Go Team!

SURE, DEWEYthought, folding a clean uniform and street clothes and socks and underwear for his backpack. They might go to a movie tomorrow night.

Dewey had faith it could be done. He’d be super excited to go to a movie on Trey’s arm. Sit in the theater, hold hands, eat popcorn. It was an adorably old-fashioned idea for a date.

But Dewey wasn’t going to wait that long for the rest of it. Trey was going to pick him up and then pick Pete up and then drop Pete off and then take Dewey back to Trey’s house where Dewey was going to ravish him from head to toe and every place in between.

Every time Dewey saw him—windburned face, rumpled scruff, shy smile, dark curls peeking out from under his ballcap—the image of him, the impression he made on Dewey’s soul got deeper and sexier and more important. And now after Dewey had kissed him the night before? After they’d lost themselves in the feeling of muscles, skin, and soft hurried groans that meant everything felt good? Dewey didn’t want to wait for a movie. He didn’t want to wait for a soccer game, either, but the soccer game was important.

Waiting for the third date when they’d spent all week flirting, smiling, waiting to see each other—Dewey wasn’t sure about Trey, but he was starting to wonder if his heart would ever not beat faster when he saw Trey’s lean-lipped smile, the quiet joy in his eyes when Dewey smiled back.

This relationship may have started because Trey got stood up at the beginning of the week, but Dewey wanted, wanted the physical contact, wanted the consummation, wanted the relationship and all that word implied to start now, before the week ended.

He got that Trey’s Saturday wasn’t his own, but his Sunday, Dewey was pretty sure, was free, at least this week, and Dewey wanted barefoot on the couch privileges by then. He’d only thought the rest of his life would begin when he’d found a better job. Turned out it had begun when Trey walked through the door of the job he held now. Trey could even make Bean There bearable, and Dewey wanted all the things—shopping for artwork, playing with that banshee of a cat, attending Trey’s soccer games, spending an entire day naked and happy—to start now.

He’d enjoyed Trey’s company more in the last week over his lunch break and during the night before than he’d enjoyed the company of any of his college-aged boyfriends. He knew there were hurdles in a relationship. He wasn’t stupid; shit could always fall out.

But hope—this riotous, blessedly exciting bloom of hope—that was new, and powerful, and he wanted to ride it into a new and powerful part of his life.

He simply had to convince Trey that it was a good idea.

Dewey wasn’t sure what had done it. Was it Trey’s Midwestern upbringing? Was it the time spent on the road as an athlete? Or maybe the years of no relationship at all, but pretty much closeted sex on tap?

Something about his life—maybe even his own sense of chivalry—had made Trey a bona fide good guy. The kind of guy who would step up for a player when he hadn’t been planning to step up for himself. The kind of guy who had the backing of not one but two entire athletic programs, from the players to the administrators to—Dewey hoped—most of the parents. Dewey had lived his life—gotten his degree in fact—guided by the tenet that vision produced beauty. Beauty sustained art. Art sustained life.

Trey had vision. He might need some beauty on his walls and in his life, but he had the sort of morals and vision that also sustained life.

Dewey wanted in. He was in the presence of a literal Coach in Shining Armor. He wanted to jump on that man’s prancing steed and ride.

But first he had to get the man naked—and not rolling off the couch in a panicked huff, either.

Hence the small pack of clothes and the tablet and the notebook. If he was going to spend some time in Trey’s house (please please please please please!), he was going to invest himself in his “beautify Trey’s life” project, and he needed his tools.

“Hey,” Ceej said, wandering into the apartment, “what’s doin’?”

Dewey glanced up from his frantic search of the laundry basket on the couch for an extra pair of clean underwear and took a breath. Ceej and Dewey had bonded over certain fashion choices—lowrider skinny jeans, colorful button-downs over bright solid-colored T-shirts, and shawl-collared sweaters as opposed to hoodies—as well as their exact opposite choice in bed partners.

