“That’s not the problem?” Again, I glance across to where Michael glumly sits, ignoring the stony-faced Casey right beside him.
“Casey’ll be loyal to Alex Richardson until his last breath,” she explains patiently, leaning closer to be heard. There’s a strange intimacy to being so quiet within the noisy stadium, sharing girlfriend secrets amidst the din. “So even if you were from the boys’ club, he’d be acting up the same way. Hell, maybe worse, for that matter.”
I nod, not sure what to say, but feeling a swell of appreciation for her analysis. “So how do you feel about Michael dating a woman?”
She laughs, loudly—a little too loudly—and it startles me, but then she leans so close against me that I feel a soft roll of flesh on her upper arm pressing against mine. She’s not fat, just soft everywhere, and likes to touch constantly. “I think the better question was how did I feel when Michael first started dating Alex.”
My eyebrows arch upward until I actually feel my hairline lift. “Do tell,” I say, hearing my soft southern accent kick in double-time. Marti reaches into her purse, retrieving a subtly disguised flask, and douses her Coke with a bit of liquid that smells like bourbon. She extends the silver container to me and I hold out my own Diet Coke for some enhancement.
“Has he told you that Alex was—” she hesitates, taking a large swallow of her drink,“—a departure? From his usual ways?”
“Yeah, he did, actually.”
“Did you know Michael used to date me? That I’m the one who introduced him to Alex?”
“No way!” I exclaim like a shotgun, and she begins to laugh, shaking her head.
Now, I have to tell you that picturing my Michael Warner with this round, squat woman beside me is almost as hard as picturing him with a man. Harder, maybe, because I can’t fathom a lick of chemistry between these two. Some women exude motherhood and comfort, and Marti’s one of them, which in my mind doesn’t exactly translate to romantic allure. Then again, looking into her luminous green eyes, wide-set within a heart-shaped face that’s framed by carefree black curls, I can also see the natural beauty that would have attracted my guy. In fact, between Alex and Marti, and now disfigured me, I think I might be detecting a pattern here.
Michael Warner goes with his heart.
“It didn’t last long,” she says with an almost nostalgic smile. “We were much more friends than anything. We bickered constantly, like brother and sister, but we had a lot of fun, too. I met Dave right after, and Michael…” she hesitates, glancing at Andrea, then stage-whispers in my ear, “…he figured out his Alex thing pretty much right away, too.”
“Was that bizarre?” I’m thinking about Trevor and our close bond of friendship. “Seeing your boyfriend hop from you to your best guy friend?”
“It might have been, but none of us knew for a long time. And when we finally did know, well, the bigger shock was how they’d hidden it from us in the first place.”
“Really?” I can’t imagine someone as confident and honest as Michael keeping his sexual orientation a secret from his friends. For some reason, this newfound knowledge fascinates me. “For how long?”
“Six months, can you believe it? Poor Alex, he was going crazy getting shoved back into the closet like that.”
“So what happened?” I take a slow sip of bourbon-spiked Coke.
“Michael was so scared by the whole thing, so uncertain and weirded out, that apparently they almost broke up before he’d even let Alex tell us.”
“But they did tell you.”
“Not exactly. One Saturday morning Casey showed up at Alex’s apartment, wanting to drag him off to breakfast. Michael was in the shower, and never heard him enter the apartment, and then, bam! He wandered right into the kitchen wearing only a towel and a sloppy grin on his face.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Oooh, Casey was pissed, too,” she titters in my ear, clucking her tongue. “Oh, my Lord! Warner was totally on his shit list for a long time. The Closeted One, that’s what he called him every time we got together.”
“Was Casey jealous, you think?”
“Protective. Possessive, maybe,” she says, reflecting. “But not jealous. It was never desire with Alex; they were too much like brothers.”
“How’d he handle his death?”
Her expression darkens, and she looks to the field, contemplative. “How have we all handled it?” she finally reflects. “We’ve tried like hell to be there for Michael and Andrea. Ignored our own pain, because we know it’s nothing compared to…” She glances next to her at Dave, who is listening to his Walkman for the radio play-by-play. She slips a fleshy palm onto his forearm, squeezing.
“To what Michael and Andrea lost,” I finish and she nods with a faint smile.
“My point, though,” she says, “is that Casey put Michael through some serious hell over ‘queering up’ with Alex, as he called it back then. Now that you’ve come along, he’s just as protective of Michael as he used to be of Alex.”