Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (19 page)

I get up, listen again at the hallway, and make it back to my room—Dev’s room—undiscovered. I’m still hard as I pull the sheets over me, but my knot’s gone down quite a bit. I rest a paw on my cock, rubbing gently and thinking of Dev, and that’s how I let myself fall asleep.

In the morning, I lie in bed studying Dev’s old room until I hear him moving around next door. There’s a lot of sports stuff, of course, a few little high school trophies, but they must have redecorated since he left. I can’t imagine he chose the floral print curtains, or the sheets that drape so nicely over my outline. I imagine him waking up in this bed each morning, going to school, a cute young tiger jock. Paws behind my head, I think of what it was like to live in this family, with a brother and his parents.

I like his mom. She’s very genuine, very caring. She doesn’t know quite what to make of me, but when she’s not thinking about it, we get along great. His father—I don’t know. He definitely doesn’t like me. Football helps, a little, but I won’t have much time to win him over. I don’t know if there could ever be enough time. Dev expects a full reconciliation in two days. I’d settle for his father using my name and shaking my paw. Sometimes there are gulfs you just can’t bridge. You have to recognize that, and make the best of it.

When I hear Dev moving around, I get up to beat him to the bathroom. I dust myself with scent rather than take a full shower, and slip out (wearing a t-shirt and boxers) just as Dev pokes his head out of his brother’s room. “All done,” I say, blowing him a kiss. “Meet you downstairs.”

He grunts and hurries to the bathroom. I get dressed and go down to the kitchen, where his mom has prepared a nice egg breakfast with a kind of black bread. “My mother’s recipe,” she tells me when I sniff at it. It has a nice sour smell, and a warm, dense texture.

“
Wow,” I say around a mouthful. “Great.” I’m still munching my way through breakfast when Dev makes it down the stairs and into the kitchen. He sits down at the table next to me but doesn’t look at me, and when I swing my tail over to brush his, I don’t feel it.

“
Oh, black bread!” He perks up at that. I watch him devour two breakfasts worth of ham, eggs, and bread, talking to his mother about old school friends and neighbors. I chime in with a few questions, and everything seems okay. After breakfast, he says he has to look at plane tickets to change his flight back to Chevali. I’d been looking forward to dinner in Port City with him, but football comes first, and I don’t want to shake that up. He looks up the appointment Ogleby made with the Today Show and finds a flight that gets him back to Chevali by mid-afternoon.

His mother takes us out to have lunch with her friends the Bakers, an otter family. It goes pretty well. I’m introduced as a ‘friend from football,’ which forces me to deflect questions about how I work with the Firebirds. But overall they’re nice people, and the wife at least picks up on our relationship, probably because I am more concerned about my quiet, withdrawn tiger than his mother is.

Then it’s time for the mall. We pass high schoolers just getting out of school, so I ask Dev where he used to hang out (what I actually say is “where did you make out with your high school girlfriends,” which makes him scowl and his mother laugh). He doesn’t rise to the bait, though. His answers are short, and he spends a lot of time staring into space, or at the floor. I imagine he’s still thinking about our little late-night tryst. But we’re with his mom a lot of the time, and when we’re shopping on our own, there are always people around, and I can’t say, “hey, was all the oral sex in your brother’s bedroom last night okay, are we cool?”

I do at one point ask, “You okay?” and he says yeah, he’s fine, and he smiles enough that I would almost believe it. At least, I believe that he wants me to believe it, which means he’s not mad at me, and that’s enough for right now.

But the day already has a bit of a sour tinge to it. After we get home, his mother sets about cleaning while Dev and I go for a walk around the neighborhood. He lightens up a little, then, and though we start out talking about his childhood memories, we move on to other things, like his Today Show interview and all the calls he’s been taking from Ogleby. I tell him more about Kinnel, too.

“
He said he’s gonna call Corcoran sometime next week and will ask about you. He wants to know if I can get any exclusive quotes.”

