Chapter Nineteen
November blew into December, along with a lot more wind and snow and a flurry of holiday shopping. Nate liked to get most of his out of the way the weekend after Thanksgiving, but between his parents’ visit and sex with Aubrey, he had barely made a dent.
At work, the mood had improved post-holiday, leaving Nate to wonder if everyone simply needed a good meal and some time with their families. Kelly and Caley’s news had the studio buzzing—everyone loved good news—and Carl brought photos of his newest pride and joy, grandchild number four.
On the air, Nate and Aubrey were smooth as a newly resurfaced rink and as sharp as fresh blades. The Thursday after Thanksgiving, Jess pulled them aside as Kelly covered the women’s game.
“What’s up?” Aubrey asked as the door to the office closed.
Jess ditched her earpiece on the desk. “Are you guys doing some kind of mind-reading thing or something?”
Nate glanced at Aubrey. “Mind-reading?” they chorused, turning back to Jess in unison.
She pointed at them. “See! That! That’s creepy. I mean, it’s compelling television, but it’s still creepy.”
Aubrey glanced at Nate. “Sorry,” they said, in unison again.
Nate felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, but he tamped down on it.
Jess stared at them. For a second, Nate thought she’d actually ask, but after a moment, she shook her head and moved on. “Well, I specifically remember telling you not to change anything, but since you actually got better, I can’t complain.”
“Does this mean we’re off the chopping block?” Nate asked.
“What am I, a fortune-teller?” She rolled her eyes. “The meeting’s next week. I told you, the network does not like to be rushed.”
“So what did you call us in here for?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She smiled, and Nate could have sworn, once again, that she was going to congratulate them. Instead she just said, “Producer stuff. Keep up the good work.”
“She knows,” Aubrey hissed as they walked back to the set.
Nate figured maybe she did.
As luck would have it, their first road trip after Thanksgiving put them in Vegas.
Before he and Nate started dating for real, Aubrey had emailed a real estate agent just to take a look around.
Whether he took the job or not—whether the show was renewed or not—his contract was up after playoffs, and it might not be renewed. He was keeping his options open.
He was supposed to swing by the Cirque office, maybe take a tour of their facility if he had time.
The problem was how to fit all that into one day without Nate noticing.
Not because Aubrey didn’t want him to know, but because he felt like he should have told him already, even though he hadn’t auditioned.
Even though he didn’t plan to leave unless the worst happened.
Somehow it felt like if he mentioned it, it would be a vote of no confidence on both the show and their relationship.
So keeping it secret from Nate was a problem… or it would have been a problem, except Nate ate the chicken cacciatore on the red-eye they took late Friday night.
To avoid scrutiny, they’d agreed not to stay in each other’s rooms on business trips, especially since it had come out in an interview with a local magazine that they’d shared in Winnipeg.
So Aubrey didn’t find out Nate was sick until the next morning.
He woke up to a text message—Food poisoning. Feel like im dying.
God, poor Nate. Aubrey was resolved to be a good boyfriend, but he wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. Should he go hold his hair back, metaphorically speaking? But Aubrey wouldn’t want anyone to see him heave his breakfast into a toilet bowl, especially not Nate.
What if Nate needed help getting to the toilet bowl, though? That was the least sexy thought Aubrey had ever had about Nate, but he wasn’t going to let him suffer. Boyfriends sucked it up and offered their services in situations like this. That was what love was for. Right?
Aubrey was kind of hoping not, but to be sure, he walked down the hall to Nate’s door and knocked. He could cancel his apartment showings. “Nate?” he called. “You need anything?”
It took a moment, but eventually Nate opened the door. His face was ashen, sallow, and damp with sweat. Aubrey fought the urge to take a step back. He smelled like stale sweat and vomit. “Front desk is sending up some meds.”
They had a call in six hours. “Are you going to—”
He never got to finish the sentence. Nate ran to the bathroom. He didn’t even have time to close the door; Aubrey could hear him retching from the hallway.
“I’ll tell Jess to send Kelly in your place? We can do a teleconference for the intermission interviews.”
Nate retched again, and Aubrey’s stomach rebelled. What a time to find out he’d turned into a sympathetic vomiter. “Thanks,” Nate said weakly a moment later.
