by Wendy Qualls
“So I wouldn’t be the only idiot on the field?” Having half the players be kids made the whole thing slightly less nerve-racking…but only slightly.
“Flag football’s light on rules too,” Dave assured him, “so don’t let that stop you. Have you really never been to a football game?”
“Only what we had to learn in gym class.”
“Christ.” Dave shook his head. “Tell you what: you join me out there on the field and if we win I’ll show my appreciation later.”
Oh, now that offer had promise. “So by ‘show your appreciation’…”
“I mean we can make use of my Jeep having such a large cargo area again.” He winked and waggled his eyebrows. “And yes, it’s mostly an excuse to get my hands on you again, but I’ll take what I can get. A secret back seat blowjob ought to be the capstone to any good Thanksgiving gathering, don’t you think?”
Lito pretended to think it over. “I don’t know,” he drawled. “I might have eaten too much turkey to fit any more meat in my mouth…”
Okay, yeah, he definitely was going to remember the predatory look in Dave’s eyes at that, even as the guy was trying so hard not to laugh. “Good thing we’re going to work up an appetite, then,” he countered, leaning in so he could murmur it quiet and dirty in Lito’s ear. “And lucky for you, I saved some room.”
* * * *
Football, Lito learned, was a lot simpler than he’d thought. On TV it seemed to involve a lot of stop and start, baffling penalties, and full-grown men throwing themselves into a giant pile at the sound of a whistle. Flag football was more about running, which happened to be something Lito was decent at.
He, Dave, and two of the boys all ended up on the same team. Dave’s father declined to pick a side and chose to referee instead. The house had a large back lawn, bordered by cotton fields and a small barn on one side and a cow pasture on the other, which made a reasonable play area for a casual game. The “flags” were literally just dish towels tucked in the back waistband of everyone’s pants.
“Just pull out someone’s flag to tackle them,” Dave explained as they waited for his brothers to finish marking the boundaries of the field. “You can only be tackled if you have the ball, and try not to squash any of my nephews. Other than that…”
“I’d just as soon nobody squash me.”
“I reserve the right.” Dave stuck his tongue out at him, prompting a chorus of giggles from the boys, and jogged over to the spot Kitt had marked as the center line. “Okay, y’all—time for you to get pummeled by Team Awesome. You ready?”
“Ready,” Jack countered. “Team Best Ever is going to kick your butts.”
Since there was no actual tackling and each side only had four players, there wasn’t particularly a need for the big pile-up of bodies in the middle of the field. Most rounds (downs?) involved Dave’s father blowing a whistle, everyone running around after everyone else, and either Dave or Jack attempting to throw the ball to someone despite all the commotion. Lito picked up that this was the quarterback’s role—quarterback being a term he actually recognized—but the rest was just chaos. The boys had a bit of an advantage over the adults, actually, having not eaten their own weight in turkey and gravy before coming out to play.
“Lito!” Dave mimed, throwing the ball, then lobbed it at him for real. “Go! Just run with it!”
Running was something he could do. Lito managed to catch the football without dropping it, which was a minor miracle all on its own, and it wasn’t too hard to dodge the two “Team Best Ever” nephews on his way toward the goal line. Dave let out a loud whoop.
“His first ever football game, ladies and gentlemen! And he scores the first touchdown of the game!”
It felt good. “What do I do now?”
“I’ll do it!” Cooper volunteered. He took the ball from Lito, slammed it into the ground, and started jumping around with his fist in the air. “Touchdown dance! Touchdown dance! Dance with me, Mr. Lito!”
Ninety-five percent of Lito’s dance repertoire would have been inappropriate in front of a five-year-old, but he gave the other five percent a good go anyway. “Like this?”
“Touchdown dance! Woo!”
“Okay, first down everybody.” Jack scooped up the ball on his way past and beckoned Lito and Cooper back to the halfway point. “I see Team Best Ever has some catching up to do.”
