Chapter Twenty-Eight

Right, so obviously I massively failed at ignoring the whole thing. But there was also nothing I could actively do , save for check my phone and email a million times a day (I'd put both on the document), which I had been doing for five days by the time I finally got a delivery confirmation from the courier in the form of an official email stating that delivery of the package had been attempted three times before it was successful.

That high price was looking like a bad deal for the courier all around. Four trips up to Bakers Mine? In gas alone, it was probably way too much money. But whatever.

So I'd spent the better part of a week checking for some contact from Orion, and he hadn't even gotten "the package" yet. And wow did that seem like spy code.

Or innuendo.

But no. Not letting my brain go in that direction.

Plus, I had work. A lot of work. When I finally started receiving paychecks, the money was better than I expected, since I was working a lot of hours. Guy explained that it was his favorite part of the year because the FC weren't playing many games, so mostly our crew was just painting and deep cleaning and power washing and generally making everything look really good .

"By October, it'll all be trashed to hell," he said, not without relish. "Football fans, you know."

"What I'm getting from this is you sorta like how they trash everything, and then you get to make it look new again."

He patted me on the shoulder. "That's why I like you, Des. You get me." Then he sent me to hose down the Block 3 restrooms before the game later.

The other thing I hadn't realized was that I could just ... watch the games. As much as I wanted. Maybe this was the upside to a sport that hadn't fully caught on yet, but staff was always welcome to watch games when we weren't on shift, and you could tell the dividing line between the folks working there because it was a job, and the folks working there because they fucking loved soccer. There were some rules, like we couldn't just show up to finals (if CFC made it to finals, which they hadn't ever in the twenty-nine-year history of the club), and if a game was sold out we were basically on standby until halftime, at which point we could grab any open seat.

I could even bring a guest once a month, and Sammy was thrilled when I asked her if she wanted to come to a game. "My boyfriend despises soccer," she'd told me, in that way that people do when they're making sure you're not trying to date them, but they don't want to imply that's what they assumed.

"I've literally never been to a game with anyone but my dad," I'd replied, feeling like it was a pretty solid way to communicate I wasn't planning to hit on you, but not because I wouldn't, just because I wasn't .

She'd put her arm through mine, awkwardly because as usual she was on skates, and escorted me to the counter. "Just for this, Des, I'm giving you a gift."

It was a Café Canaltown travel mug, and as I watched, she painted my name on it in neat script: D ES C LEARY .

"When did I tell you my last name?" I asked, suddenly paranoid.

She beamed. "You didn't, love, but I know how to google, and I saw that GIF of you fighting with miniblinds. Now here." She presented me with the mug. "Hand-wash only, or the paint will come off, though if it does I can just touch it up. But as long as you come in with this, it's all refills forever."

At which point I did not tear up at this casual but meaningful gift and Sammy did not offer me a napkin. Ahem.

One of the good things about living in such a tiny place was that I didn't let it get dirty, because the second I failed to immediately wash a dish (or a personalized coffee mug), the place felt cluttered. One of the good things about working so many hours was that I couldn't spend 100 percent of my time Google-stalking Orion.

I did manage to leave dirty dishes around in the moments when I found myself lost in a rabbit hole of Orion Broderick "news" headlines.

He was doing the campaign. It hadn't formally launched yet, and Vix had been checking in but conspicuously telling me nothing about Orion, but the early press releases were starting to go out, and he had given one Zoom interview, though I didn't recognize the background, so I didn't think it was from the cabin.

It was short and he smiled a lot.

"You know, when I was still playing, I thought a lot about the fans as a whole. You kind of have to, because you go out on the field and all you see is fans , not people . But getting some distance from the game has reminded me about all the individuals of all demographics that make up the fans of any sport, really of anything at all, whether it's football or Hamilton or a video game, movie, TV show, whatever." He paused, in that way he had, that way I'd seen him do in person. To think about what he wanted to say.

Fuck, he was so thoughtful. When he wasn't busy detesting me.

"I have some friends who do ballet, and it's the same thing. They go out on stage, and the audience is just out there somewhere, but not important. But the thing is, everyone who plays, who dances, who performs, came from a place of being a fan . And a lot of us started being a fan when we were kids. Which is one of the reasons I decided to partner with Kendall Athleisure to do this campaign. Our master plan is really just to increase access to activities for kids who might not otherwise be encouraged to get involved."

And he looked right into the eye of the camera and added, "You can get involved, too, even if you're an adult. We'll have some resources for how you can help the kids in your area, even the older ones who are too cool for you, and we'll have some other resources about what us old folks can do to engage in the stuff that used to light us up as kids. Hit our website and sign up to find out more—it's totally free, and we won't be selling your info. We really just want to make a better world where cooperation and fun are valued more than power and money."

I signed up. Wouldn't you? Vix had been right, back at the very beginning, when I still had my head in my ass: Orion was perfect for this. He radiated authenticity. You could tell he meant every damn word he said.

