Page 3 of Tumbling the Cornerback

“He had no right,” began Walrus.

“Hey. Maybe you two need to take a walk.”

The low rumble of a voice sent a shiver straight down my spine. I didn’t have to turn to know who’d come up behind me.

The two dads turned as one and stared. In just a few breaths, their rancor fell away, replaced with childlike adoration. “Cooper Howard,” Questionable Footwear breathed. “I’m a huge fan.”

“Me too,” Walrus interjected, glaring at Footwear before turning a wide, hopeful smile towards the gentle giant behind me. “Huge.”

Cooper took a step closer. I could feel his body heat even though we weren’t touching. It should’ve seemed gross on such a hot day, but I wanted to sigh and slump against him, a small swoon to make him catch me.

Oh my god, Lucas, stop watching those period dramas with Abu! “I’ve got this,” I growled under my breath.

“Hey, man,” Ryeland said, all jocularity and big smiles as he crowded in next to Cooper. “What’s up?”

Wyatt joined his teammates, and I was surrounded by a wall of giant men. Which, on any other day, would’ve been a dream come true, but today of all days?

Not so much.

Cooper pressed forward, slipping past me. He shot me a friendly grin, meant to tell me he was helping out and to let him handle things.

I mean, maybe I was reading too much into it, but I knew that look. I’d seen it so many times over the years—someone sees the short guy, the femme guy, into cheer and wearing eyeliner, prime bully bait, and they think, well, obviously, he can’t handle this on his own. Let me step up for that poor weak guy.

Fuck that.

“Cooper, I appreciate your assistance, but?—”

“It’s no trouble, buddy,” he said. Then he ruffled my hair.

Oh. My. God.

A few of the parents laughed.

I seethed.

Cooper dropped his hand and shoved it in his shorts pocket. He also had the good sense to avert his eyes on the off chance I suddenly manifested laser powers and burned them out of his skull.

The players and the dads had fallen into a discussion about the team, youth sports, and the dads’ college bowl games.

Liesel was shooting me annoyed, do something looks.

The guys were drawing a crowd, parents and kids abandoning the tents to drift over and rubberneck. The small handful of media closing in like sharks in chummed water.

The day was spinning out of control. Posts about how the event sucked danced before my eyes. The social media posts about how the event turned into a brawl, about how the queer sports group couldn’t even have one day without drama. My heart jackrabbited against my ribs.

Drawing myself up to my full height, I planted my hands on my hips. In my best cheer captain shout, I called out, “Okay! Let’s break this up! Hey, kids, we’re about to do a demo in the cheer tent! Who wants to come see and learn some cool tricks?”

I gathered a coterie of children and, like a cheerleading Pied Piper, led them over to the tent. Benny stood with Marisol and Liz, who were showing them how to do a perfect standing pike. Tori fluttered nearby, rushing to help me herd kids into the area we’d cleared for seating. The plan had been a demo, then a brief talk about being a professional cheerleader (highly edited for the kids because they didn’t need to know about how it was poorly paid and poorly supported—this was supposed to be a fun day, damn it!) The QS volunteers assigned to our tent got into place, and we started the music. The routine was simple but showcased some moves that were way more advanced than any elementary or middle school cheer squad would do.

We demonstrated some of our most popular cheers and short versions of routines for about fifteen minutes, ending with a basket toss, always a crowd pleaser. I mentally thanked the gods—namely, the 1970s Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, hallowed be thy names—that our tent allowed Marisol to be tossed so high. Otherwise, that’d be one more disaster to add to the day’s roster.

The kids went wild, whooping and hollering as we took our bows and did our post-cheer wave and bounce. Someone turned the music off, and volunteers passed around juice boxes while we settled on the floor to answer some questions. Other volunteers moved some thick mats into place behind us for the kid-participation portion of the proceedings. Some questions were expected, mostly about uniforms and did we get to be on TV, and a few more pointed ones asked about the league’s attitude towards queer cheerleaders and boy cheerleaders.

“Well,” I said, “there’s not a lot of us guys in professional cheer for the NFL but there’s way more than there used to be. And so far, just from my own experience, it’s been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve never had to hide who I was, and with very few exceptions, other cheerleaders and the players have been very accepting.”

“Were some people mean?” a little kid in the front row asked. “Did you have to tell your dad to beat up their dad?”

I snorted at that mental image. My dad was the sweetest, softest man on the planet, preferring to work on his doctoral thesis on the creation stories of the Olmecs than do anything aggressive. p. “No, I didn’t have to get my dad involved, but some people have some really old ideas about what it means to be a man, or what men should and shouldn’t do. I show them they’re wrong by being awesome at being me.”

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