They did catch up, with two touchdowns in a row, but Dave and Junior scored the next one together and tied the game again. True to Dave’s prediction, his mother and sisters-in-law came out onto the back porch to watch and cheer for both sides. By the time the game finished—called on account of dark and mosquitoes, but with Team Awesome one touchdown ahead—Lito was panting and more than a bit sweaty and feeling more alive than he had in a long time. The temporary field markers were taken down quickly and everyone bundled back inside for coffee, hot chocolate, and a second round of cookies.
“So what did you think of your first real live football experience?” Dave asked, once they were all settled in the living room and everyone had found somewhere to sit. Lito perched on the arm of the recliner Dave was sprawled in. It felt strangely intimate even though they weren’t touching, but any closer would have been awkward in front of the family. They’d probably embarrass themselves, keyed up as he and Dave both were. “You make a good wide receiver—you’re almost as speedy as Cooper and Mason are.”
The two younger boys puffed up at the implied praise.
“Football was less painful than I expected,” Lito admitted. “And there were fewer commercial breaks. Feels like it’s missing something without everyone smashing into everyone else, though.”
Kitt laughed. “Jack and I both played fullback in high school, which involved a lot of smashing into people. You’re right—it’s not the same.”
“What did you play?” Lito asked Dave.
Dave’s eyes sparkled. “Tight end.”
The term wasn’t any more familiar than “fullback,” but Lito had to fight a blush anyway. Damn Dave’s fine-tuned innuendo abilities. “Did that, um. Did it involve a lot of tackling, or more running instead?”
“Bit of both.” Dave sat back in the chair and sipped casually at his mug of hot chocolate. “I was never all that fast, honestly—I got in a lot better shape after I joined the Army. Football did teach me how to take a fall, though. That was useful in Basic. The running was too, I guess.”
“Do you still keep up with it?” Jack’s wife asked. She switched the youngest boy over to her other knee so she could put her coffee down on the end table next to her. “The running, I mean. I know you do all that search team stuff—”
“Oh!” Junior perked up. “Sorry, Mom, but I meant to ask Uncle Dave something. We’re having a ‘health and safety day’ at school, and we all get to choose which presentations we go see. Mr. S—he’s my teacher—said if we know anyone who has a job to do with health or safety we could ask them to be a speaker. And I know you talk to classes about dog safety sometimes. It would be awesome if you could bring Lumpy and Woozy, and you’d be way less boring than the lady they always get from the hospital to talk about why smoking is bad. And I’ve told my friends that sometimes you get to find actual dead bodies and they think it’s really cool, so can you come? Please?”
“Sweetie,” his mother cautioned. “Your Uncle Dave has a regular job too. He can’t necessarily drop everything to come drive two hours and bring his dogs for your friends to meet. You’re leaving it a little late—”
“It’s fine,” Dave assured her. “We schedule school talks all the time, for whoever on the team is free. I’ll see what I can do.”
“There’s a good chance I could come, if you need me,” Lito volunteered. “You live near Birmingham, right?”
Junior nodded.
That was convenient. “I’ve got to get out there sometime before the end of the y
ear anyway,” Lito explained. “I’ve got a pretty flexible schedule for that kind of thing.” It wasn’t a lie, although he had yet to sit down with Vanessa and sort out any details. Acquiring an “authentic local ambiance” meant he’d be visiting all the Dayspring hotels in the state sooner or later anyway. “I don’t know what NALSAR does for school talks in the first place,” he added, “but I’d love to find out.”
“Flexible is good.” Dave didn’t look up at him, but his hand twitched like he was trying very hard not to sneak a totally inappropriate grope of Lito’s ass right then and there. “Yeah, Junior, definitely have your health teacher get in touch with me. Mr. Lito and I can work out more details on the way home.”
The among other things was left unsaid.
