Page 3 of Doink (Rainbow Dorset University)

PEYTON

I chose kayaking as my auctionable date because it’s a favorite pastime from my childhood. My family used to vacation at the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, and I’d spend every free minute on the water in a kayak.

To make the date more appealing, I added a ‘ romantic ’ element to it and found a local restaurant to donate a decked-out picnic lunch. In the mountain valley an hour away is an enormous lake. It’s so big that there are a handful of small islands.

I’m not big into dating. I’m not even big into hookups. So I thought if I made the date something I’d find enjoyable, then at least the person bidding on the date would have something in common with me. It makes sense. Why bid on a date if you hate the date?

I get up early on Friday so I can run the few errands I need to in preparation for meeting my date mid-morning.

The plan is that I’ll grab them just after ten outside the Queer Palace Café and we’ll drive the hour or so to the lake and spend the day kayaking.

Depending on how well we get along, it might be a long day.

I stop at the outdoorsman store to pick up the kayak and safety gear and shit that they’re donating (to borrow) for the long weekend.

It includes a top-of-the-line double-seater kayak, helmets, life jackets, a first aid kit, and an emergency kit.

The entire package would rent for roughly $800 for the four days, so it’s really cool that they donated it for the cause.

The restaurant is donating a deluxe lunch in a large, insulated tote to keep anything from baking in the sun. Once everything is loaded into my truck, I meander around town for a while, so I’m not too early.

I’m bummed. I had so many damn daydreams about this trip with Coach Lemon. Part of me knew it wasn’t going to happen. I even told myself over and over again that it wasn’t going to happen.

But then he stepped into the auction tent right before I was up for bid, and I thought maybe the stars were aligning. It was difficult not to get my hopes up.

It shouldn’t have felt like a rejection, but it sure as fuck does. Almost two weeks later, and it still feels like a rejection.

Nope. This weekend isn’t about Coach Lemon. I need to let that go. I need to concentrate on forgetting football and everything related to it for the weekend. Maybe let go of a dream that was obviously never going to happen.

I drive back to campus and pull up along the sidewalk in front of the Queer Palace Café.

The café entrance is about a hundred feet from the sidewalk, with a well-manicured path and surrounded by lush grass, picnic tables, and Adirondack chairs.

Even at almost ten on a long weekend, there are people milling about.

Shutting the engine off, I step out of my truck and lean against the hood to wait. The barista from the café is sitting at a picnic table close by, just getting to his feet and coming toward me. I smile. “Hey, hot stuff,” I greet, offering him my hand.

He smiles. “Hey.” He grabs my hand for a second, and then his drops to his side.

We’re left standing there for a second. He adjusts his weight as he looks at me. Is he nervous? He pulls something out of his pocket and offers it to me.

I grin, amused. “Are you passing me a note?” I tease.

His smile is shy. It’s kinda cute. When I look at the piece of paper, I find a receipt. It takes me a minute to find the little note that reads:

Date Auction purchase – Peyton Brady/Football; kayaking picnic

I meet his eyes again. “Dana?”

He inclines his head. “Yeah.”

I laugh. “Why didn’t you fucking say something, hot stuff? I thought your name was Dan. I totally missed the ‘A’ at the end of your name tag.”

“I couldn’t decide if you knew or not,” he admits. “Sorry.”

I feel much better about this trip today than I did. I wasn’t exactly worried about who would purchase my date. But I’d chosen something remote. Like, super remote. That’s not exactly a smart, safe choice for a first date with a stranger.

Thankfully, Dana isn’t a stranger.

“Come on,” I tell him, pulling him toward the truck and opening the passenger-side door. “This is going to be fun. Have you ever kayaked before?”

I don’t wait for him to answer as I shut his door and round the truck to climb in. He has his backpack on his lap. “You can toss it into the cab if you want.”

Dana nods and does so. “I’ve never kayaked,” he says. “But it looks like a lot of fun. I love the outdoors.”

“I’ve kayaked a lot,” I tell him as I pull away from the curb. “Besides football, kayaking makes up most of my favorite memories.”

“This is your go-to date, then, huh?”

I laugh. “No. I’ve never taken anyone on a kayaking date. You’re the first.” I wink, and as he usually does, his cheeks turn pink. I love how shy he is. It’s super adorable.

“Why’d you choose that for the auction?”

“We have the full weekend off from football,” I tell him. “Which is incredibly rare. I decided that I’d spend it kayaking, and since we were supposed to have our dates scheduled by this weekend, I figured I’d just roll it in. I thought whoever bid on my date would at least have that in common.”

“That’s cool.”

“The lake is about an hour away, so as the passenger, it’s your job to entertain me. Tell me about yourself.”

Dana looks out the passenger window. “Like what?”

“I know I tease you about living at the café, but you’re a student at RDU, right?”

