Divisions (Dev and Lee) (27 page)

“Maybe not,” he shoots back immediately. “But I know you.”

“Oh, will you stop saying that? You clearly don’t.”

He eyes me carefully. “I don’t know the new you. But I’ll say this: I would never be able to love someone I had to break my principles for. And I know your principles. I would want someone I could share them with. Like you and I did.”

He is trying to get me back. And he’s using this political thing to do it, fucking with me and Dev, and I don’t want to be talking to him anymore. I don’t do it on purpose—at least, I think I don’t—but I stand up fast and bang my leg into the coffee table, and my chai wobbles and tumbles over. The lid pops off and spiced tea splashes across his script, onto his pants and feet. He jumps up, bangs into the table himself, and his coffee cup falls onto the floor.

The ferret behind the counter, who’s been unabashedly watching us for the last five minutes or so, I guess, runs over with napkins. “Oh gosh, sir! Do you want another chai?”

“No,” I say. “I’ve had enough.” And I walk out, leaving Brian there to mop up his script and clean off his feet.

***

The rest of the day I sit in the apartment replaying the conversation with Brian in my head. I go over it again and again, find myself unreasonable, find him infuriating, feel noble for defending Dev and hypocritical for defending Dev when really I want him to go do the meeting. Damn Brian for telling me I had two weeks. If I’d just said no and walked out, I wouldn’t still be thinking about asking Dev to do it.

Infuriatingly, it’s his comment about “another football job,” a dart thrown in the dark, that eats at me. I want to go work with Peter Emmanuel in Yerba, to go back to scouting and evaluating players, helping to build a team. I miss the discussions we had over who’s good and who’s not, who could thrive in our system and who would be better off elsewhere. But I don’t have to take the job. I could just live here, work for Equality Now, and help thousands more young gay people.

If you’d told me in college that I could work with a professional football team, I would have jumped at the chance. If you’d told me I could do nothing but activism for the rest of my life, I would have pumped my fist and signed right up. If you’d told me I would have to choose between them, I would have laughed and asked what would happen when I woke up.

It’s a relief to go have dinner with Hal. He gets to the bistro before me, at a booth on the far side from the noisy bar, dressed in a white collared shirt with a tie and looking somewhat uneasy. I slide in across from him and grin. “If I’d known you were going to dress up, I would’ve,” I gesture with a paw across my rumpled pink collared shirt, down to my jeans, “dressed up, too.”

He grins. “Don’t have a job to dress up for. Ties’re just gathering dust in the closet.” He brushes a finger down his tie, which is pretty nice, really: a purple diagonal stripe pattern, looks like silk.

“Can’t think of a better place than a burger joint to wear it to.” I give him a long grin, which he returns. This place is actually better than a burger joint; it’s got a polished wood bar with brass fittings and huge ceiling fans turning lazily overhead more for decoration than cooling, though I imagine they can turn faster in the summer. They keep the air circulating, the meaty smells of steak and chicken, the tangy oily smells of salad dressing, rich fatty potatoes frying, which all make my mouth water. The walls are wide windows that look out over the pedestrian shopping street outside, which today glitters with Christmas lights. Everyone seems to be carrying bags bulging with boxes, and people are smiling a lot more. Our waitress, a lithe rat, has a sprig of holly over her name tag (“Joliette”) and a bright smile when she takes our order. Hal recommends the microbrews from a local place, so I order those and a small steak with fries, then I think about Brian’s story about Paula and change my order to chicken. He gets a roast chicken breast and vegetables. Then I think, fuck Brian, I want a steak, so I change back to the steak before our waitress leaves.

“So what’s this thing with the Firebirds?” Hal leans across the table once we get our beers.

I tell him about the job offer, briefly. He brushes a finger over his whiskers. “Interestin’. Doesn’t seem out of character, necessarily, but I’m a little surprised. You want me to check around?”

I hesitate. If they hadn’t called me… “Yeah, I guess. I mostly just want to know how they got my number.”

He nods, takes a drink, and licks the foam from his lips. “Wasn’t from me, I promise you that.”

“I didn’t think so.” I’d considered it, but you never know. I’m glad he volunteered the denial. “It sounds interesting, but it’s not really what I want to do. I love scouting and being part of the game. This just sounds like it would be a lot of calculating how to reach people and setting up events.”