Ceej preferred free-spirited girls with no boundaries—and as many bed partners as they chose—while Dewey had always been searching for commitment. Ceej’s preferences guaranteed no-strings relationships with girls who stayed his friends, and Dewey’s approach guaranteed that pretty much every guy he dated ran screaming into the night shouting, “It’s not you, it’s me!” over his shoulder.

But lately Ceej had been holding out for a girl who wanted one guy—only one guy—and he’d admitted he didn’t mind if she had a steady job either. Dewey was crossing his fingers for his buddy and hoping he’d have some good news to report too.

“No,” Ceej said, answering his own question. “No, that’s not what’s doing.”

Dewey peered up from his backpack. “What?”

“You’re not sleeping with this guy on the fourth day of acquaintance.”

Dewey snorted. “Well, I’m obviously not sleeping with him on the first date of acquaintance,” he said.

“You’re packing for a date. I know that backpack,” Ceej cautioned. “Dewey, things are going so well. You’re taking it slow. You… you went to his house and didn’t sleep with him. Come on, man. Don’t blow it now!”

Dewey glared at him. “I’m going to see one of his soccer games. I’m sitting with his cousin in the stands. It’s no big deal.”

“Then why the pack?” Ceej asked, folding his arms over his impressive chest. They’d also bonded over their reluctant dedication to the gym, but Dewey was mostly a speed guy on the treadmill, and Ceej tended to sculpt all his body everywhere, which worked for him.

“So he doesn’t have to come crosstown to drop me off,” Dewey said with dignity. “Or maybe we want to go out for coffee afterward. Or maybe he and his cousin want to play Scrabble, and they wouldn’t mind a third.”

Ceej laughed softly. “Dewey, you’re grown. Go ahead and pack your bag. But don’t be too disappointed if this turns out differently than you hope. He might be totally pumped and really horny after the game, which could suit you fine. Or it might be disappointing because he’s not as committed as you. Or they might lose, and your job might be an endless supply of beer and sympathy. I’m just saying….”

Dewey sighed and remembered that he could do practicality too. “I get it,” he said, finding the perfect pair of underwear for tomorrow, as well as his clean apron for work. He shoved them in his pack and turned toward Ceej, who had made himself comfy at the kitchen table with a soda and a bag of chips.

“Get what?” Ceej asked, crunching blissfully on a chip. Dewey refrained because Trey had said something about food trucks at the soccer venue, and he really loved a good food truck.

“I get that you’re afraid I’ll get too moony over this guy and show my hand. But this isn’t really about being moony,” he said, although he had to admit he’d been pretty moony all day.

“No?” Ceej set the chips down and wiped his fingers fastidiously on a napkin. He kept his dark hair short, with messy spikes gelled up top, and Dewey wondered if maybe he shouldn’t start letting it go without product now that he was looking for a girl who might see beyond all the pretense and maybe like him for his awesome self.

“No,” Dewey said certainly. “It’s about… about being ready to stay up with him and be or do whatever he needs me to be and do. These games mean a lot to him. I want to show him that however he takes a win or a loss, I can be there for it. If he wants me to sleep on the couch, I can do that. If he wants to cry on my shoulder, I’m there for that too.” He gave an eyebrow waggle. “If he wants to sex me up because he’s feeling like he rules the world, well, I wouldn’t say no, but the point is—”

“You’re willing to do what he needs,” Ceej finished, sounding impressed. “Even if…?”

“Even if it means I come home tonight with my backpack completely untouched,” he said, meaning it. Some of the pounding urgency had faded as he’d talked things out with his roommate. For some reason, Ceej had that effect on him—on a lot of people, actually. It was why he was in such demand as a bartender.

“Okay,” Ceej told him, rolling the top of the chips closed and standing to put them away. Their apartment was cluttered—there was always an art project of Dewey’s or books or equipment from some sort of theater class Ceej was taking stashed in the corners or taking up the kitchen table or the coffee table or end tables, and laundry was a communal decorating service—but they tended to be meticulous about the kitchen, because, as they liked to say whenever one of them washed the dishes, they weren’t animals.

