Out of Position (41 page)

His eyes meet mine. “Prove it,” he says. I don’t change my expression, I just nod, but inside I’m lighting up because I know he’s giving me a chance. He likes what he saw and he thinks I can take the starting job. “Go shower,” he says. “See your family. I’ll see you at nine.”

Given half an hour to shower and dress, twenty minutes to get to Lee’s, and twenty to get to the airport, that gives me three hours and twenty minutes with him. If I can cut ten minutes off my shower-and-dress time, I can make it three and a half. I strip off my uni and head to the shower while most of the rest of the guys are dressing. Fisher and Gerrard wave at me and try to say something, but it doesn’t seem urgent, so I just wave ’em off and head for the deserted shower.

I take a long shower, trying to warm up and wash away the mud of McLauden. It’s a great historic place, blah blah blah. Playing there on the visiting team sucks. I am in a hurry, but I also want to be nice and clean for Lee, so by the time I get out, the locker room’s almost deserted. Gerrard stuck around to tell me that a few of the guys are going to dinner together. I tell him I’ve got family in town and that I’ll see him at nine.

While I’m pulling my clothes on, he and the other guy take off, leaving me alone in the locker room. I’m all dressed and just debating whether to take the ball with me to show Lee—it’s beyond cool, but it’s also filthy and muddy—when I hear his voice behind me. “Nice work, sweetie.”

I spin around so fast that I catch my shirt on the locker clasp. He’s standing there in the doorway in a mint-green polo shirt and tight jeans, smiling or smirking or something at me. “What the…” I stare at him.

He waves a black paw down his shirt and pants. “I’m not in drag,” he says softly.

Christ, it’s good to see him again. I can’t process it. It’s like after that first summer, only more so, because I know him so much better and there’s so much of me in him, him in me. We step toward each other, then run toward each other and I pick him up, mumbling something into his cheek ruff about how much I’ve missed him, spinning his slender body around until he laughs and nuzzles my ears.

“Missed you too,” he says when I finally put him down. His paws stroke my sides, his musk fills the air and I don’t want to stop breathing in.

“I thought I was coming to your place.” I keep squeezing his sides, wanting to make sure he’s real.

“Ah, why waste the time for us to drive there when we’re both right here.” He tilts his head and his eyes sparkle.

“Here?” I look around. “But the equipment guys… the coaches…”

“Oh, not here in
here.
I made sure we’d have a few minutes alone now, just enough time to get to this other little place I know about.”

“How did you get in here?”

His paw slips down to his waist, and for a moment I have this crazy thought that he’s going to undo his pants. Instead he flips up the badge dangling at his belt, a picture of him with the Dragons logo and a scent-mark on it. “Come on,” he says. “I know a nice, private room that nobody’s going to be using for a while.”

“Does it have a bed?” I reach down to swat at his wagging tail as he leads me away.

He looks over his shoulder with sultry, half-lidded eyes. “How about a couch?”

I’m about to say that even the concrete will probably be fine when there’s a scuffle from outside the locker room door. Lee’s ears go straight up, as mine do. We can see shadows moving behind the glass, in the dark hallway, but over the thick smell of wet fur, we can’t catch any scents. I run for the door; he stands frozen, looking around the room (for somewhere to hide, he tells me later).

Before I get to the door, it swings open. Fisher steps in, holding something silver in one paw and a struggling spotted skunk in the other. Now I can catch his scent, and it curls my paws into fists. I stop a foot from where Brian is almost dangling by his shirt collar. He stops struggling, his hackles rising. “Don’t touch me,” he squeaks. “I swear, I’ll… Lee, don’t let them hurt me.”

“You know this guy,” Fisher says, his calm bass cutting through Brian’s panting pleas. “Figures.”

“I barely know him,” I say. I start to say more, but Lee steps forward.

“I know him,” the fox says. His voice is so dead that I take a step back and look at him. His eyes are narrowed, but no longer sultry. They’re fixed on the object Fisher’s holding in his other paw, which I haven’t taken the time to see what it is yet. “You shouldn’t have come, Brian.”

“I told you I would,” he snaps. Even though he’s not struggling, he’s still tense, but the look on his muzzle is a savage grin. “And it’s a good thing. You’re gonna see.” He looks at me and Fisher as though we’d just asked him for his lunch money.

