Divisions (Dev and Lee) by Kyell Gold Read Free Book Online Page A

watched, and Father stayed for some of it. Mother didn’t. The next year, my at-the-time best friend Brian and I watched it at the FLAG (Forester U. Lesbians and Gays) club and swore we would go the following summer. But things…didn’t work out that way.
    He nods. “Why didn’t you go to college there?”
    I swirl my wine, staring at the patterns of the light on the surface. “After high school? I couldn’t have. I knew I was gay, but I didn’t know if I would like other gay people. Yerba might as well have been Oz. At Forester, I was close to home, so I had a safety net. Or something.”
    A smile touches his lips. There are a lot of things he could say there, to be honest, but he doesn’t say any of them. Instead, he takes another sip of wine and asks, “So you’re just going to wait for the end of the season?”
    It feels like an indictment. My “yes” is hesitant and weak, so I follow it up. “Dev’s got money, of course, and I’ll…I guess I’ll keep doing work, watching the games, breaking down players. The guys at Yerba aren’t going to tell me what to look for, but I’ll watch their players particularly. I’ll try to figure out their weaknesses, and then see what players elsewhere might match them. College, too. Just…whatever I can do.”
    What I don’t tell him is the other thing that’s been nagging at my mind, that Brian called me when the article my reporter friend Hal wrote about me was published. It was just a profile, went into our relationship a little, but Brian’s voicemail made it sound momentous. “Good to see the closet door open,” he said, because when I’d been working for the Dragons, I’d had to keep my relationship with Dev a secret. And then he said, “I’m getting back into activism. If you remember what that’s like, give me a call.” The lure of activism wasn’t strong when I was scouting, my life consumed with football and Dev, but with day after idle day stretching out in front of me, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m going to spend my time, and those words keep coming back. Brian always knew how to get under my fur that way. Not that I’d call
him
, but I feel like I want to call someone.
    “Still going to travel?”
    My father breaks my reverie. I shake my head. “Not to the college games. No point in going if it’s not for business. There’s a bowl game in Chevali, so maybe I’ll go to that one.”
    “When do you head down there?”
    “I’ll head down after we leave Dev’s place,” I say. “Dev has to fly back Friday afternoon for practice, so I’ll see him off and then hit the road. He plays Monday and I’ll be moved in by Tuesday. I hope.”
    “Good luck.” He sits back as the waiter brings the first course, a butternut squash soup that smells thickly of sage. It’s only a few leaves, but for canids, a little goes a long way.
    “I saw Aunt Carolyn last week,” I say. She’s Mother’s sister, but actually talks more to Father. She didn’t think much of Mother’s attitude toward me; I can only imagine what she’s thinking now.
    My father picks sage leaves out of his soup delicately and places them to the side of his plate. “You mentioned. She doing well?”
    “She’s seeing some wolf from the gym down the street. I told her if he’s under twenty-five, she’s officially considered a cradle-robber.”
    “And?” He takes a spoonful of the soup, blows on it, sniffs it, and holds it.
    “She laughed and wouldn’t answer.” I do the same with mine. It smells okay. I test it with my tongue. Squash seems fresh, anyway.
    Father smiles and tips the spoon to his muzzle. “Long as she’s happy.”
    Right. Relationships: not a great topic. “Um, and Dev won his game.”
    “I saw.” He starts in on the soup now.
    “He didn’t do much. Not like the Hellentown game. But he didn’t need to. Port City is terrible this year, even with Lightning Strike. They didn’t even get him the ball.”
    “Isn’t that because