“Okay?” Dewey asked, eyebrows raised.

Ceej shrugged. “Okay. You’re sounding remarkably adult about a guy you’ve pretty much wanted to jump since you first saw him. I’m okay with your mental state. Go get laid.”

Dewey let out a breath. “Or go watch a game and leave my backpack in the car,” he said.

“Either/or,” Ceej agreed, and Dewey blessed his choice in roommates for the thousandth time. Good friends were hard to find.

And they were also good audiences for unlikely stories, which meant Dewey spent part of his evening dying to tell him about Pete.

“Wait a minute,” Dewey said as he ran out of the apartment to Trey’s waiting SUV. “I know you.”

“Oh!” Pete said. “You’re the other barista! Trey kept talking about you, but I couldn’t place you. I guess I’m always, uhm….” He blushed.

“Fixated on Lena,” Dewey finished, delighted. As they spoke, Pete, who had been in the front of the SUV as Trey pulled up, was getting out and sliding in the back. Dewey barely refrained from preening. He got to be the guy in the front!

“She knows me?” Pete asked, sounding excited. “Did you hear that, Trey? She even knows who I am.”

“I heard,” Trey said dryly as he pulled away from the curb. “Good for you, Pete. You made an impression.”

“She’s missed you,” Dewey said, sliding the backpack down by his feet. “I guess widow’s peaks and dad jokes are her thing, so, you know, keep trying.”

“Yes!” Pete crowed. “She even likes the widow’s peak?”

Dewey gave him a smile over the seat. “Says it’s sexy,” he said, and glancing at Trey’s cousin’s face—lean, with the mouth brackets and eye crinkles that spoke of lots of laughing and engagement with the rest of the world—he could see Lena’s point. Of course, Dewey was becoming more and more fascinated with Trey’s quiet intensity, but Lena was intense enough as it was. Maybe people were always looking for their balance, the other side of the teeter-totter, not too heavy, not too light, but not their side of the teeter-totter either.

Interesting. Dewey would ponder it later when Trey’s cousin was not detailing the list of automobile woes that had kept him from visiting the coffee shop all week.

“You know,” Trey said, his voice holding a note of long-suffering restraint, “weren’t you and your mom going to go shopping for a new car?”

“A new used car,” Pete clarified, laughing a little at the oxymoron. “Yeah. She gets home tomorrow, but she always needs a pajama day after a trip.”

“Wise woman, your mom,” Trey said. “That used to be the worst thing about traveling. No rest.”

“Like your schedule is any easier now,” Pete chided, but Trey shrugged.

“It’s all in the same town,” he said. “And I’ve had the U-14 kids for two years. I feel like I can coach them up until they move on to college, and, you know, that’s… that’s something.”

“The side-gig with the kids is important,” Pete said. “Seriously. When my folks split, baseball was the only thing that kept me smiling. I know you don’t get too close to the kids, ’cause that’s not your job, but sometimes that team is the best thing in their lives. I mean, it’s like you say. Not every kid goes to college on sports, and only a very, very few go pro. But the game can still mean a lot. You’re, like, living proof of what sports can do when they’re good.”

Dewey watched as Trey flushed under the praise, and his chest warmed.

“You can’t say good stuff about me until after the game,” he chided. “Now where are we stopping for food? It can’t be too rich or too messy because coaching with sour cream on my jacket is embarrassing.”

“SO,” PETEasked an hour later, as they were making their way through the stadium seats after Trey had peeled off for the locker room, “Lena really mentioned me?”

“Yeah,” Dewey said. “For real. I’ll tell her you’re dealing with a car situation. She’ll be glad to see you again.”

“Here we go.” Pete pointed to numbers painted on the aluminum bench and triumphantly held out the seat cushions he’d made Trey grab from the back of the SUV. “See? See? And it’s September, so it’s still hot here, so you wouldn’t know this, but by December, if they make the playoffs, those benches will freeze your balls off. Who’s your bestie? C’mon, you can admit it.”