“Let ’im go, Fish,” I say. “What’s that?”

Fisher looks at me and drops Brian, then holds out his other paw. The silver thing is a small camcorder.

Lee and I just stare at it for several seconds that seem like minutes. I’m the first one to get my voice back. “You were
taping
us?”

“For his blog,” Lee says.

I turn to the fox. “You knew about this?”

He shakes his head. “Not the taping.”

Fisher’s look catches my attention. “In the locker room?” he says.

“He works for the Dragons,” I say.

Brian’s straightening his shirt. “Fucking Neanderthal,” he says.

I ignore the remark. “He made sure there wasn’t anyone around.”

“Brian, you can’t write about this,” Lee says, with more spirit.

Brian sneers. “Ha! You kidding?”

“Still,” Fisher says to me, “I told you—I warned you.”

“I’m serious,” Lee says. “Don’t you care about me?”

“I know what you said.” I’m looking over Brian’s head at Fisher. The fact that I had nothing to do with this, that it was all Lee’s idea, doesn’t seem relevant. The camera in his paw does. “Thanks.”

“
You’re
serious,” Brian says. “Are you kidding? You know how many readers I’ll get? Plus I get to out this guy, too.”

“You’re not exposing anyone,” Fisher says, holding up the camera. “Not without this.”

“Oh, so you’re stealing that?” Brian says.

“You’re trespassing,” Lee says. His voice has gone dead again.

Brian waves that aside. “That’s not news. I’ll get fined or something. An athlete assaulting a fan? I’ll be on sports news for weeks.”

Fisher and I lock eyes. Lee holds out his paw. “Let me see the camera?” When Fisher doesn’t move, he says, “Please?”

Fisher hands him the camera. Lee fiddles with it and pops out a tape, then throws the camera to Brian. “There. No theft now.”

Brian points at the tape. “What do you call that?”

“Illegally recorded footage of a private area without permission,” Lee says. “Read the fine print on your ticket.”

“So you’re on their side. You’ve always been on their side.” Brian starts backing away, tapping the side of his head. “I’ve still got it all up here.”

I look at Lee. “Can we just let him go?” Lee shrugs. “Listen,” I say, pointing at Brian. “If you write anything about this…”

He straightens, near the door now. “You’ll what?” he sneers. “Lose your job? Lose your precious starting role? Lose your boyfriend?”

“No,” Lee says quietly.

Brian scowls. “Turncoat,” he says, and he’s gone.

The three of us stare at each other. “Maybe I should leave you two alone,” Fisher says. “Or maybe y’all should leave me alone.”

He looks at the door, while Lee and I look at each other. “Thanks, Fish,” I say again. “Did you follow him?”

He shakes his head. “Coach said he held you late. I came back to see if you wanted to join us. I saw him holding the camera to the door. He backed into me and I grabbed the camera.”

“And him.” Lee sighs. “Probably just made things worse.”

“Hey.” Fisher looks at Lee, then at me. “You would’ve wanted me to let him go with the video of you two?”

“We weren’t doing anything,” I say.

Lee gives me a small raise of the eyebrow. “He has a history,” he says to Fisher. “You couldn’t know.”

“Well, shit,” Fisher says.

“Hey.” I step toward him and put a paw out. “Thanks. I know you were trying to do the right thing.”

He looks at the paw. Slowly, he grasps it, and looks up at me. “Have been for a while now,” he says. “So what are you gonna do about this?”

I glance at Lee. “He’s the smart one. So what are we gonna do?”

Lee looks at the tape in his paw. “Not much we can do. I guess you should call your agent and get ready for some damage control.”

“Oh, that’s gonna be fun.” I kick the bench, and as if on cue, my cell phone rings. I glance at the number—Ogleby, of course—and toss it into my locker. Lee and Fisher look at me, so I do a passable impression of a squeaky ferret. “Omigod why didn’t you tell me now your value’s going to go down and I had three teams interested in talking to you!”

They laugh, shortly. “Come on,” Lee says, walking across the room. “We’ve still got a little time.”

“Yeah.” I bump Fisher on my way to the door, but it’s a friendly bump. “See you at nine.”

“Hey, Miski?” he says.

I turn. He looks past me to Lee, waiting at the door. “Never mind. I’ll talk to ya later.”

