by Kyell Gold
“Uh-huh. I just mean, I basically avoided my mom when she was caught up in Families United, but I had to go deal with her eventually because she’s my mom. Your brother—well, you don’t go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas really anyway because of football, so you could probably…”
“What? Cut him out of my life?” I stare down at the parking lot and think again about the Cornwalls, the quiet mule deer family: shy, loving Jay; casual, fun-loving Josh; bright, driven Jenny. Maybe they have tensions simmering below the surface or maybe they just always get along. “He’s the one who keeps trying to get a rise out of me.”
“With what? That public statement that nobody heard? Pretty lame.” His fingers rub along my side and the touch in my fur is lulling, reassuring. “I’m not saying you should cut him out. I’m saying it’s an option you can consider.”
“Maybe.” I bring him closer, wanting that reassurance to continue.
“Conversely…maybe you drifted apart because of our relationship, because of the secrets.”
“No.” I squeeze him to shut that thought out.
“Have you two always fought?”
“Not really.” I sigh. “But pretty much since he started high school. All my teachers would tell me how well he’d done in class, what a high standard I had to live up to. I never did, except in football and baseball, which he didn’t even play. But he wouldn’t help out and he didn’t want to hang out with me anymore. He had his older friends, his girlfriend…”
I go quiet, and after a moment he says, “I always kind of wanted an older brother. You know, someone to team up with me against my parents. But my dad was the one who showed me the ropes, who taught me about football, whom I really looked up to. So I don’t really know what to tell you. I only know how to deal with parents and ex-boyfriends and cousins. And boyfriends, sometimes.”
“You do pretty good at that.” The anger’s draining away from me, but I don’t really want the sadness that threatens to replace it, either. “I had my football friends in high school, and you know, once we went out to see him at college, my folks and me. We met him at his dorm and he came to dinner with us, but he left early because he had to meet some people. He said he might hook up with us later, but he never did. We ended up walking around the campus all the next day.” I rub his side. “It was pretty, anyway. Dad was mad and called Gregory to yell at him, but Gregory I guess said something about his classes and a study group and apologized, and Dad dropped it. He could always talk his way around Mom and Dad better than I could.”
“You’re more honest.” Lee leans against me, tail brushing my legs.
“Yeah, that and twenty thousand dollars will rent me a winery.”
He laughs and pushes his nose into my shoulder. “You’ll get there, tiger.”
“The championship or the money?”
“Both.”
“Heh.” And the sadness lifts a little, too. There’s a vicious little needle of pride at the thought of rubbing a championship in Gregory’s smug muzzle, but that’s only a small part of why I want it. I imagine Lee’s eyes after winning, the way he beams at me with pride. “I’ll need to work at it a lot.”
“Yeah.” He tilts his muzzle and looks up at me. “Speaking of, do you want to call Gerrard?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m still mad at my brother, and we have to go look at houses and then I’m worried about Fisher and all. Do I need one more thing to stress about if it’s not urgent?”
He makes sympathetic noises. “You miss football season, huh? Only one thing to worry about?”
I turn, and he’s tilting his head, eyebrows raised, lips curved slightly upward. For a second, I want to yell at him because he’s not understanding how I feel about Gregory, and then I realize that he understands perfectly. My anger at Gregory slides to the back of my mind, because he’s not here and my fox is; I redirect it to a mock-growl down at that fox. “Shut up.” I push him over onto the bed and pin him down when he struggles. “Jock smart! Can understand many things at once!”
“Yeah, I see that.” He raises his eyebrows up at me. “You going to shut me up like you did last night?”
“Tempting,” I say, grinding down against him, “but we’ve got houses to look at and I wanted to see if we could get together with Ty again before we go.”
“We’ve got two more days. I’m sure he’ll be free.”
“I’ll text him now.” I lean down and kiss Lee on the nose and then muss up all his fur so that he gets mock-pouty and has to fluff it out again while I get dressed and text Ty. Then I tease him for taking so long to get ready, and he growls at me and says he’ll get me back.
It’s probably just a way of keeping my mind off my brother and my family, but it works. We go out and get a breakfast at some place that smells like it was run by hippies, all wood and flower-patterned wallpaper and signs that proclaim “organic” and “locally sourced” food as well as “fair trade” coffee. It’s got a weird underscent of patchouli that bothers Lee, but I barely notice it. The place was recommended by online forums and it turns out the omelettes are actually really good. Lee gets one with fresh spinach and peppers and ham; mine comes with sliced steak and I order an extra side of potatoes, and we get one of the place’s famous cinnamon rolls too, thick and chewy, dripping with sweet icing and bursting with spice.
Then we work off that breakfast running around the neighborhood looking at the houses Clara recommended to us, and we find two that look pretty likely—good location, and a price that will take all of my Strongwell check and then some if we pay cash.
There are still half a dozen houses we could look at, but that night over dinner we talk about it, and Lee says he can stay in a long-term hotel for a couple months until the house purchase is settled. But we’re both warming up to the idea of a house, more and more so as we talk back over the two we liked.
We’ve made it back to the hotel and are lying in bed just talking and holding each other, the idea of sex present but not immediately so, and Lee’s been quiet for several minutes, so I ask what’s on his mind.
