Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Leo has been looking into a lot of puppy eyes lately. Currently, there are two sets gleaming at him inside Pawsitive Futures, where he and Gabe are washing a fifty-pound husky-lab mix that has one amber eye and one icy-blue eye.
“I hope you didn’t think you were just coming here to pose with the dogs,” Ollie made sure to tell the group of players that’s here volunteering.
Despite their attempts to argue their way in, Ollie didn’t end up inviting any of the guys from the group in Acapulco to his rescue agency’s facilities for Miami Open Unites.
“You’re all here to help get these perfect babies ready for the Pawsitive Futures adoption event this weekend.
That means chipping in with baths and cleaning up the play area where they’ll meet their potential owners. ”
The rescue that Leo and Gabe are washing—er, trying to wash—is named Achilles, and Achilles would prefer to put his paws on Gabe’s shoulders and lick Gabe’s face than take a bath.
Leo, as is becoming harder and harder for him to deny, can relate.
Dozens of bubbles floating up from the stainless-steel groomer’s tub, Gabe has managed to get Achilles’s thick coat sufficiently sudsy, but Leo is failing to rinse him down with the sprayer.
Achilles refuses to stand still, jumping up on Gabe’s shoulders and dodging Leo’s every move as both his tail and his long, pink tongue wag excitedly.
Engulfed in an iridescent glow, Leo gazes at Gabe as he tilts his head back to avoid another French kiss from Achilles.
Gabe’s booming laugh filling the room, his wide smile that creases his cheeks, his ears that wiggle a little when he talks enthusiastically—it’s all so infectious when he’s unguarded. Not that Leo has noticed or anythi—
Ah, fuck it.
Leo’s noticed.
He can’t stop noticing.
“You’re spraying me more than you’re spraying him, just FYI!” Gabe shouts over the noise of the sprayer and Achilles’s aggressive panting. He spits out some water. “Between this and the Aperol spill, you really love to get me wet, huh?”
Leo blinks at him. He then rolls up the sleeves of his teal Miami Open Unites T-shirt, farmer’s tan on display, ready to get the job done. The hair on his forearms, usually light and wispy, is brown and matted from the bath.
“Try to hold him still!” Leo says, pressing more firmly on Achilles’s back. “Let me adjust the nozzle and see if that helps.”
Gabe grips Achilles’s front legs. “Okay, go!”
Leo pulls the trigger and a firehose-stream of water sprays across the tub, bouncing off its metal walls and back at them. Achilles barks and shakes off his coat as the blast continues streaming out like Niagara Falls.
“Why is this even a setting?” Leo yells, fumbling to readjust the nozzle.
Finally, the sprayer shuts off.
The three of them, drenched and dripping, are all panting from the commotion.
“Well, he’s rinsed,” Gabe says. He brings the crook of his arm up to his face to wipe it down, as if that’s going to help, wet skin on wet skin. “And so am I.”
“Yeah, I’m a little … damp,” Leo says, thick streaks of water streaming down his face.
They look at each other and start laughing, while Achilles starts licking Leo’s cheeks.
Click. Click. Click.
“I’m sorry but this, as they say, is a Kodak moment,” the photographer hired for the day says, appearing behind them suddenly. “Can I get a posed one now? Big smile. You too, pup.”
Gabe puts his arm around Leo and, without needing any direction, Achilles, a natural model evidently, stands up with his front paws on Gabe’s shoulders.
Click. Click. Click.
“Amazing, thank you, guys,” the photographer says. “When you’re done, uh, drying off, come meet everybody in the lobby for a group photo.”
Leo has seen Gabe towel off in the locker room more times than he can count, but this, here, covered in dog hair, smile creases, and soaked tees, he likes this better.
“What happened to you two?” Ollie says when they enter the lobby, their T-shirts a darker shade of teal than when they left to bathe Achilles.
“He wouldn’t stay still,” Leo says.
“The dog or Gabe?” Tess says, chuckling.
“You know there’s a harness in there you can clip the dog to, right?” Ollie says. “To hold him steady? Tabarnak. Well, thank you guys anyway.”
Leo is now picturing Gabe in a harness and almost starts panting like Achilles.
While the photographer sets up, the group gathers for the shot, each of them holding a small puppy or the leash of a bigger dog. Gripping Achilles’s leash, Leo turns to Tess and catches her smiling mischievously at him.
“What?”
She leans a little farther to see Gabe, who’s standing next to him. “Pssst, Gabe,” she whispers. “You coming to Leo’s game night after the tournament?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t invited,” Gabe whispers back. A pit bull-mix puppy with a brindle and white coat is squirming in his arms.
