by Serena Bell
“What choice do I have?”
Julia shakes her head. “None, I guess.” She sighs.
“It would be easier if he’d been an asshole about it,” I admit. Because the truth is, even though I don’t have a choice, it’s not as easy as just flipping a switch. Something aches inside me, something that was drawn to Ty Williams’s spirit from the moment he started standing up for O and has only gotten more insistent as I’ve learned more about the kind of guy he is. “But he said I’m a good coach and he doesn’t want to do anything to get me in trouble.”
He should have thought about that before he kissed you, a grumpy voice in my head insists.
But Ty had been thinking of me when he kissed me. I’d been tearing myself down and he built me back up with his words and his gaze and his kiss. And made it practically impossible for me to imagine doing anything that might lose him his job.
Yeah, maybe he hadn’t thought through all the consequences, but I don’t hold it against him for kissing me. And I probably never will.
“Everything could change, you know,” she says. “You could get offered another coaching job somewhere else after this season.”
It’s true; the only thing sure about the PFL is that nothing stays the same. Ty or I could be with another team by this time next year. On opposite sides of the country. Yet another reason to tamp this thing, whatever it is, down.
Whatever it is.
What is—was—it?
“I kind of wish he’d argued with me,” I say.
Julia, being Julia, good with the words and the feelings and the nuance, knows exactly what I’m talking about. “I do, too,” she admits.
No fucking way, Iona. I told you, you’re beautiful.
His words from the other night unspool again: And if there are guys who can’t handle how tough you are, that’s their problem, not yours. But I’m not that guy. My masculinity is not in question and neither is my ability to hold my own.
“I don’t know what I would have done if he did. I just wish—I wish I knew what it was. Why—”
I’d been about to say “why he kissed me” but then I remembered it was Julia I was talking to. I wasn’t worried about her betraying me, but I didn’t want to make her have to keep any more secrets than she already would.
“Don’t tell me,” she agrees, as if I’ve spoken aloud. “Whatever it is, don’t tell me.”
“It wasn’t much,” I say, which is so true in the scheme of what could have happened, and such an enormous lie.
I wish I knew why I feel things I don’t want to. Why I tell him things I shouldn’t. Why I couldn’t leave well enough alone in the ice room.
Why I want to go home and nurse the sore feeling all through my chest. Eat a block of dark chocolate and take a hot bath and watch bad sports movies.
“You know what we need to do, I?”
“What?”
“We need to find you someone to take your mind off Ty.”
“Coaches don’t date,” I said scornfully. “Not during the season.”
“Who said anything about dating? Just a little good old-fashioned swiping right.”
I laugh. “Are you seriously suggesting I Tinder?”
“Yep.”
“No way.”
“Then how about you let me fix you up with a guy I know?”
“I hate fixups. I’d rather Tinder.”
“He’s a former major league baseball player, thirty-five, exceptionally cute, very smart and funny, and a total player. I can practically guarantee you no-strings sex.”
It has been a disturbingly long time since I had any kind of sex, and it’s possible that is part of my problem with Ty. All the stupid animal bits of my brain and body are looking for a good time, and when you add that to the insane chemistry and the fact that he’s hot and a nice guy, you get bad decision-making. It might radically improve my judgment to let off a little steam.
“Okay,” I say.
She practically drives off the road, it’s so obvious I’ve shocked her.
“Am I that boring that you can’t believe I’d say yes?”
“You’re just—you’re very focused,” she says. “It’s a good thing. It’s one of the traits that all good PFL coaches have. They’re very—one-track.”
“Well, let’s say I’ll get off track for one night in the interest of getting back on the track for the long term.”
She grins. “You got it,” she says. “I’ll talk to him and get back to you.”
Chapter 26
Ty
There’s practice on Christmas, which is a Friday. For some teams, the season’s winding down now. They’re either in the playoffs and sailing through the lame duck end-of-season, or they know they’re out of the running and there’s no point in busting their butts. But for us, it’s the opposite. We’re winding up. Sunday’s game is the second-to-last of the regular season. We’ve lost only one game since week 8, putting us at 7-7, something no one would have predicted, and giving us a surprise last-minute shot at the wild card spot. It’s a slim shot, to be sure. We have to beat our next two opponents, and Atlanta has to lose at least once, and only one of those things is in our control.
My focus should be one hundred percent on what I can control, but lately—well, my focus just isn’t much to write home about.
For one thing, I’m drowning in texts from Derek. He got a new phone, and he keeps texting stuff like Everyone deserves a second chance, and It’s Christmas. How about a beer? I should block the new number, but I haven’t yet. Don’t ask me why not.
I want to ask Iona, What do you think? Do you think I should give him another chance? But she made it abundantly clear that we’re not friends. That she can’t be my friend. Even so, for some reason, she’s the first person I think of when anything interesting happens.
She’d love this.
Oh, man, gotta take a photo of that for her. That would crack her up.
I wish she were here.
I wonder if she’s ever seen…?
The texts from Derek are troubling, but the voice in my head that wants to share everything with Iona won’t shut up.