“Well,” he says, “what if we buy a house and then we have a fight again? Or we break up, or think we’ll break up? Am I going to have to pack up all my stuff and go sleep in a hotel and just leave the house empty?”
I snuffle his ear. “Doc, I don’t want to plan for a breakup, okay?”
“That’s what we’re doing this month. Part of it, I mean.”
“Sure,” I say. “But people buy houses all the time together. Married people buy houses and get divorced.”
“Or get kicked out of their houses.”
I rest an arm over his side and rub my fingers through his fur. “So we sell the house then, if it comes down to that. That’s what guys in the league do when they move from one city to another.”
“I guess.” He scoots closer to me in bed and rests his head against my shoulder.
The idea of owning a house in Yerba that has no fox to live in it feels really empty to me. The idea that I might lose him because of football feels very real and very terrifying to me at that moment. “Fox,” I say right into his ear, “we’re not gonna break up. We’ve already been through about the shittiest stretch of four months that could happen, and we’re here together still. I want to buy a house with you and come here for two months and live with you, and see you on weekends during the season and whenever we can until our careers are over. I know you want to wait a month, but we’ve been together close to three years, through football season and off-season, and I don’t know how much longer we need to wait to figure this out.”
He exhales into my fur. “I know how we feel now,” he says, and I cut him off.
“If you feel it too, then why is this a problem? Why can’t we just say we want to be together? Do I have to ask you to marry me?”
I don’t know why I said that. Probably because we’ve been walking around Yerba, where gay couples are more normal, where Clara doesn’t bat an eye at two guy
s who want to buy a house together, where Ty can kiss a guy in a club and it’s nothing at all that a hundred people around him aren’t doing, where Polecki and Cornwall can stand in a winery and say “I love you” without caring about the wine bartender. And it’s desperation, frustration that I still don’t quite understand what we’re supposed to be thinking or talking about.
He pulls his head back. Our noses almost touch; his eyes stare into mine. “Are you asking me?”
Heartbeats in my ears. I part my lips and then I start thinking, dammit. About my parents, and about his parents, and about whether or not it would be viewed as a publicity stunt. Marriage is only just starting to be an option, with Freestone currently the only place it’s legal, although it’s going through the courts here in Yerba as well. I get bogged down in all those thoughts and I shake my head slowly. “I’m not asking,” and then I feel shitty about that, like he’ll think I would never ask him, and so I say, “yet,” and I kiss his nose.
His ears flick upwards and he kisses me back, a gentle affectionate kiss with a brush of his tongue over my whiskers. “Okay,” he says. “Because I don’t think we should get married if we haven’t figured out if we’re going to stay together.”
“Doc—”
“You want to know what I’ve been thinking about?”
“Um. Sure?”
He reaches up to rub behind my ears. “I’m thinking about what happens in ten years. What if you end up with multiple concussions like Fisher? What if you can’t remember things like what year it is, or the names of—well, maybe we’ll have pets. Or our friends.”
I blink. “Lots of guys retire without those problems.”
“What if it’s five years down the road and I’m busy with the Whalers, or what if I get let go and I end up on the staff at Port City or Peco or something, or in one of those new places they want to put a team? And we can’t see each other as often, and you’re on the road in some restaurant and a cute fox comes up and you start thinking, ‘That’s how Lee used to be.’”
“Wait,” I say, “Why is it always me who’s the problem?”
“Okay, fair enough.” He flicks his ears. “What if I’m going out here during football season and there’s a guy who reminds me of you, only he’s local and he’s not busy for nine months out of the year, and his family’s okay with him being gay and he wants me to meet his parents?”
“You met my parents.” I poke his side through the soft russet fur. “They like you.”
“I know, I know.” He sighs. “But more than that, I’m worried about me. What if I get some crazy ideas about something I think you should be doing—anything, not just gay rights—and I can’t keep those thoughts in? What if I start screwing up your life every time something happens? The gay rights movement has years, decades left…”
“Hey.” I put a paw on his muzzle. “You’re smart, right?”
He gives me a questioning look and doesn’t answer. So I go on. “You’re smart. And we’ve been through that shit already. We’re going through different shit now. You’re telling me you didn’t learn anything from the last couple months?”
Slowly, he shakes his head. I remove my paw, and he kisses it and sighs. “I know you’re right. But…I’m not sure I can change. You get what I’m saying?”
“Of course, doc. I’m not a dumb jock.”
He smiles. “No, you’re not.” His paw reaches up to brush my whiskers back. “You’re a very smart jock, and I love you so much.”
I wrap my arms around him and hold him, and murmur, “I love you, too, you silly fox. So why is this so hard?”
“I think that’s why.” He wiggles his hips. “Also because you’re pressing it into my leg, probably.”
“Grrrf.” I mouth his shoulder. “Don’t change the subject.”
“All right,” he says, though he does reach down and brush his fingers along my rear. “How about this, then: I agree with you, but I still need time to sort out my own thoughts.”
“That’s fair.” I press fingers through his fur, down his back. “So enough thinking for tonight?”