“I’m, uh, I’m going to go,” Aubrey said. “Text me if you need anything, okay?”
Nate didn’t answer verbally, but he stuck his arm out the bathroom door and gave a thumbs-up.
Aubrey fled and carefully closed the door behind him.
Then he set out house-hunting, even though he was only looking semi-seriously.
He stood in the center of the living room of the first apartment.
It was furnished, on a fashionably high floor, with huge tinted windows with blackout curtains.
It might as well be his apartment in Chicago.
The layout was almost the same—one huge bedroom, open floor plan, big bathroom.
This one had laundry service instead of an in-suite setup.
There was a pool on the roof and a gym on the main floor.
It was very much the sort of bachelor pad Aubrey had always sought out and lived in, and it felt completely wrong.
He gave Sarah, the agent, his best tough-customer smile. “What else have you got?”
The second apartment was better, with a living room that spanned two full stories, a huge private balcony, and enough kitchen counter space to prepare two turkey dinners simultaneously. The walk-in closet with built-in drawers and shelving was big enough to host an orgy.
He hated it… except the closet.
By the time Sarah was showing him the third executive-style apartment, he’d figured out the trend. He could see himself living in these apartments just fine. There was nothing wrong with them.
He couldn’t see himself living in any of them with Nate.
It didn’t even make sense! Nate lived in an apartment very similar to Aubrey’s.
It should have been easy to superimpose him on any one of these places, to imagine him there with Aubrey as he often was with Aubrey at his actual apartment.
But the apartments they lived in now—those were already homes.
Aubrey couldn’t say why it was different, but it was.
The next property, on the other hand….
“I know you’re not looking for something with maintenance,” Sarah explained as she unlocked the door to let him in, “so I want to assure you that this is a condo. Everything’s taken care of in the monthly fees.”
“I’ll keep an open mind,” Aubrey promised.
“It’s also rented through the end of the week. We have permission from the residents to show it; they went to a movie. But the point is it’s not quite as tidy as an unoccupied home.”
“Nor should it be.” In truth he liked the way the place looked lived-in. The kitchen was bright and airy, with appliances along the left wall in front of quadruple patio doors and a huge island separating it from an open dining area and living room. There were two glasses in the kitchen sink.
“Master bedroom is this way,” Sarah said, gesturing to the right.
Aubrey followed her down a wide hallway to the far end of the house and a master bedroom with a king-size bed and a conversation set. The room also had a walkout to the yard.
“One-way privacy shades to keep the sun and any prying eyes from getting in, but you can still see out.” Sarah indicated a control panel next to the bed. “Master bathroom is just through there.”
It had every luxury Aubrey expected in a property like this and a few more besides. “Nice place,” he commented.
Sarah led them back down the hallway, saying something about the privileges at the development pool, but Aubrey accidentally tuned her out.
They were passing another door, which must be a second bedroom or maybe an office?
The door was cracked. Aubrey hadn’t been able to see in from the other direction, but now… . He nudged it open.
A canopy bed covered in a unicorn blanket took up one wall. Opposite that, a neat white wood desk housed a laptop and a pile of schoolbooks. A hammock overflowing with stuffed animals hung in the corner, and there was an in-progress Lego model of a spaceship on the floor.
It was like something had taken over his body. He stared stupidly, but he didn’t see the empty room. He was seeing a full one, three people sitting on the floor, two adults and a kid, putting the finishing touches on a block tower.
Aubrey suddenly realized that he was picking out a new place with the idea that he would be sharing his life. Of course a one-bedroom apartment didn’t seem right for that.
But he hadn’t realized that he’d also internalized what it might mean for him that Nate wanted children.
That wasn’t something you could compromise on.
Aubrey had never thought about it much himself—he’d been honest when he said that to Nate.
But apparently his subconscious had concluded that if he was going to settle down, he’d do it in whatever way made Nate the happiest.
The idea of having a family terrified him. But he’d be lying if he said it didn’t also fill him with a sort of warm fuzzy hope and, yeah, that was longing. Time for that identity crisis.
“The home does come furnished,” Sarah said, and Aubrey snapped back to the present. “But if you’d prefer to use this room as an office or gym, I’m sure the furniture in here can be relocated.”