At practice these last couple weeks, we’ve both done our best to be coach and player. She treated me exactly like she treated everyone else, except that I think she was super cautious about not laying her hands on me, which made it feel sometimes like she was actually touching me an extra lot. Because I kept feeling her not touching me, not raising my arm higher or adjusting my stance to make it squarer or whatever. Every one of those not touches was still a real thing.
And she didn’t ask me any particular questions about what was going on or what was on my mind, and I made sure to be super cheerful when I was around her, lighthearted but not so lighthearted that I would accidentally make some double entendre.
All that not doing was exhausting.
Also, I missed her in plain sight. I mean, she was right fucking there but I couldn’t tell her about Derek’s stupid texts or how winning so many games felt great but also kind of unsettling, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. I couldn’t joke about my junk or tackle her or block her or kiss her or ask her to tell me more about her father or maybe also her mother who must have been somewhere around when that asshole was making her feel like shit about herself.
And I couldn’t tell her that I know all about how mothers and fathers—and brothers—can hurt you.
So I missed her, which makes no sense, because she was right there.
Just like she’s right here, as in at Julia’s house when Zach and Calder and I show up.
I should have figured she would be. Coaches are the only people with more fucked-up schedules than players, and her family is on the opposite coast, so there’s no way she had anywhere else to be today.
She’s setting the table when we come in, and she greets us all with a big “Merry Christmas!”
I wonder if, like me, she sat alone this morning, thinking of all the people all over the country—and world—o
pening Christmas presents, and felt more sad than she’d expected to.
Look at me, I think. Just look this way. Give me a sign that you miss me, too.
She’s wearing dark jeans and a red sweater with a Christmas tree on it, and earrings that look like shiny glass-ball ornaments. Ten different stupid jokes about balls fly through my head, but there’s a dining room table and a couple big men between us, and I have to let her be.
“Ty, will you carve the turkey?” Julia asks. “Dave is watching Gareth so he doesn’t destroy something, or himself.”
“Sure.”
I head into the kitchen and Julia loads me up with fancy equipment. Her husband is a cardiac surgeon and they live in this incredible house on the water on Mercer Island. The kitchen is all granite and big stainless appliances, Viking stove, you know the deal. She gives me a big carving block, an electric knife, a seriously frightening meat fork, and a huge porcelain platter to stack the results on.
I’m pretty close to done when Iona steps into the kitchen. Luckily I’m not using the electric knife at the time, because she smiles at me and I drop the meat fork, narrowly avoiding my shoe. What am I, a thirteen-year-old boy? I feel like that a little bit, with the whole unrequited—sex—thing.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
She’s fidgety. Not really looking at me.
“Merry Christmas,” I say.
“Merry Christmas.”
It’s suddenly too much for me.
“I wish I had a present for you,” I say. “Something small. It wouldn’t have to be a big deal, just a gift for a good coach. There’s a new book out, called something like, In Defense of Football. Pretend I got you that. Pretend I wrapped it in really ugly plaid paper and tied a red ribbon around it.”
The look she gives me slays me. Me? Really? No one’s ever gotten me anything that nice before. Like there’s never been a person in her life who celebrated her for who she is and what she loves best.
But then she seems to recover, and she shakes her head. “Ty, no.”
“It’s just ’cause you’re a good coach.”
But I make my eyes tell her there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that.
She looks away.
“Come on, open it.”
She hesitates, then mimes opening a present.
“Do you like it?” I ask.
She hesitates a long minute. I think maybe she’s not going to answer me. But then she looks all around her to make sure no one can hear. Drops her voice. “I love it,” she says. Her voice wraps all around me, a caress.
She takes a deep breath and makes a gesture like she’s passing me a gift.
“Open mine,” she urges. “Green shiny paper and a cream-colored ribbon.”
I tear the imaginary paper off.
“Silk boxers,” she whispers, and quick as that, she’s gone from the kitchen.
Best Christmas ever.
Chapter 27
Iona
After the Christmas party, I guiltily confess to Julia about my moment of weakness, about the “presents” Ty and I exchanged. But I don’t tell her everything. I leave out how much the “book” meant to me. How it made me forget myself for a long, sweet moment, and how in that moment, I handed him, in the form of imaginary silk boxers, the truth: that I was not as sure of my resolve as I should be.
And I don’t tell her about the flare in Ty’s eyes before I ran away. I keep that for myself. I hug it tight.
Instead, I beg her to cancel the blind date she set up for me with her baseball player friend. “Don’t you think that’s a pretty good sign I’m not going to be open to someone new?”
“You’re human,” Julia says. “You’re going to have impulses. But you need to resist them. That’s why you need to go on this date.”
She refuses to give me her friend’s name or phone number.
In the meantime, the Grizzlies win our second-to-last game, which means that we can still clinch the wild card slot. But we have to beat Arizona on the Sunday after New Year’s and Atlanta has to lose its game. As a coach, it sucks to have to depend on another team’s losing. You want the season to come down to how well your players pull it out, not the fate of some team you can’t influence at all.
