Page 56 of Game Misconduct

The conversation flowed easily enough after that. Chris’s job had been frustrating: with Xfinity expanding and hiring, the HR department had been insanely busy. Josie had been suspended from preschool for repeated biting incidents and being unable to follow the behavior plan they’d written up for her, but had won over the teachers again by hugging all of them and sayingI sorrywhen she’d returned. It felt weirdly natural to have Mike here with his family, like he fit right in. At some point during the dinner Josie decided she wanted to sit on Mike’s lap, fascinated with the tattoos peeking out from beneath his sweater. He let her.

“Drawings?” she asked.

“Yes, but they don’t come off,” Mike told her. “They’re called tattoos.”

“Why?”She sounded impressed, though.

“I like them, and I wanted them forever.”

“You color them?”

“I like black,” Mike said, and patted her on her chubby arm.

“They need color,” Josie said, frowning.

Before it was time for buñuelos and coffee, Danny helped Celi and Chris clear the table while Mike took Josie into the living room to play and keep her away from their feet. Danny was washing the dishes when Chris said, “So how long has this been a thing?”

“Uhh...” Danny really didn’t want to say July, because he knew Araceli would put two and two together, and the less he thought of that awful dinner, one of his true low points, the better. He still broke out in a cold sweat when he thought about his parents watching hopefully as Celi had started talking about how concerned they were. What a horror and a relief it had been to just get up and leave them all behind. “October, I guess?”

Saying it like that, things sounded probably as though they were moving too fast. But Mike had been a part of his life, for better or worse, since that first game in October last season. When Danny had almost knocked Mike out cold and started something neither of them knew would happen.

Chris’s eyebrows went up again. “October, wow. He seems, uh...pretty smitten.”

“Chris,” Celi said, warning. “Stop teasing him.”

“Sorry, sorry, I can’t help it. It’s, uh, it’s sweet.”

Danny looked down at the sink, embarrassed but also weirdly, strangely pleased, and said nothing. He was mostly just relieved that no one had said anything about his long absence, and if they hadn’t exactly picked up like nothing had happened, neither of them was rubbing his nose in it. He knew he’d fucked up but for now, it was just nice to be here, near them.

“Hey,” he said, drying his hands on the towel and shoving an envelope at them, “I got you guys a present.”

“Danny, you didn’t have to—”

“Well, I know, but take it, okay?”

It was a set of gift certificates to different restaurants in the city. He’d picked Mike’s brain for trendy places that a couple of forty-somethings would enjoy on their nights off from toddler-wrangling and chosen a week’s worth of them. The gift for Josie, which she wouldn’t open until the morning, was a tabletop easel appropriate for toddlers, and brand-new sets of markers and crayons and acrylic paint.

“Well, thank you,” Celi said, a little severely.

“I’m not trying to buy my way out of this,” he muttered. “It’s just Christmas and I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Thank you,” Chris said, and patted him on the shoulder.

By the time the worst of the mess was cleaned up and Celi had started frying up the buñuelos, Danny went back out into the living room and saw that Mike had rolled up his sweater sleeves and was letting Josie color in his tattoos with the markers. Josie bent over him in intense concentration, her tongue sticking out as she worked. Mike’s forearms were a riot of color, yellows and reds and oranges all bleeding into each other and into the negative and gray space of his tattoos. She’d drawn a huge ladybug in the blank space on his left hand.

When he saw Danny watching, Mike grinned. “Everyone always asks me if they’re finished. Guess they are now, huh?”

I love you, Danny thought, and said, “Well, until you take a shower, anyway. Josie, what a good job you did,” and he sat down on the floor next to them, the weight on his shoulders lighter than it had been in a long time.

Mike wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he’d invited Danny to stay for the holidays. He’d done it the same way he did a lot of things in his life, which was to act on instinct and worry about the consequences later. It turned out to be one of the better decisions he’d made that way but also he’d been embarrassingly wrong about several things, though he couldn’t really muster up the energy to be angry about it.

The first thing he’d been wrong about was that it wasn’t awkward at all hanging out with Danny’s family. Okay, wrong: it had been a little awkward at first, especially because he wasn’t at all used to dealing with babies, but they were reallynice. There was none of the out-of-place feeling he hated so much when he went home to his own parents and siblings, the way he couldn’t talk to them about anything he was actually interested in, none of the desperate longing for approval that he never truly received. Celi and Chris were just really, genuinely nice, incredibly welcoming, and hadn’t made him feel weird or out of place, especially considering their first impression of Mike had been him knocking out Danny’s teeth.

The second thing he’d been wrong about was his worry that maybe having Danny staying at his place for so long would be uncomfortable, or that they’d get bored of talking to each other for so long. Instead it turned out that the more time he spent with Danny it was like the more Mike needed his attention and the more he wanted to talk to him and find out things about him and know him, which was kind of actually terrifying. Mike didn’t want to think about that one or what it meant for too long.

The third thing he’d been wrong about was the drinking and drug shit. Mike watched him like a hawk the whole time, but Danny only drank when Mike did, and not to excess. He was still taking the pills, but the prescription was a legit prescription, so. Mike couldn’t really say shit about that, even though he was still so fucking worried. It was just that he’d been prepared for something worse, and he hadn’t seen it.

The fourth thing he’d been wrong about was sex.

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