“Yeah,” he says, and he kisses me. “I think so.”
14
Thinking (Lee)
Those days in Yerba are about the happiest I’ve had with Dev in a while. We do everything together, laugh about the hippie restaurants and savor the delicious food and wine and beer, enjoy the amazing February weather, talk about Polecki and Cornwall and Ty, and behave like a couple. It makes his argument more compelling: we really are a couple, so why not just decide to be one?
I’d been holding back telling him my hesitations, but then I thought that wasn’t fair to him, so I just let it all out, and he surprised me by accepting it. I’m sure he doesn’t want to think about ending up mentally unstable like Fisher, or philandering like Gerrard, but the fact is, nobody sets out to lose their memories or to cheat on their families, or, for that matter, alienate their boyfriend by getting fanatical about a cause. Well, maybe some people do, but not as many as it happens to. It happens because you get hit in one game and you feel fine and you come back for the next one and get hit again. It happens because you had an argument that morning and you’re feeling unappreciated and there’s a guy (or a girl) standing there who adores you. It happens because when you’re an athlete and you’re famous, you start to believe that you deserve everything you have and everything you want; you start to believe that nothing will ever happen to you. It happens when you get caught up in ideas and everyone else who might need you, and you lose sight of the person next to you in bed who also needs you.
And then you can’t remember your cubs’ names. You get a message from a coyote you hooked up with telling you you’re a father again. You dance in a nightclub and a guy comes up and dances with you. And none of these things happen all at once. They happen as a series of events over time, and you might look back and wonder how your steps took you to this place, but the path is right there and it’s easy to see—looking back.
It’s not so easy looking forward. Buying a house: how would that change our relationship? Would I be resentful that he’d bought me a house? Or would I come home every day and smile because he bought me a house? How much of that is up to me? How can I guarantee that our ending will be different from Fisher’s or Gerrard’s, from Hal’s or Mother and Father’s?
I roll those thoughts around on Monday, when we take a break to drive out to the coast and see the ocean, actually get out and walk on the beach rather than just look from the car. It’s an amazing thing to both of us, brought up where trips to the beach were things that happened in movies. We play in the sand and get silly, take pictures and sit in the sun and watch the waves. It’s still a little cold for swimming, but we get our feet wet, and because it’s a Monday, the beach is barely populated, so we can even hold paws as we walk, which feels very romantic and movie-like and keeps my tail wagging even when we’re back in the car.
After a meeting with a mortgage broker, a slightly-manic tiger, I call Father sitting on a coffee shop’s patio in the sun (which I make sure to describe to him), and he says if we need someone to talk to the mortgage guys that I could call him in. I also tell him I’ll be up in Hilltown with Dev next weekend, though I don’t mention Dev’s family troubles, and he says he’ll plan his flights to Chevali accordingly.
On the way to dinner, Dev and I talk about the house purchase and the houses we visited. It feels very grown up, very mature, and very couple-y to be discussing finances and houses and all, and it erodes some of my objections. The more time we spend being a couple, the more it feels right, and I can’t ignore that. But I also feel like I can’t just give in to it. The last four months have been up and down and I’m scared that as soon as I commit, it’ll all go downhill again—I’ll send it downhill again. I love him so much and I want this to happen, and in a way, buying a house with him feels like support, like maybe it’ll be harder to storm out of a house we co-own than out of an apartment and that, if nothing else, will kee
p us together. But I know I can’t rely on that, that the strength has to come from inside me, and I just don’t know if I have it.
Monday afternoon, Damian calls Dev to tell him Forester loves the idea of having him back for an LGBT day. I listen in as we’re driving up to meet Ty in Yerba proper. Mostly it’s Dev listening, but occasionally he says, “Sure,” or “Sounds good,” and, “Sure, I’d love to see Coach again.”
“So when are they planning it for?” I ask as he puts the phone away. We’re crawling along the highway because I’d forgotten to account for rush hour. “And tell Ty we’ll be a little late.”
He takes his phone back out. “I told them we can’t do it after mid-April so they’re shooting for March, the week after spring break. The football team’s not in practice but all the students will be around and we’ll be able to get a good turnout. They’re checking with the local LGBT group to see if they can get other people to show up as well.”
“Nice. I can talk to…” I pause. “Well, no, maybe I can’t.”
He pats my leg, his claws just unsheathed enough to snag my pants. “I think the gay rights movement will move forward without Brian.”
“I could call some of my ex-FLAG friends.” The thought brings a pang, as I remember the camaraderie of those meetings and briefly wonder where they all are. “But I’m sure the current FLAG people will be involved. Maybe there’s not much for me to do.”
He retracts his claws and squeezes. “You can stand up there as my boyfriend. That’s pretty important.”
The memories fade before the power in those words, and my muzzle creases in a warm smile.
We’d heard a lot about the piers that used to bring all the business to Yerba, lined up between the two big bridges and crammed full of tourist spots. Mostly we want to walk along them with a view of the water, and we meet Ty at the end of one of the piers standing next to an old lion whose mane is braided into dreads with beads at the end, streaked with grey. “There are my friends,” the tall fox says as we come along. “But I’ll take your advice about the basketball.”