I don’t need any more encouragement. I leave him standing in the middle of the locker room and follow Lee down the corridor. He takes me to a small film room with a windowless door that locks, and we make excellent use of the three hours remaining in our evening. Touching him again is like coming home. It doesn’t hurt when he whispers, “Starter…” in my ear. We move together with energy and passion, and any vague memories of the listless sex from our last meeting are blown away.

Afterwards, cuddling on the couch with the particular urgency gone, I stroke the fur between his ears. I don’t want to bring up Brian, but things keep gnawing at me and I can’t help it. “Should I ask now?” I say. “Or would it ruin the moment?”

He shifts, the light weight of his slender form brushing against me. I feel a stirring in my groin and figure we’ll be ready for more before I have to go get dressed. The soft weight of his tail settles across me. “You remember how we met?”

“Of course.” I brush the line of his back.

“Brian’s still on that crusade, still out for revenge.” He sighs. “It’s… it’s sad, it’s twisted him. He used to be…” The dark room is quiet save for our breathing as he looks back into the past. “More hopeful, I guess.” His fingers rub my chest. “He told me that he was going to out someone this season. Make a name for himself.”

“And ruin someone else’s.”

“He figures once one player’s outed, others will come out because they won’t be the first. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.”

“In his Star Trek universe, sure.”

“Yeah, he hasn’t spent much time around actual football players.” I tighten my arms around him. “After he saw you with Caroll, he was even more convinced you were going to fuck me over.”

“I think I just did,” I say.

He nips my shoulder lightly. “He hated you pretending to be straight. I hoped… I tried to go along with him, encourage him to investigate someone else, but nothing worked. Then he said he was going to follow me around to get pictures of us.”

“Oh. That’s why you didn’t want to see me.”

The ceiling light reflects in his eyes as he pulls back to look at me. “Until you got the starting job. Then you’d be more valuable. If he did… if he does publish something about us, you’ve got a better chance now.”

“Of what?”

“Of keeping your job.”

I push that thought away. It felt so good to walk out and be announced in the starting lineup, I can’t bear to think of that feeling being taken away. “What about my boyfriend?” I say teasingly.

“You’ve always got that,” he says.

It hits me then, thinking about the passion in our lovemaking just now, how hard it’s been on him to be apart from me. At least as hard as it’s been for me, maybe more, and he didn’t have me to get angry at. I feel like a complete heel, unworthy of him. The best I can do is hold him right and press my muzzle into his cheek fur. I can’t even come up with words. So we find something else to do, again, better than words.

Panting and happy, we kiss and fumble around getting our clothes on. I’ve just got time for a quick shower in the locker room, but I hate to leave him. “See you in Aventira next week?” I say.

“You bet,” he says, and leaves me with a kiss.

When I get back to the locker room, I’ve missed ten calls from Ogleby. I don’t have time to talk to him tonight, with the plane leaving and all, so I put the phone on silent and join the team.

It’s a quiet ride back. A few of the guys are talking about the game, which seems to me like a day or two ago already. I sit next to Fisher, who doesn’t want to talk about the game either. We both put our music players on and spend the four hours of the flight dozing. Even though we don’t talk, it’s nice to share that companionship again with him. I don’t trust him, but at least I don’t hate him anymore. For now, that’s a step forward.

When I do talk to Ogleby, on the way to practice, he takes a minute to gush about my performance and tell me how great I am before he presses me again about the engagement. “When do you think you’ll be ready?”

“I dunno,” I say. “I’ll talk to Caroll about it.”

“Great, that’s great. I talked to her agent and we’re already writing up the press releases. It’s gonna be terrific, kid, you’ll see.”

I stop at a traffic light. “Don’t get too far along.”

“Hey,” he says, “you can’t back out now. This will really move things along for you. Trust me, kid, I know what’s best for a career, I’ve managed a million of ’em. You’re not backing out, are you?”

“I just don’t know if I need it now. I’m starting, and—”

“So you need it more than ever! Never hurts to get a little extra boost, am I right?”

“Whatever. Listen, Ogleby, you monitor all the press and blogs and stuff, right?”

“Sure, kid, haven’t gotten a chance to look at the net this morning, but it usually takes a while before the stuff comes out, right?”

“Yeah. Can you tell me if there’s something up on that guy Brian’s blog?” The light turns and I pull through.