Page 121 of Game Misconduct

Ugh. Somehow, Tanner had a feeling this wasallLeif’s fault.

After the tar pits, the team went into the museum and they tried not to make too much noise as they checked out the fossils of saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, and mastodons—Wait, are those mastodons outside, then, not mammoths?Tanner wondered.And what’s the fucking difference?—along with giant sloths, dire wolves—which he thought were just a made-up thing in movies—and even a nine-thousand-year-old human murder victim.

Apparently, there were no dinosaurs, which Tanner was kinda bummed about.

So was everyone else, and they all got into an argument about what the best dinosaur was. Unsurprisingly, T-Rex was Crawford’s favorite, Rafe was a fan of Stegosaurus, Mickey liked Apatosaurus, Graham voted Spinosaurus, Jesse was a fan of Hadrosaurs, and Connor put his vote in for Ankylosaurus.

Tanner was a Velociraptor fan. They looked cute but weretotalbadasses.

The team argued so loudly about which one was the best that they started to get dirty looks from the people working for the museum.

Connor suggested maybe it was time for them to leave, so they headed to the Grand Central Market where everyone went off in small groups to do different things.

“Have fun with your ex!” Tanner told Graham and Thad, who were going to meet up with a guy Thad had gone to prison with.

Tanner thought it was pretty awesome that they’d managed to stay friends and that Graham was chill about hanging out with a guy Thad had hooked up with for years. That was one thing Tanner loved about this team. They weren’t weird and judgmental about shit.

After Thad thanked him and they wandered off, Tanner looked around. The rookies had headed out to find food and do some shopping and Tom was supposed to meet up with them at the taco place.

Tom had been off hanging out with some guys he’d played with here in L.A. before he was traded to the Harriers.

Crawford was being all weird and grumpy on the walk to the food court, but Tanner tried to cheer him up by telling him some random stuff he’d learned about the apartments nearby. He’d scoped them out online after Jesse sent the info about the market.

“It’s right near the L.A. arena too!” he told Crawford.

Crawford stared at him blankly. “You planning to get traded or something, Clayton?”

“No!” Tanner protested. “I fucking love playing with Boston. But like, let’s be honest, there’s no way I’m going to end up playing for them my whole career.”

He’d been thinking about that a lot lately. That at some point, he probably would play for a team like the Rockets. A place that didn’t have a captain like Connor and teammates who were either queer or totally chill about the people who were. Ugh.

“Why?” Tanner teased. “You want me to leave?”

“Most days,” Crawford said.

Outraged, Tanner protested and Crawford put him in a headlock to give him a noogie.

Tanner wriggled away, yelling at Crawford about messing up his hair and accidentally bumped into an older woman coming out of a designer handbag store. She frowned at him and he gave her his most sincere smile.

“Sorry about that,” he said breathlessly. “One of my teammates is being a jerk but he’s usually harmless. Hope I didn’t hurt you. You look lovely today by the way.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” she said, smiling as she patted his shoulder. “And thank you. It isn’t very often these days that I get compliments from handsome young men.”

“Well you should,” he told her with a little wink.

Laughing, she walked off with a bounce in her step.

In the background, he heard Anker mutter, “How does hedothat? He was like that with the guard at the tar pits too.”

“Hell, if I know,” Luke said.

Tanner smiled to himself. They didn’t get it.

They were always giving him shit for flirting with everyone and sure, hedidflirt a lot. But the thing was, most of the time what people called flirting was just Tanner being friendly. He genuinely liked people and wanted them to feel good.

He loved when he could make them smile. So whether it was some awkward sixteen-year-old girl with braces or a wrinkledold geezer in his nineties, he was going to try to make them feel good about themselves.

That didn’t mean he wanted to have sex with them. He just wanted them to walk away feeling like someone had reallyseenthem and thought they were great in their own way.