The One & Only(122)

We kissed and kissed until we finally separated, his hands still tangled up in my hair, our faces so close that his features were blurry.

“Damn,” he said, catching his breath.

“I know,” I said, staring into his eyes.

“Crazy,” he said. “That was some crazy stuff right here.”

I laughed because it was so him to call a first kiss “some crazy stuff,” and because I knew exactly what he meant. He laughed with me, then led me by the hand over to the leather sofa that I’d sat on for years. Only never like this. Never with my legs thrown across his, my arm around his neck. Never this relaxed, this close. I glanced around his office, taking in all his clippings and photos and plaques, as if seeing them for the first time. Everything seemed different now, elevated. My eyes rested on one framed quote hanging on the wall behind us that read:

A GOOD COACH MAKES HIS PLAYERS SEE WHAT THEY CAN BE, RATHER THAN WHAT THEY ARE.

The quote felt true for me, too, as I thought of how much he had changed me in the past few months, encouraging me to leave the Walker cocoon, begin a new career, end a relationship, then another. Now here we were, seemingly in the same spot, just where we had begun. Yet we weren’t the same. Nothing was.

“I’m proud of you, girl,” he said, kissing my forehead.

“Why’s that?” I asked, wondering if he could read my mind.

“For handling your business,” he said, his breath in my hair. “For being strong.”

He was talking about Ryan now, so I said, “I couldn’t have been strong without you.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “You got us here.”

I smiled, accepting part of the credit, but thinking that a lot of things had had to happen, some of them really bad—like Ryan grabbing me and Connie dying. But I pushed those things away and said, “You helped me. You’ve always helped me. You have no idea how much …”

He touched my cheek and smiled at me. “I’d do anything for you, girl. You know that.”

I nodded—because I did know that—then I put my head on his shoulder, trying to place what made our first kiss different from all of my other first kisses. The answer was seemingly obvious—I was in love. Maybe for the first time; maybe just more than before. But there was something else, too. Something else that made our moment different, special. It meant more because we felt like a team. Not in a cheesy Go-Walker way but in the ultimate I-have-your-back way. There was none of the emotional negotiation that so often comes with a first kiss. No wondering what it meant, what would happen next, who had the upper hand. Instead, our kiss came from a sacred understanding of where we had been and where we were headed. We both wanted this. We both were committed to making it happen, and I felt certain that neither of us would enter into a situation so fraught with controversy and potential hurt feelings unless we were damn near positive that this was what we wanted. But we still had one major little blond obstacle.

“We have to tell Lucy,” I blurted out, breaking the tranquil spell. “We have to tell her before she finds out. She deserves to know. It isn’t right to keep a secret like this from her.”

“I know,” he said. “When do we do that? … I gotta hit the road soon here.”

I knew he was talking about recruiting, that he only had two weeks until the next dead period, when coaches couldn’t communicate with recruits. “Where are you going?” I asked, avoiding the hard topic for a few seconds more.

“Chicago and Pittsburgh,” he said. “Naperville and New Kensington, to be exact. Two quick trips to visit two quarterbacks. Up and back … And a couple day trips in Texas.”

“When do you leave?” I said.

“Chicago on Friday. Pittsburgh next week. In and out … Why? Do you want to join me?”

I smiled and said, “I wish.” Then I remembered Lucy’s tree-trimming invitation and asked him if he planned to be there.

“Yes. Why? You don’t think we should tell her then, do you?”

“No. That will be emotional enough,” I said, knowing how much Lucy dreaded all the Christmas traditions without her mother. “Maybe we should wait until after the holidays?”

“And after the game?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling a rush of cowardly relief. “Maybe so. We just have to be really careful in the meantime.”

“I agree. Because this has to come from us.”

“Both of us,” I said, thinking that it wasn’t fair to give him the task—and I wasn’t sure I could handle it alone.

“Yes. When the time is right, we just have to do it,” he said in his intense, coaching voice. “Man up and do it.”