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My face grows hot. Shit. Whatdidhe see?
“It wasn’t that, I swear,” I tell him, but he’s closer to the truth than I care to admit. Brendan just smiles and nods.
“Are you not eating?” I ask, noticing that he hasn’t got a plate in front of him, only a cup of hot coffee.
“Oh, you didn’t collect a plate for me then? Okay, I see how it is,” he says.
“I, um,” I mumble, and he laughs, deep dimples forming in both his cheeks.
“I’m joking, dickhead. I just wanted to set down the coffee before grabbing a plate, then you decided to head-butt me, and I figured I should probably sit down in case I pass out.”
“Right, sorry again, but I swear I wasn’t looking at what you think.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you were. We all have our ways of starting the day. I usually reserve my porn watching for when I can jerk off in private, but you do you.” With a smirk and a wink that sends a whirl through my gut, he stands and heads to the buffet.
If I didn’t know he was straight, I would think that he was flirting. I mean, why else would anyone bring up porn and masturbation this early in the morning?
***
“Okay, so tell me what you have in mind,” Brendan says before shoveling another piece of bacon into his mouth. At first, that’s all I thought he came back with. Bacon. But the rest of his breakfast was hiding underneath the ten or so pieces.
“Well, what I was thinking is we play off the whole rivalry thing.” His brow furrows, and I quickly explain further. “You know how we have the dance battle that we’ll be doing for game one?”
He nods, mumbling something through his chews that I’m going to assume is a yes. “What if we keep that sort of thing going? Even if they don’t continue to use us in their social media stuff, we can do our own. We can even use our articles to rival each other, pointing out opposite views and stuff.”
“They did split us up to follow the opposite teams,” he says, sipping from his coffee.
“Exactly. You’ve been given Animal Control and I’ve got Funky Monkeys to follow along with, and even if they swap us over mid-tour, we’ll still be on opposing sides. We’re already rivals. We’re already focusing on opposing teams. Let’s use that. There’s one downside, though. I mean, you might not see it as a downside, given everything we, well, you…” My face grows warmer with each millisecond that passes.
He puts down his fork, crosses his arms over his chest, and leans back a little in his chair.
“What is it?” he asks.
“We have to keep it going all the time. If people are going to believe it. If we want to build real belief in this rivalry, this breakfast will be the last time that we can be in public together andnotbe rivals.”
He leans in and bites his bottom lip. My stomach does a flippy thing, and when he squints his eyes, the corners crinkle, and fuck me if it isn’t adorable.
“So you want me to act like I hate you when we’re in public, in front of the other writers, in front of the players?”
“It doesn’t have to behate,“ I try to explain. “More of a general dislike, but yeah. I mean, we kinda have that going for us already. Benny noticed there was something up between us. I’m sure some of the other players and writers have, too. We just keep that going.”
“I don’t know about this,” he says, leaning back again.
Suddenly, he has a problem acting like he doesn’t like me? It was only yesterday he was shooting me daggers and making snide remarks. True, I now know why, and it’s fucking warranted. But this plan is a real way that I can make it up to him. This is a way that we can build up hype, not just about the game, but about us, too. Social media will be all over it. People love conflict. People love to take sides. He still doesn’t look convinced. Why is he worried all of a sudden for people to think that he hates me?
“Is this about you not wanting to lie?” I ask, wondering suddenly if my willingness to lie is something I should worry about. All those years writing gossip, it wasn’t lies exactly, but we stretched the truth, or at least implied things that we didn’t have all the facts on. That’s what got him in this situation, but not knowing the whole truth kind of got him here on his own,too. He said he didn’t know who she was when he took her back to that room, but a couple of questions and he could’ve avoided all of this. I mean, I’m assuming he would’ve avoided it. No one goes out of their way to be the one that’s cheated with, do they?
“I’m just not sure the other writers will buy it. They saw us last night at dinner. We were fine, all of us got along pretty well. Don’t you think they’ll find it odd that we’re suddenly back to hating each other again?”
“Again, nothate, and maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t really matter if they do, I guess. But if we want to really sell it, it’s probably best they think we at least aren’t friendly. We could tone it down for them. Sit on opposite sides of the table when the whole group of us are together, not engage with each other. If one of us asks the other a question, we give those, you know, short, one-word answers. All that passive-aggressive stuff that assholes do, we can do that?”
“So basically, everything I was doing before.”
“Yeah, exactly. Should be super easy for you, right?” I laugh and then worry for a second when he doesn’t laugh, too. Did I go one step too far? I want this to be a pretend rivalry, I don’t want us to be real rivals. Relief floods through me when he suddenly smiles.
He nods and pops another piece of bacon into his mouth and says through his chewing, “Okay, I’m in.”
We agree to encourage the choreographer to include us whenever he likes too. We’re pretty sure that he’s not going to have any issues, as long as the focus stays on the new teams and their tour.
