Page 12 of Totally Opposed

“Doesn’t matter. You’re performers. You’ll play my star-crossed lovers, and they will love it.”

Dennis taps a few buttons on his phone andKissing Youby Des’ree starts playing.

“Will half the audience even get this reference?” I ask with a chuckle, and he pauses the song, puts one hand on his hip, and pops it out to the side.

“You got it, so I think we’ll be fine.”

Ryan looks from Dennis to me and back.

“What’s the reference?”

“See,” I say, stretching my arm out towards Ryan.

“It’s from the most incredible Romeo and Juliet movie ever made, the Baz Luhrmann masterpiece. If what I have planned is going to work, you’ll need to at least be able to mime the songs. I’ll send you both the list of songs and movies we will be referencing over the next few weeks. If I were you, I’d watch the movies first, then practice the songs.”

“How many movies are we talking about?” Ryan asks, but before Dennis can reply, I have a more important question.

“Did you say weeks?”

“So far five, and yes, weeks, so get to it, but if this thing takes off, there are countless movies to draw from. It’s one of the most popular tropes after all.”

“I never really liked it,” I say, and Dennis clutches his chest like my words have wounded him.

“Like it or not, you will practice the words to these songs. I don’t want any weird guppy fish mouths out there.” He hits play, and the song continues, and we go through some possible skits to go with it. The scene they used the song for in the movie has Romeo and Juliet spotting each other for the first time through a fish tank, and when Ryan flips his phone over and shows Dennis he can order adult costumes of various fish, he decides that is the way to go for this skit. We move through the list of songs and movies,Titanic. He wanted to do the bow of the ship scene, but we convinced him recreating the fun dance they do below deck would be way cooler. He’s hitting the younger crowd with a vampire skit, and it was nice seeing Ryan go all red-faced at the thought of biting into my neck. To tell you the truth. It excited me far more than I should have let it, too. Ryan is young, well, he’s actually about my age, but with his beautifulporcelain skin and bright blue eyes, he could pass for a decade younger. He’s sweet, too, and fucking gorgeous, but he’s also on the other team, and mixing business with pleasure, no matter howpleasurableit would likely be, I’m told, is not a good idea.

***

“It’s your turn,” Kelly, my sister, whines from the comfort of her bed while I pull on my trainers, sitting on the couch that was my bed for the few nights I stayed here. Getting her crap out of her spare room so that I could have my bed set up was a top priority after night one. This couch sucks. I really should try to get my own place. But I’ve never liked living alone. I grew up with my brothers and Kelly and Gramps always there, and I had roommates all the time up until I moved in with my ex. Not that living with him was an enjoyable experience. At first it was. You know, when you first meet someone, and they show you the rose-colored version of themselves, then… bam! Their true colors shine through, only now you’re invested, you’re in love and you explain away all the red flag behaviors because it was good once. It was perfect, and you know that if you are just good enough, they will be that person again. Only with him there was no turning back, because the rose-colored version wasn’t just him on his best behavior, it was a complete fabrication of a man he never was and could never be. When I finally got up the courage to leave, Kelly was on my doorstep an hour later with a trailer and she helped move me out of there and into her place.

“How is it my turn?” I reply, grabbing my gym bag from beside the couch.

“I took Precious to the vet for him last week, remember?”

Oh shit, yeah, I do remember. Gramps insisted that his cat, Precious, which I am still not convinced isn’t the spawn of Satan, had swallowed a button from one of his shirts. I was not sittingin a vet’s office with that thing trying to claw at my face the whole time, seeing as he refused to crate her or go with her, so Kelly took the hit.

“But I have the gym this morning, then training.”

“Go after training.”

“Does he need to eat? I mean, he’s old and chubby. Surely he can go a few more days. Oh, we can have Quickdrop deliver him his groceries.”

“Nope, last time we tried that he attacked the delivery guy with a stick, and now none of them will go there. Besides, he likes it better when you shop for him. You get him all the stuff I refuse to.”

Fuck.

“Fine, I’ll go after training.”

It isn’t that we don’t love Gramps. We do. I have some of my best childhood memories with him, and he’s the reason I love baseball at all. It’s just that he doesn’t think what I do is baseball, and he doesn’t miss an opportunity to tell me as much whenever I see him. He hasn’t even come to a game before. He’s basing all of his opinion on what he’s seen in the papers about us, so it’s really hard not to get into an argument with him over it. Plus, if it’s not Banana Ball he’s complaining about, it’s my love life. He doesn’t give a shit that I’m gay. He does care that I am gay and almost thirty and single again. If he knew what a controlling douchebag my ex was, he probably wouldn’t give me such a hard time about finding another guy. No. He probably would. He’d just tell me to pick better next time.

At least now that Harry has moved in with his boyfriend, I won’t have to hear about all thevisitorshe has or fend off the repeated requests that I sneak over there and install curtains.

“Dean and Nial should have him visit the ranch and get him out of our hair for a while,” I tell her.

Our other brothers Dean and Nial took over the ranch in Bellerelle when it got too much for Gramps and moved him out to Savannah. I didn’t think it would stick, but they found an apartment he didn’t hate and got him the spawn of Satan, and he never looked back.

“You’d have better luck getting them to visit here. Actually, it’s been ages. We should get them to come to one of your games now that you’re actually in the league and all.”

I scoff. “I was in the league last year, too.”

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