He nods. “Yep. I’m studying business. Very generic.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “I wanted something universal that can be applied to many career fields, so I didn’t get stuck with a useless degree if I changed my mind. I’m hoping to continue with my MBA to make me extra marketable in an economy where a degree doesn’t guarantee you shit anymore.”

“What do you hope to do with it?”

“Honestly? I want a printing press.” He gives me a smile.

“I’d love to become a publishing house exclusively for queer books.

I want to print both mass market and extra deluxe special editions under one roof, choosing to be the opposite of every conservative printer who refuses to print if you have dirty art or queer lovers. That’s all I want to print.”

“That’s awesome,” I say. “That’s super specific, which sounds completely opposite to your generalized statement a minute ago.”

“Okay, maybe I meant it differently than it came out. I want a degree that can be applied to a vast variety of fields, primarily because I know I can’t make that dream happen as soon as I graduate.

I need to find the funds. Maybe establish a professional reputation.

That kind of thing. But also, I need to have something that will still serve me in the future if this falls through.

There’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to get it off the ground, you know? ”

“I do. I bet if you told the RDU administration what you hope to accomplish, they’ll tell you how to get some donors on board. RDU has a massive queer donor base who keeps expanding their efforts to give us opportunities and voices.”

Dana nods. “I hadn’t thought of that, but yeah. When I get closer to finishing my master’s degree, I’ll start investigating how to make it happen. I don’t even know how much money I’m going to need to begin with. It’s nothing but a dream right now.”

“I think it’ll happen,” I tell him.

He’d been looking out the window, but turns to look at me. “You do?”

“Yep. In a world that continues trying to keep us down, there are those who fight back and help us make our voices louder. I think this is a great way to give the queer world a very loud voice. Oh! I bet you can maybe partner with the school and get some interns to work with you. It’ll help you save on some costs, give them experience, and help get you up and running.

Look at all those birds you’ll be hitting with a single stone. ”

He smiles. “That’s a cool idea. I really haven’t thought details, yet. This is just a pipe dream.”

“It’s a great dream, and I hope it happens for you.”

Dana bows his head. “Thanks.” A beat passes. “What about you? I know you’re here for football, but what’s your degree program?”

I grin. “Liberal arts.”

“Ah.”

“I’m banking on football,” I admit. “Which, yeah. It’s a little stupid to do that when so few actually get drafted. Even those who get drafted aren’t guaranteed a profitable career in football. They may never even see the field.”

“I’m putting positive energy into the universe for you, but what if you don’t get drafted? What do you hope to do then?”

“There’s a really stupid frame of mind in which athletes only plan on going pro.

They don’t make a backup plan because that’s telling the universe that you’re not confident in your ability to go pro.

You make this your entire future. The only future.

In a way, that’s what I’m doing. I have to choose a degree field in order to be enrolled at RDU.

So I chose one that doesn’t apply to anything at all, therefore making my only acceptable future football. ”

I can tell by the way he’s looking at me that he thinks that’s a stupid idea. I laugh.

“That’s… an interesting approach.”

“It’s not a smart one,” I agree. “I know that.”

“Then you haven’t thought about a future without football at all?”

Talking about a future without football feels treasonous to the only future I want. I’ve made it a point not to think about something I’d like to do instead of football. But… maybe there’s a loophole. What will I do after football?

“I don’t actually have anything real planned,” I tell him.

“I’ve not given it a lot of thought. There’s a part of me that thinks, once I retire from football, I might take some time off and just relax.

Not to spend the rest of my life in retirement, but because full-contact sports are really rough on the body.

I want to rest my joints and shit. But after that? ” I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“Coaching?” Dana suggests.

I shake my head. “There are more than a hundred players on a football team,” I tell him, and spare him a glance. His eyes are wide. “Bet you didn’t know that.”

He shakes his head. “Wow.”

“Mhm. That’s a lot of people to manage. A lot of people to learn.

” I bite the inside of my lip for a second.

“One of the things I admire most about Coach Lemon is how he knows each of his 120 players individually. We’re not just bodies on his team.

He knows the classes we’re enrolled in. He knows our interests.

He knows our personalities. On the field, he knows our playing styles and how to work on the particular skills for our position that work best with our playing styles.

That’s what makes him such a good coach.

That’s why he has so many drafts into the NFL every year. ”

“He sounds like a different person with your team than he is with everyone else.”

I grin. “He is. He’s great. But I’m not like that. I can barely keep up with the small handful of friends I have. As soon as I started at RDU and saw the kind of coach that Lemon is, I knew that I’d never match that level of coaching, and that’s the only kind there should be.”

It’s one of the reasons I’ve crushed on him since I enrolled. He may be frosty to the rest of the school, but to his athletes? He sees us more clearly than anyone else on campus.

That hit me hard, and I’ve been falling for him ever since.