet nice
guys, not assholes. Andy was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke. I still don’t trust
Dale’s taste in men.”

Erick smiled broadly. “That’s
funny, coming from you.”

Lowell narrowed his eyes at him and
said, “I treated him badly, if you think about it. You know he called me an
ex-boyfriend? I never thought of myself as his boyfriend, not even once. It
made me feel like a total shit again.”

Erick cocked his head. “I’m not
absolved from this, either, but seriously. I think you beat yourself up about
Dale way too much. Dale doesn’t hate you for it. I don’t think he’s even mad
about it. It’s been almost two years.”

“I only beat myself up over it
because most of the time, I don’t. Most of the time, when I think about how you
and I got together, I feel like that was the luckiest moment of my life and I
forget about the stuff I did to get to that moment, the stuff I let go of to
stay with you. So every now and then I remind myself of what I put Dale
through. Because there’s always sacrifices to get what you want.” Lowell gazed
at him steadily.

Erick said, “I totally want to kiss
you right now, but (a) I’m too lazy to get out of this chair, and (b) I’m not
sure when your mom’s coming home.”

Lowell chuckled softly. “Dude. We
are so on the same page right now. Yeah, my mom should be home soon.” He
stretched his arms. “Damn. I was gonna grill those steaks tonight, but it’s
still cats and dogs out there.”

“Let me take you and your mom out
for dinner. We can do the steaks tomorrow.”

“Take us out? Bro, I can’t let you--”

Erick laughed. “Menacker,
seriously. I’m loaded right now. It’s slightly obnoxious. Besides, I didn’t say
where I’d take you to dinner. Drive-through burgers and fries?”

“Fuck you, Texas,” Lowell grinned.

Erick stayed for a week, and they
went every day to toss the ball around, spent every morning in bed together
after Lowell’s mom left for work. Erick was curious about Lowell’s new QB, so
they looked up Kellen Forrester and found videos from the Knights’ past seasons
as well as footage from when he was QB at Utah.

What they saw of the Knights
suggested that the team was losing more because of its defense than poor
performance from the offense. Jennings was solid but had been sidelined for
several games due to injury. Pell was inconsistent. They had at least one good
wide receiver and a solid running back.

“Forrester’s not very accurate,” Erick
said critically. “But he’s fast.” When they watched his Utah clips, they saw
why -- he got so little pass protection he’d had to learn to fire the ball off
as well as he could before he got sacked. Lowell thought it was a wonder
Forrester was still functional after all the hits he’d taken in college.

The more they watched, the more
Lowell got a feel for Forrester’s style. He was not a big guy: six feet even
with a hard lean muscle build. Forrester could weave and race around defenders,
so he ran with the ball more than Lowell was used to.

“There,” Erick said, pausing a
video and pointing. “That’s Forrester’s trick. The way he sees his options
change and can get the pass off in time. I gotta say, I admire his speed.”

“Not much on long passing,” Lowell
commented. “The longest we’ve seen was twenty-seven yards.”

“You can’t really go by that.” Erick
shrugged. “It’s because they like their short pass game. Probably because it’s
easier for Forrester to be accurate at that range. I kinda wonder why they don’t
have more of a running game, though.”

“I’ve been memorizing the playbook
but haven’t heard much about their specific strategies yet,” said Lowell. “Mostly
it’s been about housing, medical exams, speed drills, report here, report
there, see this person, see that person. What about you?”

“I memorized the playbook first
thing, and I’ve been studying the roster since then,” Erick said. “Especially
the receivers, of course. There’s a great running back, this guy from Florida
International they recruited in last year’s draft. I’d never heard much about
him, but I found this clip from their bowl game, when he made an awesome
forty-eight-yard run. Nearly a TD, but he went out-of-bounds at the four. They
got the TD in the next play. He started for New Haven last season and has
already made some great plays.”

“What are your new tight ends like?”
Lowell asked, not bothering to hide his jealousy even though he knew it was
childish.

Erick grinned at him and said, “They’re
not as pretty as you.” And Lowell let go of the jealousy and said, “Can they
block? Can they run? Can they catch what you throw at them and do anything with
it? I mean, you’re in the worst team in the NFL. I want you to have a good team.”

“They’re not bad players, far as I
can tell, but it’s hard to say. One of the tight ends is Layne Gordon, and he
was a high third-round draft pick two years ago. So he’s gotta be pretty good.”

“Layne Gordon... Why is that name
familiar? Was he in a PWAC team?”

“No. He went to Virginia Tech.” Erick
winced a little. “You probably heard about him because he was arrested for
domestic abuse his rookie year. The charges were dropped but he was out for
half a season because of it.”

“Oh. Hm.”

“Yeah, I know.” Erick frowned. “The
charges were dropped, though. There may be more to the story. All I care about
right now is finding out how good he can be on the field.”

