Page 54 of Game Misconduct

It seemed like a long time before Mike said, “Jesus, you’re heavy,” his voice hoarse from begging.

“Hmm,” Danny said, disinclined to move.

“I’m still like—my whole fucking body is vibrating,” Mike said, “shit, this is fuckingweird,” then started trying to wriggle out from underneath him, to push at Danny’s shoulders. “Get off of me, asshole.”

With anyone else it might have ruined the moment, but Mike saidassholein the same tone of voice Danny used when he saidI love youand for a minute, he thought,god, I’m going to fuck it up, I can’t fuck it up. What he said was, “Okay, okay.”

“Shit,” Mike said, again, and he started laughing, a sort of hysterical giggle. “You really fuck me up, Danny.”

“That’s the general idea,” Danny replied, pressing his lips against Mike’s shoulder. He couldn’t help smiling, warm and fond, even though he knew he should rein it in.

They spent most of the rest of the morning in bed, until around noon Mike staggered out of the bedroom complaining, “Dude, I don’t know how you’re still—and you’reold—I have toeatsomething, okay?”

They passed the remainder of the afternoon eating delivery pho and watchingGoonon Netflix, at least until Mike glanced at his phone and said, “We should get cleaned up to go, right?”

Danny, who had been dreading this, said, “Yes.”

They showered together, didn’t fool around—“I couldn’t get it up even if I wanted to, dude,” Mike groaned when Danny tried—and then there was no getting out of it.

It was time to get ready to see his family.

Danny had agonized over what to wear, not wanting to seem as though he was trying too hard to look normal, not wanting to seem like he was a depressed slob who spent most of his time at home alone on the couch, his body aching. In the end he’d settled on something completely nondescript. Khaki trousers and a blue, gold and tan Fair Isle sweater, brown leather dress shoes, and hoped for the best. He discovered, not surprisingly, that Mike didn’t own many clothes that weren’t Under Armour, band T-shirts, skinny jeans, black oversize sweaters, or leather jackets. He had a single pair of dress shoes, but they looked like the kind of thing an awkward teenager would buy for a prom.

“How many leather jackets do youneed?” Danny asked, bemused.

“I wear all of them, fuck you,” Mike said, then looked mournfully in his drawer. “I guess I could wear my ugly sweater from last year...”

It was, indeed, an ugly sweater. It was knitted and stylized with the Cons’ red, white, and blue logo, and it looked completely, incongruously out of character on Mike, but it was that or black and more black. In the end, that and a pair of jeans that weren’t ripped yet had to do.

Mike drove and Danny tried not to fidget in the passenger seat. He really wished he’d thought to have a drink at Mike’s before they left, just to calm his nerves, but he didn’t want to ask Mike for that. That would be another kind of exposure he couldn’t handle today. So his fingers tapped on the armrest and he chewed on his lip.

Mike, making a left-hand turn, glanced sideways at him. “Dude, it’s gonna be fine, okay?”

“I know,” Danny answered, curt and clipped.

Mike reached over and put a hand on his knee. “Really. And if it’s not, I’ll take you home, okay?”

He hadn’t noticed what he’d said, but Danny did, and he stilled, slid his own hand on top of Mike’s. “Okay.”

Chris and Celi lived in Mt. Airy, a residential neighborhood filled with Victorian twin homes constructed of brick and stone. They had bought the house a few years ago and spent the entire time they lived there renovating it, and it was homey and warm, everything Danny’s wreck of a house wasn’t. They’d landscaped the front lawn. He was pretty sure they’d never found any cats in their garbage can. Josie had a little swing set in the backyard and they had a vegetable garden on the sunny side of the house. They’d decorated for the holiday, strings of multicolored lights, some hung neatly, some messily at about the level a two-year-old could reach.

Mike parked outside and looked sideways at him. “You good?”

“No,” Danny said, because it was easier to be honest. He felt the yawning void inside of him, and he didn’t like it.

Impulsively, Mike leaned across the center console and kissed him. It was brief, barely anything but a press of Mike’s mouth against his—they were almost in public, after all—and pulled away. “You will be.”

It wasn’t fair, Danny thought as he followed Mike up the stone path to the door, holding the bag with Josie’s present in it. It wasn’t fair that Mike was such an asshole sometimes but was instinctively so kind. He was thinking how fucked up he was going to be when this was inevitably over, but then Celi opened the door and Josie, dressed in reindeer pajamas, came barreling out barefoot and shrieking,“Tío Danny! Tío Danny!”

He knelt down and dropped the bag to catch her in his arms, and his knee cracked. He winced in pain but kept his balance and hauled her up into a bear hug. She had grown so much since he’d last seen her, but she was still the same affectionate, silly Josie, patting his beard with inquisitive hands. “Your face!” she said, delighted. “So fuzzy.”

“Te quiero mucho,” he murmured into her hair.

“Te quiero,” she assured him.

Danny finally looked up and saw that Celi and Chris were standing there too, and his stomach dropped. This was the moment he’d been worried about. Someone who would hold him accountable for the shitty way he’d acted this year. But Celi, gray at her temples and laugh lines at the corners of her eyes, just stepped forward and hugged him and Josie both.

“Danny—god, it’s so good to see you.”

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