Not that there weren't the typical knee-jerk homophobe responses, and some ugly crap about "recruitment," but for the most part, Orion and the campaign were getting positive early press. Which was great. And I was happy for him, happy for all the lives that would improve because of his work.

And also Jesus, he'd had the thumb drive for days now; why hadn't he read it? Was he never going to read it? Did he read it and then, horrified, hack it up with his axe and bury the pieces? Did he read it and hate it? Did he think I was pathetic?

Or fuck, did he think it was badly written ? Did he cringe at how needy it sounded? Was it needy? Did I misjudge the neediness level?

He'd Zoomed from not-the-cabin ... maybe he was on the road somewhere? I'd put my new address as the return address, but only my initials (because I was still paranoid). Maybe he hadn't known it was me? Maybe he thought it was a very small bomb. Maybe, maybe, maybe ...

I kept going to the café each morning for coffee, even on the days I didn't work. My land-/gaylord invited me over for dinner sometimes and asked about work. But not like he was trying to decide if we should have sex. Mr. Bisset had been a high school teacher, but his husband had died a few years ago, so it was just him and his little dog now. I had the impression he liked making sure "young people"—a phrase he flatteringly used about me no fewer than three times whenever we saw each other for longer than a minute—landed on their feet.

Mr. Bisset's grief over his husband was super present and real, like I might not have noticed it if I hadn't been in such a weird space myself with the idea of companionship and intimacy and all that junk, but I was, so I noticed the photos on the walls and the way that while he had visitors, even some low-key hot younger guys I figured he hooked up with, no one ever seemed to spend the night.

When I was that young, impulsive college activist, I would have found the whole thing kind of pitiable. Like, Oh, you bought into this idea that you needed to be part of a couple and then you wasted all these years trying to live up to that, and he still died, you're still on your own . And I would have believed my interpretation was valid because I'd never known anything else, never really seen a relationship someone would want to last for decades except through some form of predator pressure: You must not challenge the heteronormative ideals lest you be cut off from the herd .

But I didn't get the impression that Mr. Bisset regretted his marriage, even though he no longer had his partner. He told me a little about how they'd met, the trips they'd taken. He even assured me that I didn't have to keep listening to his "silly old stories," but when I told him I enjoyed hearing them, it was the truth.

This was nothing like my mom losing her true self to every asshole she dated and then feeling like she was nothing when each of those relationships ended. I'd never imagined a marriage being ... good for people. Like, I guess I hadn't really seen that much except on TV, which wasn't real, and even the fake version seemed kind of icky. But Mr. Bisset didn't make his husband out to be perfect, even talked about fights they'd had in this sort of sweet, nostalgic way, like he missed them every bit as much as he missed the vacations and parties and shared pots of tea. Maybe when you started out as a complete person, and the person you were dating was also a complete person, then you didn't risk everything you were to be with them. Instead of zero sum, it was positive sum. That was a thing. I was pretty sure. It was ... economics? Or no, game theory? Whatever, it just meant a situation where it wasn't all win or all lose, where multiple parties could benefit simultaneously.

I bet Orion could tell me all about what "positive sum" meant. Maybe I should just ... slightly Google-stalk him a little and hope that someday I could invent a noninvasive, noncreepy reason to see him again. To ask about the difference between zero sum and positive sum. Natch.

The league season began to ramp up, and both of my jobs demanded more from me. The social media side, which I had now fully taken over, didn't really have an exact format to it. I'd asked who I should run my posts past before publishing them, and MBS had frowned thoughtfully.

"I guess that would have been a good idea, now that you say it. But no one really has the time, so you just go ahead and try not to get the club sued, okay?"

"So no pressure?"

She slapped me on the back. "Got it, sport. No pressure at all."

The club had a YouTube account with no videos and a Facebook page that it took me some time to realize was the "official" page, despite being completely unmoderated by anyone. No Instagram, no TikTok, no Mastodon, no Bluesky, no Discord server or official subreddit.

Okay. I could work with this. And by "work with this" I meant "start from scratch."

I considered the demographics and decided to focus on Instagram and Facebook (for the old folks who made up a huge portion of our ticket sales, particularly for the higher-priced seats and boxes), but I also wanted to get some stuff going on TikTok, because the only real way to market to the youth on my budget was getting the accounts they followed to start posting about stuff. Accordingly, I followed every Conquistos local and every soccer fan I could find on the Conquistos FC account. Then, thinking about what Guy had said about his kids getting to tell their friends about actually meeting some of the players, I started brainstorming how to, you know, best exploit that idea to sell more tickets.

As one does.

I didn't know why it felt less truly exploitative than a lot of the work I'd done before, but partially it was because of the position of the sport in the States. The players were not signing billion-dollar contracts, the recruiting at the level of high school and college was not designed to completely screw over young athletes, and there remained at the stadium a charming quality of familial feeling between players, grounds crew, hospitality, janitorial, security, and even management.