“I thought you said the complex has a gym?” he said automatically.
“It does.” Sarah sounded a little confused, or maybe concerned. “Lots of people prefer their privacy, though.”
“Right.” Aubrey shook himself, willing the vision he’d had to disappear. Then, out of self-preservation, he pulled out his phone and checked the time, and—“I have to get back to the hotel.” How had the day gotten so far away from him? “I’ve got to be at the arena in an hour and a half.”
And he needed at least half that time to get his head back in the game.
Nate spent the weekend and half of Monday recuperating. Monday night he felt like himself again, but he didn’t see Aubrey until he got an invitation to lunch on Tuesday.
That turned into something else entirely, and then into a nap. So when Nate’s phone beeped and dragged him out of a glue-eyed slumber, he didn’t panic until he actually saw the time.
Then he peeled his face off Aubrey’s shoulder and shook him awake. “Hey. Get up.”
“If you wanna go again, I need coffee first,” Aubrey mumbled.
Nate shoved his phone in Aubrey’s face. “If we don’t get in the shower right now, we’re going to miss our call.”
“Shit!”
Nate scrambled back to his place to shower and met Aubrey downstairs.
“Think we’re busted?” Aubrey whispered as they got in the car that had obviously been waiting several minutes. His hair was still damp at the ends.
“At least we don’t smell like the same bodywash,” Nate muttered back. He was pretty sure that almost got them caught last week.
The car dropped them out front only a handful of minutes later than usual—enough that they could pass it off as bad traffic.
But when they stepped off the elevator and into a panic-free studio—a hallway where half the staff were standing around with somber faces and the other half looked about to punch someone—Nate knew.
“Ah, fuck,” Aubrey said.
Nate made an aborted grab for his hand but caught himself.
Before they could get any farther, Jess poked her head out of the office, looked up and down the hallway, and sighed. “No keeping a secret in this place. Nate, Aubrey, please come in. The rest of you, I’d appreciate if you could contain your catastrophizing until the staff meeting later.”
They closed the door behind them.
Jess didn’t make them wait long. “As you may have guessed, Larry was here late this afternoon, and apparently I do not have a poker face. But it’s not as dire as you’re thinking.”
“So, we’re not canceled?” Nate clarified.
Jess rubbed her hands over her face. “No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“Oh, well, that clears it up,” Aubrey said sardonically.
Nate shot him a quelling look, but he did have a point. “All right, can you explain in, I don’t know, five words or less?”
“The network sold the show.”
Nate blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh.”
Aubrey went a little further with it. “Oh, of course they…. They spent weeks harping on us about viewership and ratings and blah, blah, blah, and all the work we put in was just us inflating our value so they could fetch a higher price for us?”
Well, when he put it that way. “I feel like a fatted calf.”
“You know the show has always been an experiment.” Jess sighed. “The truth is, getting the licensing we did was a coup we only managed because there was a gap in coverage and the show was a guinea pig. Well, phase one of the experiment is over.”
Wait— “They sold us to ESBN?”
“Effective tomorrow,” Jess confirmed. She looked like she needed a stiff drink, or maybe eighteen solid hours of sleep. “We won’t know more about what’s happening to us until then.”
“Well.” Nate’s throat felt suddenly thick. “Let’s make tonight a good one.”
In the end, they got through the episode all right, but even though he and Aubrey were good at their jobs, Nate could tell their banter felt strained.
The game they were slated to cover was a gruesome slog, with the total shot clock barely creeping up to thirty at the end of three periods, the score a measly 1–0, and not even a fight to make things interesting.
Kelly’s coverage, at least, had more engaging fare to offer. The women’s game was tied 3–3 going into the second, and by the time it finished, it had crept up to 9–7.
They wrapped up as they always did, with score updates from around the league.
Nate wished he’d had time to come up with something new and different and original to say if this was going to be their final signoff, but he hadn’t.
The usual words felt hollow and insignificant.
“That’s all for tonight. Until next time, I’m Nate Overton—”
Under the desk, Aubrey put his hand on Nate’s leg. “And I’m Aubrey Chase—”
“And this has been The Inside Edge.”