Page 16 of The Lies We Play

She turns at the sound of the door.

She doesn’t look startled. She looks caught. The difference is a category of facial expression I’ve spent several years cataloging on the faces of my youngest sister, the occasional girlfriend or boyfriend, and anyone who has ever had to decide, in real time, how much truth I deserve.

She decides on none.

“Oh,” she says. “You know about the roof.”

I don’t know what to do with the sentence, so I do the thing I do when I don’t know what to do. I stay where I am and let the other person commit to whatever they’re committing to.

“I do know about the roof,” I say.

“For how long?”

“Three weeks.”

“Oh, that’s longer than me.” She bites her lower lip for a second. “Are you possessive about it?”

“I haven’t had the chance to find out.”

“Because I just got here, and I’d like to know if I’m trespassing or if this is a shared situation.”

There is something about the way she says ‘shared situation’ that makes me understand, in the small calibrated way a man understands things at eleven at night on a rooftop, that I'm not going to tell her she is trespassing.

“I believe this could be a shared situation,” I say.

“Generous of you.”

I can’t help it. I wink before I say, “I’m a generous man.”

“On three weeks of squatter’s rights.”

“Don’t tell anyone about the squatter’s rights. I’m cultivating a reputation.”

She almost smiles.

Not fully.

She does the thing where a woman keeps the smile from happening because letting it happen would mean conceding the round and she has not, to her own satisfaction, conceded anything yet.

I like her.

Probably more than I should.

And I shouldn’t like anyone right now. Not even a cute neighbor on a roof with a mouth made for arguing and a sweater that looks like it belongs to a memory.

It’s a rule. Not mine exactly, my father’s.

The first few years of my career are supposed to belong to the game. So there can’t be a girlfriend or a boyfriend or anyone who will distract me. Dad is afraid I’m going to fall in love and throw everything down the drain, when he knows I have potential.

That means no beautiful distraction with a quick mouth, dark eyes, and a face I’m already having trouble not looking at.

Dad isn’t afraid of who I’ll love. He has never made me feel ashamed of that. When I told my parents I’m bisexual, my mother hugged me so hard I lost air, and my father looked me in the eye and said, ‘Good. Then whoever loves you better be worth your time.’

That is my father. Practical.

His fear isn’t me loving a man. It isn’t me loving a woman. It’s me loving anyone before I know how to protect what I’ve worked for. He thinks potential is a fragile thing. He thinks the league, the press, the schedule, the noise, the hungry machinery around a young player can take a soft part of you and sell tickets with it.

Maybe he’s right.