Page 61 of Caught Offside

“I remember,” Patrick said.

“You said it wasn’t important.”

“I lied.”

Asher’s finger paused on his sternum. Then resumed, slower. “I know. I knew then. I let it go because you needed me to.”

“Je suis foutu,” Patrick said aloud, in the morning light, to the man it had always been about.

“And that means?”

“I’m screwed.” It came easier than he expected. “It’s what you say when something’s already happened to you. When it’s too late to get out of the way.”

Asher went still against him. “You said that the day I kissed you.”

“Right after you kissed me. And again that night in the kitchen, and most days since, somewhere you couldn’t hear it.” Patrick turned his head and looked at him. “I couldn’t say it in a language you understood. So I said it in mine.”

Asher’s hand pressed flat on his chest, over his heart.

“Say it again,” he said.

“Je suis foutu.”

“Still?”

“Worse.”

They lay there. The morning moved forward without them.

Asher’s phone lit up on the nightstand. He reached for it, read the screen, and laughed.

“Pops,” he said. “Third text this morning. He wants to know if I’m bringing you to dinner tomorrow or if he has to drive downtown and pry you out of a hotel himself.”

Patrick went still. “He knows I’m here.”

“Patrick, my dads have known about you since roughly January. I told Pops the real version on the phone a week ago, and he said, and he laughed because I actually thought I’d kept it a secret from him.” Asher set the phone down and looked at him, the grin gone soft. “They want to meet you. Tomorrow, after the day game. Dad’s already talking about the brisket and pretending he isn’t nervous, which, according to Pops, he is.”

The old reflex moved in Patrick before he could stop it, the urge to find a reason not to go. Meeting the parents was a door, and doors were what he’d spent his life keeping shut. He acknowledged the reflex, and then he let it go.

“Okay,” he said.

Patrick went back for the night game and sat in the same section, cap low. Asher threw out a runner trying to steal second in the seventh, and Patrick was on his feet before he’d decided to stand. The next day’s game was an afternoon one, done before dinner, and when Asher came out of the players’ lot with wet hair and his bag over his shoulder, he held out his hand for Patrick’s keys.

The house sat on a quiet street south of the city, an old brick place with a deep porch and a backyard that had clearly hosted a lot of catch. Patrick read up on Sean Tucker from the passenger seat on the way over—eleven years a Maverick, an All-Star, the first openly gay pitcher in the league, outed only when Mason retired at a press conference without warning him, and he’d stayed in the game anyway. Mason Atley he knew already, the way everyone did. The loud one, the funny one, the retired outfielder who said the quiet parts aloud on national television.

Mason got to the door first. He was shorter than Patrick expected and took up twice the space, and he looked Patrick up and down with open, delighted appraisal.

“Oh,” Mason said. “He’s tall. Ash, you didn’t say he was tall.” He stuck out a hand and gripped Patrick’s hard. “Mason. Or you can call me Pops; most of Asher’s friends do. Come in before the brisket files a complaint.”

Sean was at the grill out back, and he was nothing like Mason: big, still, unhurried, someone who didn’t perform. He set down the tongs and shook Patrick’s hand and held it a beat, his pale eyes—the same translucent blue that showed up in every photo Patrick had scrolled past—taking him in.

“Patrick,” Sean said. “Glad you came.”

“Thank you for having me.”

“You play for the Syndicate.”

“I do.”