“
You just shouldn’t talk to him,” he grumbles.

“
You don’t want advance warning if you’re gonna be traded?”

He sighs. We walk a few more steps. “Does he still think you’re a vixen?”

“
I think that’s part of why he keeps talking to me.”

His tail flicks back and forth against mine. “It’s dangerous.”

I bump him, curling my fluffy tail under his. “I fooled you.”

“
Not for long,” he rumbles.

I give him a sweet smile. “Well, I’m not going to sleep with
him
.”

He eyes me. “I know you make a good vixen. But he’s a fox. It’s dangerous.”

I make a good vixen? I change the subject. “No more than sneaking around your hallway naked.”

He looks around and then down at the ground. We keep walking, and when he doesn’t reply, I say, “Oh, come on. You didn’t think that was hot?”

He reaches around to scratch behind his ear. “God, yes.”

“
So?”

“
I dunno. It was hot, and it was great, don’t get me wrong. I just...couldn’t we have waited?”

“
I offered to wait,” I point out.

“
That wasn’t fair,” he says. “I really wanted it then.”

I roll my eyes. Boys. “So I seduced you into it?”

“
No,” he says, and then, “Kinda. Maybe.”

I bump his arm. It’s got about the same effect it would on a house, but he humors me by bumping back lightly. “I thought you’d like doing it in your brother’s room.”

It’s adorable the way his ears flick. “That’s not the point.”

I laugh. “So what’s eating you?” I wink. “I mean, now.”

“
Nothing.” He kicks an acorn about thirty feet.

I watch it roll to a stop. “You planning on going after Charm’s job?”

“
It’s like...” He takes a breath. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“
Promise.”

“
It’s like I outgrew my favorite pair of jeans. You know, I tried them on one morning and realized they don’t fit.”

I nod. “You feel like you’re a different person.”

“
I’m the same person,” he says. “Just...different, because there’s this part of me that everyone knows about now, and my old life doesn’t...doesn’t fit around it.” He gestures in front of him with his paws. “I feel so stupid.”

I shake my head. “I know the feeling. When I go home now, I feel like I don’t belong there any more.”

“
But I do belong here. I mean, not all of me, just part of me. That’s what’s weird. I wanted you to fit in with me, but instead I’m partly with you and partly with them, and it’s just...frustrating.”

I take his paw. He flinches, but I hold on. “Look,” I say, “the whole point of coming back here is so your parents get to meet me, right? It’s not all going to happen at once. Your father will still hate me, I’m sure.”

“
He doesn’t hate you.”

“
He hates the idea of me.” I squeeze his paw. “But when we’ve spent more time together, he’ll feel better. Your mom already likes me. At least she doesn’t want to lock me out of the house.”

“
Course you get along better with Mom,” he says.

I stop walking. We’re about a half block from the house. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He looks at me, the afternoon sun bright in his eyes. “Mom’s more mellow. What?”

“
Nothing.” I’m not sure what in that remark rubbed me the wrong way. Dev never really made any remarks about me being girly—not serious ones, anyway. We were always on an equal footing. But I make a good vixen? I get along better with his mom? “Nah, just took it the wrong way, sorry.”

“
I wish Dad hadn’t had to work today.” Dev clasps his paws behind his back as we walk on, tail swinging behind him.

I don’t think Mikhail had to; he chose to. But I don’t say that. I want to get along with his parents and I want to believe they’re trying to get along with me. So does Dev. “You think he’s talking to that guy, what’s his name, Ivan? About me and you?”

Dev shakes his head. “It’s family business. Stays in the family. I just wish we had time to talk with him.”

“
We’ll have time to talk over dinner tonight. No movie this time.” I shield my eyes from the sun. “We’ll have to lay it out for him, that we’re gonna be together.”

He bites his lip. “Do we have to say it like that?”

“
And when I say ‘we,’ I mean you.” I grin at his frown. “They won’t take it coming from just me.”

He sighs. “What do I say?”