He nods, his ears flicking around and then back. “That’s my read on it too. Course, you don’t need to do it forever. Sounds like they don’t even know if they want it to be forever.”

“Right.” I lean one elbow on the table and rest my chin on my paw. “But would this screw up my chances to land the job in Yerba?”

“Ah.” Hal waves my objections aside. “Nobody’s gonna fault you for keepin’ busy. And maybe Yerba’d be glad you had some community outreach experience too.”

“Emmanuel specifically said I’d be kept too busy to do shit like that.”

Hal laughs. “Maybe he thought that’s what you wanted to do. It’d make more sense in Yerba than here, anyway. Only reason I can see for the Firebirds to set up a position is if they really want to do one big blowout thing. So probably it’d just be short term.”

“Which is fine,” I say, “and it sounds like something worthwhile. At least something to do. I can’t Christmas shop all the time.”

He grins. “Having trouble filling the days? Weren’t you going to do something with that activist group? Lots of players’ wives work with charities.”

“Ha ha. Equality Now. Yeah, I talked to them a bit.” I rub a finger up and down the beer glass. “I talked to one of them a bit.”

His expression gets more serious. “Your old pal.”

“Yeah. He—they want Dev to meet some politicians. Second week in January.”

“Playoff time.” He leans back. “Sounds like a no-go.”

“That’s what I thought, but I…” I stare down at my beer.

“Can’t mess with the playoffs.” His voice goes low and dangerous.

“I won’t! Believe me! But…” I sigh, and my tail stirs restlessly against the back of the booth. “Maybe I really am a hypocrite. If I don’t do this, I mean.”

“You gotta do what’s important to you,” he says, flicking his ears back. His claws tap the back of his other paw. “But you know, you’re not responsible for saving the world. Worry about your tiger.”

“I am,” I say, “but am I worrying too much about him? Am I giving up myself for him?”

“Y’always give up some of yourself for your partner. And she—he gives up some of himself for you, too. That’s how it works.” His gaze drops to his paw.

Now I lean forward. Over the beer, I catch a bit of his earthy scent, familiar, and there’s no shade of fear or lust or anything obvious in it. “You been talking to Cim?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, but…” He licks foam from his lips again, slower.

“The date went well.” I grin, watching his reaction. “You’ve had another one. With that coyote, right?”

“Going sorta okay.” He taps the table and doesn’t meet my eyes. “Hey, tell me something. Is it okay for a guy to have a gay pal for relationship advice? Or is it just girls get to do that?”

“It’s okay for guys.” I grin. “I don’t know what I can tell you about girls, but I’ll try.”

“It’s cool,” he says. “My question isn’t really about her anyway. It’s about me.”

My ears perk. “Okay, shoot.”

“Well, it’s…” He has to pause because our waitress brings our food then, and there’s a couple minutes to sort out condiments and extras. I ask for horseradish for the steak and he asks for pepper for the chicken. The steak is a little tough, but pretty tasty. Hal swallows his first bite of chicken and keeps eating, but talks between bites in a lower voice.

“We had our second date, y’know, and she was snuggled all close in the movie theater, and…” He stops, takes another bite of chicken. I listen to the conversation of the people around me, talking about sports teams and the weather, about politics and about their jobs. Two booths away, someone is talking about the Firebirds and Strike, but I tune that conversation out as Hal takes a breath and starts again.

“This is weird, y’know. I don’t know you that well, but…I don’t know anyone else I can talk to about it.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Not worried about that.” He takes another bite of chicken and chews, staring down at his plate.

I put on my husky female voice. “Come on, Hal,” I say. “You can talk to me about your feelings.”

“Oh, put a sock in it,” he says, but he lifts his muzzle with a grin. “Just haven’t been in a lot of relationships, you know. There was a gal in high school and then there was Cim. So I don’t know if it’s right that I’m sitting with this coyote and I got my arm around her and all I’m thinking is ‘she’s gonna ditch me.’”

“Oh.” I chew a little more steak and take a couple fries.

“It’s stupid, right? We’re on a second date, we aren’t even sure if we’ll have a third. So what the hell?”

The last words he says pretty evenly, but his pain shows through because he just goes still for a second. Then he recovers and he’s got his easy smile back on. “Am I still getting over Cim?”