Dewey cackled and took Pete’s beer from him so he could set up the cushions. “I don’t know,” he teased. “My roommate gets me free beer at a meat-market bar. I mean, seat cushions or free beer—it’s a conundrum!”

It was Pete’s turn to cackle, and in a moment they were settled, each of them with a beer and Pete with a lobster quesadilla that he’d ordered from one of the food trucks.

“I can’t believe you’re going to eat that,” Dewey told him. “After chicken tacos? Are you kidding? My eyeballs are full.” They were not really full. Dewey was eating light tonight. For reasons. Maybe those reasons were just hope for snuggles and not for actual sweaty naked time, but they were still reasons.

“Physical job,” Pete said, mouth full as he chewed. He finished the bite and added, “And the bus doesn’t go all the way to the machine shop. I’ve got a mile run each way, in my boots.”

“And it’s lobster,” Dewey added dryly, because Pete had been adamant that a lobster quesadilla was too good to pass up.

“Am ith lobther,” Pete added, mouth full again. On the field, the players had filed out and were doing warm-up drills as a team, Trey leading them. What had once been a ritual of practicality for the players had in past years become something of a psych-out for the other teams, as the warm-ups, from stretches to calisthenics to speed drills, were perfected to military precision with the rhythm and showmanship of a dance team.

“I could watch soccer for this alone,” Dewey told Pete, and Pete swallowed and grinned.

“Trey and the other assistant coach worked up the drills, got the kids into it. The college team has become known for it. YouTube videos show up all the time—it’s great publicity. I think Trey and Russ were hired for that sort of creativity. Trey doesn’t know this, but I talked to one of his former teammates, and he was like, ‘Yeah—that guy. Made you glad to play. Would come in and get us all pumped, but not in an obnoxious way, just, you know, ‘Glad to be here!’”

Dewey laughed. “That’s funny. That’s how I try to be at the coffee shop, but it doesn’t feel like this!”

“Is that where you want to be?” Pete asked.

Dewey shook his head. “No. Lena loves it,” he said. “She loves bossing people around, developing menus, talking to customers. But….” He shrugged. “I got an art history degree. I’d love to use it.”

Pete laughed. “You should talk to my mom. She’s got an assistant at her shop right now who’s supposed to help with the art on the walls, but I swear, I had to remind the girl to breathe out the other day or she would have hyperventilated and passed out.”

Dewey sputtered some of his beer. “Nobody’s that stupid,” he said, although he remembered Trey mentioning this too.

“Oh my God. She called me at four this morning to go pick my mom up at the airport, but Mom had forwarded me the itinerary, and she gets home tomorrow at four in the afternoon. The girl kept talking about ‘pim.’ She was like, ‘But she gets here at four pim, and that’s gotta be today.’ I was, like, cross-eyed, right? Because it was four in the morning, and it wasn’t until I woke up that I thought to wonder what ‘pim’ was. I called her up and said, ‘The hell is four pim?’ And she said, ‘Well, it’s not ‘am.’”

Dewey blinked. “Am? As in….”

“A.m.” Pete blew out a beleaguered breath. “That girl wakes me up two hours before my alarm goes off because she thinks ‘pim’ means morning in idiot-speak.’”

Dewey had to cover his mouth with his hand to keep from spitting out his beer again. “That’s terrible,” he choked.

“Yeah,” Pete said darkly. “Dude, if my mom can pay you a decent wage, I’d love it if you took over for Caitlyn. I just… I can’t even. Four pim!”

Dewey managed to swallow his beer that time, but that wasn’t the last time Trey’s cousin made him laugh. And then he taught Dewey the rules to the game, and Dewey got to watch Trey on the field, cheering the kids on, analyzing plays, even exchanging speaking glances with the rest of the coaching team, and suddenly Dewey got it.

Got why this was so important. Got the excitement of a full stadium cheering on their soccer club. Got the thrill of watching athletes drive themselves to their best.

Got why something like this would mean something to the people who organized the play and helped the players and tried to create order out of chaos.

And then Trey’s team won, and he got winning…and fell completely in love.