I turn the question over. “Don’t be confrontational. Just say you’re really glad you were able to visit and you hope we can come back.”

“
We.” He gets it. He smiles.

We get back to the house, where his mother is bustling around in the kitchen. I ask if I can help, and she says, “No,” then adds, a moment later, “thank you.”

Her tail’s wrapped tightly back around her legs, and she’s moving very quickly and intently. I don’t know if this is how she always gets when she’s preparing dinner, or if there’s something wrong I don’t know about. So I wander back to the living room, where Dev and I turn on ESPN and check out the sports scores. The baseball playoffs are on, and Chevali’s team is playing. We watch for a bit, and when a big wolf comes up to bat, Dev says, “He came around the locker room last year. He’s a prick.”

“
I didn’t know baseball players talked to football players.” I’m aware that they do, of course, the two worlds just feel so independent of each other that I’m a little surprised every time I hear of it.

“
He was just looking for free tickets.” Dev shrugs.

I grin. “Wouldn’t talk to a poor backup cornerback?”

He makes a “pfft” noise. “Wouldn’t talk to anyone but Aston.”

“
Maybe he’ll talk to you now.” We watch as the wolf takes a huge hack and strikes out.

Dev flips his paw. “Who says I want to talk to him? He can’t even hit the ball.”

That gets me thinking again about other gay athletes out there. I haven’t checked Dev’s e-mail in a couple days, but so far the one from the kid in high school is the only contact he’s gotten. There have to be others out there, there just have to. I’m watching the wolf walk back to the dugout and wondering if he’s gay, and it occurs to me that if he were, and wanted to keep it secret, the last thing he’d do is get in touch with Dev. Anyone spending time talking to him now is going to have questions raised about them.

I’m a little sad at that. And it doesn’t help when at a break in the action, a promo comes on for “Gay Athletes: What’s Next.”

Dev reaches out and turns the TV off. “Don’t you want to see what’s in your future?” I say.

He rests a large paw on my knee. “Dad’s home,” he says.

I hadn’t picked out the noise of the truck engine over the other cars on the street, but Dev knows it. He gets up and walks to the door, which opens right before he gets there.

His father looks surprised to see him, but changes the surprise into an ears-up smile, though his wide cheek ruffs don’t lift. Dev says hi, his dad says hi, and I stand and say hello as well.

He gives me a look that makes me think he’s been talking about me all day at work, and his auto shop friends have been giving him a hard time about his faggoty son’s faggot boyfriend. He nods curtly and goes into his den.

Dev gives me a quick look and then walks after him. I plop back down on the couch, realizing I’d been hoping his father would come home interested in talking, or at least a bit less standoffish. Fuck him, seriously. If he’s not going to make an effort, then the best thing is that we just get out of here in the morning, get back to Hilltown and catch our flight to Port City.

But that thought leaves a nasty feeling in my stomach, because Dev is so wrapped up in this family that if things don’t end well, he’s going to bomb the interview. And while I wouldn’t be crushed if I never come back here, he would be.

So I get up, brush fox fur from the couch, and walk back to the kitchen. “Smells terrific,” I say to Dev’s mother.

“
Thank you.” She starts chopping some vegetables, with quick, sharp strokes.

“
Mikhail’s home,” I say, for lack of anything else to say.

She nods. I lean against the door, resisting the impulse to just go watch TV in the living room. Have to keep trying. “I can chop, if you need some help.”

“
I’m fine,” she says, still not looking at me. Weird. Earlier today, at the Bakers, she was fine. Is it her husband being home?

“
Please, let me help,” I say, and that stops her chopping.

She sets down the knife and indicates the cucumbers. “Wash your paws,” she says, and as I walk over to the sink, she says, “Thank you.”

“
Thank you for taking me to the Bakers,” I say, running my paws under the water. I dry them on a towel. “They’re nice people.” She still doesn’t say anything. I push again, trying to get her to talk about Dev. “They said they used to watch Devlin and Gregory?”