Chapter 11
Birmingham was a good half-day drive from Black Lake. As a result, Dave wasn’t entirely surprised that Lito was the only one who volunteered to come along and give a talk at Junior’s school. It worked out well, actually—Lito needed to stay in the Birmingham hotel overnight, and even though Dayspring Inn & Suites was dog-friendly it would have been awkward to have Spot along on a work trip. He’d jumped at Dave’s offer to dog-sit and meet up together the next morning.
Lumpy and Woozy loved having Spot sleep over. The three of them chased themselves silly from when Lito dropped Spot off until their dinner hit their dog bowls, then slept like rocks until five o’clock in the morning when they started tearing around again. Dave was actually kind of impressed at how they managed to keep that excitement up for the entire two-hour drive. This had to be what parents of toddlers felt like. Toddler triplets, maybe.
Lito was waiting in the parking lot of his hotel when Dave pulled up, as promised. He hopped in with a smile and two cups of coffee. Dude must have been psychic.
“You are a god among men,” Dave pronounced.
Lito laughed and set them carefully in the two cupholders, which were both far enough forward the dogs couldn’t investigate too closely. Spot stuck her nose between the front seats, but Lito just gave her an ear scratch and a playful noogie and then nudged her back where she belonged. “I’m lucky the manager here considered me worth impressing,” he said. “The executive suite has a Keurig—everyone else gets to deal with the pot in the lobby. However stale it happens to be. The poor lady at the front desk this morning certainly hadn’t had time to refresh it, not with one of those guests complaining at her.”
“Difficult?” Dave guessed.
“That’s a polite word for it.” He wrinkled his nose. Dave had a hard time not leaning over and kissing it, he was so adorable, but Lito was still talking. “Used to hate them back when I was in her shoes. They stay the night, then come down in the morning to nitpick at their bill because the air conditioner was too loud or the cell phone reception wasn’t good enough and they want you to give them a discount. Sometimes it’s things I could have fixed if they’d told me earlier and sometimes it’s totally in their heads, but they almost never give up without a twenty-minute argument. At least. We had about one a week on the overnight shift, way back when.”
“Glad you’re not still on the front line?”
“God yes,” Lito answered immediately. “Not saying I don’t still hear inane things from people at work, but at least now I’m not required to smile while I do it.” He sat back in his seat and sipped his coffee in silence for a moment. “Yesterday wasn’t bad, all things considered, but I’m not excited about having to introduce myself to a whole new set of people now that I’m here. At least with the Georgia locations, I’d finally gotten the managers to stop treating me like I’m on the hotel version of Queer Eye. I mean, I’m finally getting to see the layout of each Dayspring in person, which makes visualizing the space a lot easier, but I do miss the distance an email can give.”
“I’ve never…” Dave shook his head. He’d always preferred getting his hands dirty versus languishing in front of a computer every day, but he thought he knew what Lito meant. “Can I say I commiserate even though I’ve never seen Queer Eye?”
That surprised a laugh out of Lito. “Clearly you’ve missed some required viewing.”
“Is there a checklist?”
“There’s a whole queer agenda, haven’t you heard?” Lito let out an amused snort. “Gonna guess you’ve never worn heels either, even just trying them on with your drag queen friends. Or memorized Broadway musicals and belted out all the good diva parts. Or went to a gay club and got down and dirty on the dance floor.”
“I think you and I have had very different life experiences.” Very, very different. “Correct on two out of three.”
Lito stilled. Dave could sense him sorting through what he’d just said. Then… “You sing?”
“Only country, and only karaoke. When Rick makes me.” Dave kept his eyes on the road, but he could feel Lito’s gaze on him. “I’m a pretty damn good dancer, though. In the right circumstances. Have I not mentioned that?”
“The Nashville thing?”
“On occasion.”