After talking some more about what they
knew about their respective teams, they went to real estate sites and looked up
housing in New Haven and Portland. Lowell had avoided discussing their separate
careers with Erick before, but Erick was so optimistic and confident about
their futures it made Lowell feel much easier about all the changes. The fact
that they were going to be thousands of miles away from each other, in
different leagues, didn’t phase Erick. He didn’t see it as a problem; it was
simply something to face head-on and find a way around.

“I don’t give up when it’s
something I truly want,” Erick said. “Doesn’t mean I always get it, but it’s
not for lack of trying.”

The last night of Erick’s stay,
Lowell snuck down to the guest room after his mom was asleep. He wanted to curl
up in Erick’s arms and fall asleep but they ended up talking quietly for half
the night.

“You ever wonder what would’ve
happened if we’d won the Hammer Game in junior year?” Lowell asked.

“I wonder what would’ve happened if
we’d won it in sophomore year,” said Erick, and Lowell had the feeling this was
something privately significant to Erick. “But if you’re wondering if I would’ve
kissed you if we’d won the game... I don’t know. I’ve wondered about it, too.
Maybe I would’ve. I mean, I wanted to for a long time. So if not then, some
other time.”

Lowell smiled and kissed Erick’s
chest. “For a long time, huh? Why’d you wait?”

Erick kissed the top of Lowell’s
head. “Seriously? I don’t even know. Stupidity, probably.”

“Something we had in common. I
wanted you for a long time, too, and I didn’t do anything about it. Nothing
directly involving you, that is.” Lowell sighed a little. Poor Dale. “But in my
case, I didn’t do anything because I was afraid of corrupting you.”

Erick laughed a little, and Lowell
tickled his stomach. “Back then, I didn’t know you were a sex fiend. You had us
all fooled.”

“My master plan of deception
worked,” Erick murmured, exaggeratedly stroking his stubbly beard. “Fool
everyone and strike when you were vulnerable.”

Lowell nuzzled his neck. “I was
vulnerable way before you struck, bro. Your master plan had some timing issues.”

After a long, comfortable silence,
Erick said, “There’s a couple of things I gotta tell you. I put it off all week
and here we are, and I gotta leave in a few hours.”

Lowell’s gut knotted. “Okay. I’m
listening.”

Erick kissed the top of his head
again. “Well, the first thing I wanted to tell you is that I love you. I guess
you know that -- I
hope
you know that. But I never said it flat-out
before and I thought I should.”

Lowell looked at him, silent for a
moment. “Yes, I know that. And I’ve never said it, either, which is kinda dumb
when you think about it. Why’s it so terrible to say it? So, um, same here. I
love you.”

Erick’s grin flashed and he
tightened his arms around Lowell. “It’s nice to hear it. At least once. More
than once might get too mushy.”

Lowell smiled and curled closer. “Yeah,
I agree.”

“So we know where we stand in that
regard,” Erick said reasonably. “And it’s not something that’s ever going to
change. Not for me. I mean, it would only change because I took a wrong hit and
they knocked my brains out and I forgot who you were.”

“Erick. That’s not even funny,” Lowell
said seriously.

“But you get my meaning? ‘Cause
that’s important.”

“I get your meaning. It’s not gonna
change for me, either. I don’t think it can change.” Lowell rested his hand
over Erick’s chest.

“Yeah. Okay, good. Because this
next thing I gotta say...” Erick hesitated. “First of all, you gotta know I’ve
thought about this a lot. For a long time.”

The knot in Lowell’s gut twisted
tighter.

Erick gently combed his fingers
through Lowell’s hair. “We’re gonna be apart, but I don’t want us to be alone
all the time. I don’t want you to be alone and I don’t want to be alone. So I
want you to be with whoever you need to be with. And if you fall in love with
someone else, that’s a good thing. I remember you told me once, the more people
you love, the less selfish you become. That’s stuck with me. I think it’s true.”

Lowell thought carefully before he
said anything. “I guess this is our ‘we should see other people’ talk, but I
can’t tell: are you breaking up with me?”

Erick’s fingers continued their
gentle combing. “Lowell. It’s the exact opposite of breaking up. I’m never
going to let you go. I never give up when it’s something I really want. What I’m
saying is, in the meantime, while we’re apart, we have to take care of
ourselves. Not box ourselves up, because that’s artificial. And not beat
ourselves up over being with other people, because deep down, we both know
where we stand, right?”

Lowell slowly released the breath
he’d been holding and relaxed in Erick’s arms. “I’m not sure what to say.
But... I won’t let go, either. Not unless you tell me to.”

“I never will,” Erick said
confidently.

Lowell kissed his chest and after a
moment asked, “Will I see you outside of the times Portland’s gonna come kick
New Haven’s ass?”

“Already dissing my team. Harsh.” Erick
smoothed his hands over Lowell’s back and shoulders. “Yeah, I’m sure we’ll see
each other outside of the times New Haven comes to stomp all over Portland.
Schedules allowing.”

Two days after Erick left Indiana,
Lowell was called out to Portland. He stayed with his mom’s friend and found a
sweet sublet, a loft-style condo. It looked chic and urban and Lowell had never
lived anywhere chic or urban and got a kick out of it.