And not a single one of my coworkers gave a flying fuck who I was or who I had sex with, which honestly, I'd worked in white-collar offices where that was a more touchy subject. Not always because of outright homophobia. Sometimes it was just outright awkwardness, or weirdly formatted questions to make sure I knew it was okay that I was queer, like I went through life desperate for the acceptance of straight people.

Dear straight people: most of us don't give a shit what you think. We just want health care, basic civil rights, and to be fucking left alone. And Skittles with all the colors, please, since we're here.

Anyway, I found that, while I may have been partially a pity hire, I was really digging my jobs. And spending a fair amount of time in my off hours thinking about all the different ways we could work our socials for the best return on investment.

I was sitting in the café on my day off when my phone rang, startling me. I'd been back in Conquistos almost two months, and aside from Vix calling periodically to make sure I was eating and Marlo wasn't "taking advantage" of me ("She's a type A workaholic, kiddo; don't let her rub off on you ..."), my phone hardly ever rang.

Of course my first thought was, as it always was, even though there'd been nothing but crickets in the weeks since Orion had received my thumb drive, Maybe it's him!

The phone number was, so my mobile informed me, from Houston, Texas. I almost let it go to voicemail, but what the hell. It was my day off. I could always hang up. I stepped outside and answered.

"Is this Mr. Desmond Cleary?" The voice sounded youngish, with an accent that sounded, to my ear, more "vaguely southern" than "actually Texan."

"It is." I sounded suspicious. I felt suspicious.

"Hi there, Mr. Cleary, this is Ben Perot, I'm a fact-checker from Sports Now ."

My heart sank. A fact-checker? Who was writing about me? And, dear god, what were they saying? Would it be enough to make Marlo fire me? I gathered my courage. "Okay. Well, how bad is it?"

"Err, what do you mean? We didn't have much of a problem confirming what you've written. It was a real nice experience, if I'm being honest with you. Sometimes things get tense." The voice on the phone paused. "Mr. Cleary, you still there? This is about your story, of course."

"My story?" What the hell was happening. I wasn't the important one. Who would write a story about me?

"Yes. Working title ‘Snowed In with the Soccer Star'?"

I recognized the line. I'd written the line. "Uhh. Right." I was trying to think fast, but it wasn't working. "My story."

Ben Perot cleared his throat, a trick I knew well. You don't know what to say to me, Benny boy, and I for sure don't know what the hell to say to you. "Yes, sir," he continued valiantly on. "I'm pleased to let you know that everything has checked out, and we're about ready to send you the proof for your final approval, bearing in mind that the editors can and sometimes do make last-minute edits for both content and length."

I controlled the urge to babble, NO! What are you talking about? I was never snowed in with a soccer star! I would never write about that! Whatever you've heard, it's all lies! You could get sued! I could get sued! We could ruin people's lives if anyone sees that—

I swallowed. A long— long —moment followed while my fevered brain churned out thoughts at light speed with no apparent organization: everything checked out, "Snowed In with the Soccer Star," my story, fact-checking, Sports Now , my story, Sports Now , but—how could—the courier—delivered, it had been delivered, and did a courier in Somewhere, Middle California, have the contacts to send a found piece of writing to Sports -Frigging- Now ? I didn't think so. Even if said courier somehow could resist the urge to sell it to the nearest tabloid first.

"Mr. Cleary? You still there?"

Was I still here? Was I Mr. Cleary? Maybe in part. In pieces. In broken shards of ... was that self-respect I was trying to put back together? Because the only person who'd had access to this particular essay, the one in which I'd penned the borderline-absurd "snowed in with the soccer star" line, was Orion. "Uh-huh. I'm here."

Beat of silence while he waited for me to say whatever people usually said at this point, and I stood against the side of the café and tried to understand what was happening.

"And so I just need to get a good email address for you, Mr. Cleary. Usually we've got one on file by now, but every now and then we don't. Actually, I also can't find your signed contract, so if you don't mind, I'll need to resend that. Just need your email for the contract and the proof."

Which was when it dawned on me that Sports Now was on my phone. In the person of ... Ross Perot? No, that wasn't right. Some other Perot. Because Sports -Frigging- Now wanted to publish something I'd written. Something only Orion had seen, ergo (or was it therefore?) Orion must be the person who'd sent it to Sports Now . Orion, who did have, or could acquire, exactly those sorts of contacts.

I cleared my throat and managed to give Whoever Perot my email address, recover at least a few of my wits, and sound halfway normal by the end of the call. It wasn't until I'd hung up that I thought of the half dozen questions I desperately needed answers to. Did Orion send it to you? Have you spoken to him? How did he sound? Did he sound tired? Because he looks tired when I Google-stalk him ...

I sent Vix an SOS text, which she did not return, and went back inside.

"You've got milkshake face if I ever saw one," Sammy told me. "Mocha?"

It felt so nice to be seen . "Oh god, you have no idea how much I need a mocha shake right now, thanks."

My story. Sports Now . Orion. Fact-checking.

What the actual fuck.