I laugh. “I don’t know. I got over guys pretty quick back in college, and I haven’t broken up since then. But I think maybe you’re just thinking about it too much.”

“Maybe.” He spears a piece of chicken on his fork and looks at it. “I went on another date a few months ago, though that was through craigslist.” His ears go back and he looks away again. “Hey, I was desperate.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Anyway. I thought the same thing. Kept running through that in my mind, we were gonna go out again and then get engaged and get married and—”

“On a first date?” I dip a fry in ketchup and eat it. “Jeez, you straight people.”

“I didn’t talk to her about it.” He pauses, puts his ears up again, and meets my eyes. “Sorry. Just feel pretty shitty about it, and talking about it doesn’t make me feel better.”

Now I put my ears back a bit. “Look, it’s something you can get past. Just because it happened on one date doesn’t mean it’ll happen on all of them. I had…well, you know Brian?” He nods. “I told you he and I used to be friends. It didn’t go well, when I started seeing Dev. There was a lot of other stuff there, it wasn’t jealousy, but—well, I tried to smooth things over with him, and it was just clear that we were not as close as we had been.”

“So it was kind of like breaking up with a best friend.” His whiskers come forward a bit.

“Yeah. And it made me wonder about friendships in general, because I thought he and I would always be friends. But when I’m with Dev now, I don’t think about Brian.” I give him a little smirk, and I leave out the part where I’m working hard not to think about Brian as I’m having steak, remembering his story about his boss Paula. “At all.”

“Uh-huh.” He keeps his eyes on mine. “And you didn’t think at all that what happened with your best friend from college might happen with your boyfriend?”

In this case, I think the truth might actually help him the most, even if it’s hard for me to say out loud. “I did think it, briefly. But then I let it go.”

“And it hasn’t come back?”

I shake my head firmly. “No.”

He grins. “No offense, but you’re younger. And you seem to be a bit more forward-looking than me. But I’ll take it.”

“So go on another date with her. You know, talk about her and let her be herself, and then stop imagining that she’s Cim in a coyote skin.”

“That’s disgusting.” But his grin widens. “I think I saw a movie like that once.”

“One of those Cronenberg jobs?”

“That’s the one. Let’s talk about something else.” He lifts a bite of chicken.

I raise an eyebrow. “Weak stomach?”

“I thought I’d spare yours.”

I cut another piece of steak, dip it in horseradish, and eat it with a flourish. “I’m okay talking about Saw III if you want. Doesn’t bother me.”

“Yuck.” He sticks his tongue out. “You watch that trash?”

“No. But I can talk about it.”

He laughs. “Fair enough.”

So we talk movies for a while, until we’re done, and then he tries to pick up the check. I get my card out first. “Let me get this.” When he starts to protest, I say, “My boyfriend can afford it.”

That stops him. “Reckon he can. Okay.” He puts his card away. “Thank him for me.”

“Oh, I will.”

He shakes his head. “Just with words will be fine.”

I grin. “Aw. Okay, I’ll do that and then I’ll thank him for me.”

He rolls his eyes. I pay, we get up, and he holds the door for me at the exit. “What are you guys doing for Christmas?”

“Not sure. I’m trying to talk my father into coming down.”

“Oh, good. How’s he been?”

I catch him up on the latest while we walk amidst busy shoppers—not frantic, it’s not that close to Christmas yet. My tail wants to swish, but people keep brushing it, so I keep it close to my legs. “So what are you doing for Christmas?”

“Well, if I don’t spend it with Polly—the coyote—then I guess I’ll probably continue my tradition of the past couple years and watch the Christmas Mass at home with my good friend Mr. Daniels. Then go to a movie.”

“If we’re not doing anything else, maybe we can go to the movie with you.” I flick an ear. “Long as it’s not Saw III.”

“How about My Best Friend’s Boyfriend?”

I look sideways to see if he’s kidding, but he looks pretty serious. “Why? Because of Amanda Mandy?”

“I got a thing for cute wolves.” He doesn’t look abashed; in fact, I can see his fangs over his lip when he grins.

“We’ll see.” We get to his car. “I’ll give you a call.”

“Can I give you a ride home?”

I shake my head. “I’m gonna do a little more shopping while I’m down here and then catch the bus.”