“Well, you are now,” she says. “Leo will text you the details. Bring a game, drink, whatever. It’s the best.”
“Cool, thanks,” Gabe says, eyes bright. “Can I bring my friend Billie?”
From beside Tess, Ollie leans forward. “Billie Jean King?” he whisper-yells.
They all turn to look at Ollie.
“No,” Gabe whispers back, brow furrowed. “I’m not just, like, friends with Billie Jean King now because we’re both gay. I mean, I did meet with her back in January, but—”
“Are we, um, good to go?” the photographer says, camera directed toward the group.
“Yes, we are,” Leo says, facing forward, ears reddening.
Gabe elbows him gently in the ribs.
“I feel like I still smell like that dog shampoo,” Gabe says, loading up his bag in the locker room. He sniffs his arm. “Oatmeal. Or coconut. I don’t know.”
“Let’s just pray we’re better doubles players than we are dog groomers,” Leo says.
He’s been joking around with Gabe as they get ready for their first match together, but truthfully, he’s extremely nervous.
This was his idea, and now it’s haunting him.
Things were going just fine with Gabe. The truce was working out well.
With their feud seemingly at an end, he had one fewer problem on his plate.
Did he really have to push it by suggesting doubles?
It’s too much too soon.
What if they crash and burn? What if they embarrass themselves all the way onto the Tennis Network highlight reel? What if this reignites the hatred between them? Wait, when exactly did he stop hating Gabe again? These questions—and more!—kept him up last night.
Leo’s not one to renege on a promise, though, so he’s here now, and he’s channeling his anxious energy into his racket, slowly rotating it as he changes the overgrip.
He likes it extra tacky, and he’s going to need it more than ever today if he doesn’t want the racket to fly out of his clammy hand in the middle of a point.
“Go get ’em, boys,” Ollie says as he walks up with his gear, fresh off a press conference after his second-round match. “I tried to wear him out for you.”
That’s one thing they have going for them, at least. Earlier this afternoon, Ollie beat Juan Carlos Puentes, one of the Spanish players they’ll be taking on in doubles.
The players are given “suitable rest” between singles and doubles matches, but Leo can hope that Ollie’s victory will still be weighing on Puentes’s mind and body.
“That serve out wide,” Ollie adds, eyes bulging. “Tabarnak. Stay ready for that.”
“Thanks, Ol,” Leo says.
“Yeah, thank you,” Gabe says.
Ollie leans over to Gabe conspiratorially, and in a voice that isn’t as quiet as he seems to think it is, says, “Take the overheads when you can. Leo sucks at those when he’s nervous.”
“You’re really bad at whispering, you know that?” Leo says, and he throws one of his wristbands at Ollie.
“And you are really bad at overheads when you get nervous,” Ollie says with a shrug, then walks away, bumping fists with a fellow Canadian player as he heads for the exit.
“I’m not actually that bad at overheads,” Leo says to Gabe. “Really. If I miss, it’s usually just because of the sun. Blue eyes are especially sensitive to the sun. That’s all.”
“Uh huh,” Gabe says, failing to conceal a smile as he shuts his locker. “All right. So. Ready for this?”
“Yeah,” Leo says, putting his freshly wrapped racket in his bag. He stands and meets Gabe’s eyes. “Ready.”
Leo is, in fact, not ready for this.
He’s about to serve the opening point of their match against the Puentes brothers and Gabe is up at the net, signaling which serve Leo should go for first. Why didn’t he realize he would be spending a large portion of this afternoon staring at Gabe’s ass?
The man is crouched down at the net. Bent over.
Butt out. In tight black shorts. Flashing a middle finger quite literally between his cheeks.
Yes, it’s a signal to serve into the opponent’s body, but my God.
Leo was so concerned about the potential emotional ramifications of playing doubles with Gabe and not nearly concerned enough about the ass of it all.
Hoo boy. They’re playing on a side court in the shadow of Hard Rock Stadium.
Hard. Rock. Rock. Hard. Okay, he needs to stay focused. Deep breath.
Leo follows Gabe’s orders—why is that horning him up even more?
—and hits a body serve. Juan Carlos returns it back to Leo, who hits it back crosscourt with even more pace on it.
When Juan Carlos hits it back crosscourt again, Gabe is already shifting over to the middle of the net, where he intercepts the shot, smacking it hard.
It bounces in and flies off the court and into the crowd.
“15–love,” the ump announces.
Leo jogs up to Gabe, uncontrollably beaming. They give each other a low five.
“Nice!” Leo says.
They walk back to the baseline of the blue-and-teal court as a ball kid tosses Leo two new balls for his next serve. His face mere inches from Gabe’s now, both of them with a hand covering their mouth, they whisper about their next move.