They each drank their coffee in silence for a few minutes. It didn’t take a psychic to know they were both thinking back to the previous weekend, where they’d spent most of Sunday afternoon in Lito’s bed together. It hadn’t been “dancing,” exactly, but Dave came home feeling simultaneously more energetic and more exhausted than he’d been in a very long time. Lito was very flexible, as it turned out. He’d let Dave boss him into attempting some truly ambitious positions until they both couldn’t take it anymore. Lito ended up riding Dave until they both collapsed and passed out for a long afternoon nap together. It had been sexy as hell and comfortably domestic and hell if he was going to be able to reconcile the two. With Lito, both descriptions fit.
“More travel now, then?” Dave finally asked.
“Yeah, probably, but who the hell knows how it will all shake out.” Lito sighed and let his head thunk against the back of the seat. “In this particular hotel, they’re redoing the lobby and breakfast area. I accidentally got the owners on a ‘local art’ kick with some of the stuff I did in Georgia, so now my big project is to revamp every Alabama Dayspring to be more local without breaking the bank. The lobby here is an odd shape, so I wanted to get a sense of the space and light levels in person.”
“You have to suss out the local art scene for every town in Alabama? That’s…ambitious of you.”
“Shut up.” Dave didn’t turn his head to look, but he could tell Lito was smiling. “Janet is trying to hook me up with a friend of hers who’s in some sort of Alabama painters’ guild. If they’ve all got portfolios online, it will save me a lot of time.”
“You’re still going to have to visit all the hotels, though.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I didn’t realize your job was so expansive.”
“Neither do most other people. Including the women I work with here.” He upended his paper coffee cup, draining the last few swallows, and sat up straight again. Seeming slightly more awake. “When I first moved to Atlanta, I was doing purchasing and inventory management. Then I made some executive decorating decisions because nobody else would. About a year after that, I finally persuaded Betty and Ronald—the owners—to do all the hotels in the same color scheme. Now I’m still doing most of the purchasing and inventory, but I get to pick most of what we get. That usually means I can spend some time with Google and at least come up with a short list of local artists, but web presence doesn’t always correlate to talent.”
“I can believe that.” Computers weren’t usually Dave’s first choice for dicking around outside of work, but he’d seen enough of the internet to make that particular truism very clear. Which brought to mind that NALSAR needed a website too. Tracking all that web hosting nonsense down was going to be a huge headache.
“So yeah,” Lito said, “more reason to travel.” He twisted around so he could give the ever-patient Spot another ear scrat
ch while he held his coffee in the other hand. “Dayspring Inn & Suites doesn’t have all that many locations in Georgia too far from the Atlanta area, so in the past I’ve always just taken day trips before when I needed to see something. This will be new.”
He didn’t look enthused by the concept. More like exhausted. “I’ll always be happy to let Spot bunk with my two idiots when you’re gone,” Dave offered. “They had fun last night. Loud I-don’t-know-where-they-get-all-that-energy fun, but all three were clearly having a blast.”
“Thanks.”
The offer won Dave another one of those genuine little smiles.
“On a not-entirely unrelated note,” Lito said, “I think I’ve forgotten most of what was in that ‘how to not get mauled by wolves while lost in the woods’ handout you gave me way back when. You’re not expecting all that much teaching from me today, are you? I mean, I know the basics—”
The basics would be more than enough. “Don’t worry about it,” Dave assured him. “They’re not going to be grading us on our presentation. Junior said it’s only for the sixth and seventh grades, and the kids got a list of something like two dozen speakers to pick from. I wouldn’t be surprised if we only end up with a handful who signed up to hear us.”
Lito laughed. Really laughed. “Did your school never do these? They’re universally terrible. I guarantee you, when ‘dogs who find dead bodies’ get stacked up against the chance to hear the school nurse lecture on healthy eating or watching a Smokey the Bear video from the seventies, the dogs are gonna win.”
“Seriously?”
“Trust me.”
The school wasn’t at all hard to find: it was a giant brick monstrosity with a mural of the school logo painted over the entrance. Dave could have pointed it out from half a mile away. Lito got the three dogs in their vests and harnesses while Dave double-checked that everything in his box of hand-outs was how he remembered it.