At the game, and afterward, Ty and I are back to business as usual, and it’s like the gift exchange never happened. Neither of us mentions it, and if my eyes stray toward his, I don’t catch him looking back.
And that’s the way it should be. The way I need it to be.
I guess it’s a good thing that the blind date is going ahead. It’ll be a good distraction.
When Mark Deflorio arrives at my door for our date, I discover that Julia hasn’t exaggerated his appeal. He’s tanned, lean, and well-muscled, with blond hair that’s neatly trimmed except for a bit that flops in his eyes. He shows up on Monday night, six days shy of the Grizzlies’ last regular season game, on time, with a non-stagey bouquet of daisies.
“Hope you like daisies,” he says.
“They’re beautiful.”
We shake hands, I take the daisies and dig out a vase for them, and then he asks if I’ve been to Wild Ginger yet. I haven’t.
“I’m glad we could actually find a time that worked for you.”
“Me too,” I say, hoping I mean it.
Mark drives a BMW with heated seats, and I crank mine to max.
“You like it hot.”
I laugh.
“That wasn’t a come-on,” he says quickly.
There’s a moment of silence, and I catch his mouth curving into a smile. Under any other circumstances, it would be a very nice smile. Maybe I could learn to appreciate that smile.
“You should just be warned, though. Those seats are hot hot. The highest setting will actually set you on fire.”
“I hope that wasn’t supposed to be a come-on, either.”
He laughs. I feel myself relax. I’m having fun.
Over dinner we do the first date thing. He tells me about his baseball career, and I tell him about my football career. He tells me about his family—he has the classic dad who pushed him way too hard and almost destroyed his arm—but for some reason, even though he’s opened up to me and told me something pretty personal, I don’t feel like telling him about my dad. So I don’t. I talk instead about my guys and how well they’ve been playing and how good I’m feeling about the work I’ve done with the Grizzlies.
He’s a fan and says he can see the difference. I think he’s just being nice, but it’s sweet anyway. I take another slug of beer and ask him what other sports he likes, which are his favorites, and why.
The scallops are peppery and tender, but my favorite is the seven-flavor beef, which I have to stop myself from decimating. I’m eating more than he is—a common theme when I go out for dinner with men who weigh about the same or less than I do. The food’s delicious, the conversation’s lively, but there’s a little part of me that’s guarded. I keep thinking of that night with Ty, of pizza and film and the feeling I always have around Ty that there’s nothing about me that I have to hold back from him.
Still, the guy is beautiful to look at. Deep blue eyes, white teeth, solid eye contact. When we finish dessert—amazing blackberry–vanilla swirl ice cream—he asks if I want to come back to his place for a drink.
I hesitate. I’m thinking of Ty. Of the look in his eyes that night at the Christmas party, two thirds lust and one third some soft, unrecognizable emotion.
I hear Julia’s voice, saying, You’re going to have impulses. But you need to resist them. That’s why you need to go on this date.
I say yes.
He’s got a condo on the waterfront, and he asks how I feel about walking. It’s a surprisingly clear night, and I say that sounds good to me. We walk along First Avenue most of the way because the waterfront is still all ripped up from the tunnel project, and walking down there is like taking an intimate tour of a construction site.
He rests his hand at the smal
l of my back, his fingers spread wide, gently caressing. Not too intrusive. I think maybe this could work.
He unlocks his condo and lets me in. I cross immediately to the wall of windows that look out over Puget Sound. I can see the lights of Kitsap Peninsula across the way, and I know the Olympics are hiding in the dark beyond. He turns out the lights in his apartment—“to let you see the view better.”
He comes up behind me, kisses my neck, and turns me toward him. He approaches slowly—I think he’s trying to build up the tension, and on another night, under other circumstances, maybe it would work. But when his lips meet mine, they’re just lips. Soft, pliable, but just lips. And that thing teasing at the seam of my mouth is just a tongue, and once it’s in my mouth, it’s still just a tongue.
More to the point, it’s not Ty’s tongue.
He draws back.
“I’m—sorry,” I say. Horrible thing to say right after someone kisses you, but I think it would have been worse if I pretended there was nothing wrong.
“Give me another chance?” he asks.
What a sweet thing to say. As if my lack of responsiveness were about him, as if he’d done something wrong, had bad breath or kissed badly, or something, rather than just been the wrong person on the wrong day.
“I know it’s the worst cliché in the book, but it’s not you, it’s me.”
“Oh, God!” He makes an exaggerated show of horror. “Anything but that! Tell me you just want to be friends! Tell me you’re a virgin and you just realized you can’t go through with it!”
I laugh, and he takes advantage of the moment to lean in for another kiss. It’s fine, it really is—good, even—but when he pulls back I shake my head and say, “I should go.”
He calls me a cab, and I’m almost home before it hits me. That I believed, without stopping to think about it, that Mark Deflorio was game to take me to bed after one night’s acquaintance, enjoy me thoroughly, and feel fine about it in the morning.
That not once the whole night did I worry I wasn’t feminine enough, or sexy enough.
That even now, leaving before the deed was begun, I knew Mark wanted me, that if I turned and ran back into his arms, he’d distract me all night long.
