Page 33 of Leo and His Love Bunny

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

Cal is one of the most unselfish people I know. I’ve played with him for over seven years. Typically in sports like ours, people aren’t teammates that long. But he and I grew up together, and no one knows it, but I took a pay cut to stay with the team a few years ago. I didn’t want to leave my teammates, and I like the sense of permanency. I like playing with peoplelike Cal, who are more concerned about the team than they are about themselves.

Up until this point in our lives, I thought he was relatively sane.

“I checked it out. It’s seriously legit. You should do it. Anteaters are cute.”

“How about you do it for a couple of months, and you can let me know how it goes for you.” I take a breath, feeling like his father instead of his friend. “And keep a close eye on your accounts, because you give your credit card information to those people and they’ll drain your account before you even know it.”

“I can pay through PalPaid. They’ll never get my information.”

I pull back and start walking again, and he falls into step beside me. He really is a great friend and a great teammate. He’ll support me no matter what, and he’ll sacrifice his own career, give up whatever he needs to, in order to help win the game. He’s not a selfish player in any respect.

I suppose I should support him and his anteater adopting quest.

“All right. Fine. I’ll adopt one too.” We’re paying through PalPaid, so our information should be safe, but it still sounds like a scam to me.

“The family actually lives here in Virginia,” he says as he squints a little and pulls the phone closer to his face as he reads the fine print on the website. “Wouldn’t it be cool to look them up?”

I’m trying to get on board, but my mind wants to go back to Nora. What was wrong with her? Had she gotten a phone call this morning from some busybody in town who was giving her a hard time? After seeing her last night, I know that she feels bad about what happened and truly didn’t mean for it to.

But I don’t know what more to do. I’ve done everything I can, and hopefully people will soon find something else to gossip about.

“I just sent you the link. You can pick whether you want a male or female, young one or an old one. And then just choose which level of donation per month you want to have.”

I nod as he pulls open the gym door and I walk through, clicking the link on my phone and waiting for the page to load. I don’t give a flip what kind of anteater I get.

“Hey. We can get siblings!” Cal says, grabbing my phone as I walk by.

“Hey,” I say as he compares our phones, and then he clicks and swipes.

As he’s holding it, it dings with a message.

His fingers stop as his eyes look over the message, and I resist the urge to grab my phone out of his hands. I don’t know who it is, although I do know that Nora is up since I just saw her, and I’m sure there’s something wrong. I want to grab my phone back and see if it’s her and see if she’ll tell me what the problem is or ask me to help in some way.

“I’m not sure what’s up with this. You want to explain yourself, pal?” Cal says, his brows drawn down, and his eyes narrow like I had done something wrong.

I take the phone back, giving him a glance, before I read the message that has come up on the screen.

Thanks for last night.

“So what happened with Nora last night?” Cal asks, and there’s a little bit of accusation in his voice. I’ve always been known as a clean-cut player, and part of my inspirational speaking to school-age children is about morality and treating yourself and others with respect, forming deep and abiding relationships, and not jumping from partner to partner.

I swallow. How am I going to explain this?

Even as I think that, the thought runs through my head that I had just been wondering what had gotten Nora so down and that I had done everything I could for her. But not everything.

I can roll with this. I can say that we were together. As in more together than her just providing cupcakes for my presentations over the summer.

But no. Lying is how I ended up in this mess to begin with, not that it’s exactly a mess. But I don’t want my life to unfold in a series of lies because of a series of lies.

So, I will my mouth to only say the truth. We show our IDs to the desk clerk and walk into the locker room.

“She and I are going to do some things together, and she’s going to provide cupcakes for my speaking engagements this summer.” I need to make some phone calls today. “We spent some time last night talking about it.”

“Talking?” Cal says as he shrugs his bag off his shoulders and puts it on the bench.

“And we had a paper airplane contest,” I say, smiling as I remember again who had won that contest. I look Cal in the eye. Never say that I can’t deliver the hard news. “I lost.”

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