The One & Only(78)

“Of course,” I said.

“And maybe you should talk to Daddy?” Lucy said. “Maybe he has some insight into Ryan.”

“Yeah. I don’t think so,” I said. I was all about finding excuses to talk to Coach, but not about Ryan. And definitely not about this. I wasn’t sure exactly why—if it had more to do with unfairly casting aspersions against one of his former players or if I simply didn’t want Coach to know the details of our relationship. “I don’t want to spread this stuff around—if it’s not true,” I said.

“Yeah,” Lucy said. “And I’m sure it’s probably not.”

“Me, too,” I said, thinking that so much of how we see the world is a matter of interpretation. A matter of wishing and wanting and hoping rather than really deep-down believing.





Twenty-four





I decided not to worry about Ryan for the time being and focused all my wishing and wanting and hoping on the rest of our season. After beating FSU in Tallahassee, we were so close to reaching the promised land, with only Stanford and Texas in our way. A few days later, we were halfway there, having eked out a 44–41 victory over the Cardinal.

“Great win,” I said to Coach Carr outside our locker room. I was headed to the pressroom but had stalled here on purpose, hoping I’d see him.

“You like that?” he said, angling his shoulder toward me in a thirty-second private sidebar. The favoritism was obvious to anyone even half paying attention, but nobody was. In my peripheral vision, I could see a well-known writer for Sports Illustrated barreling toward us, so I kept a stoic expression, nodding, scribbling on my pad as if getting a quote from Coach.

“Call me later,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“You heard me.”

My heart fluttered. “You mean tonight?”

“Yes. Tonight.”

I was already warm from the lights and crowds and my hustling move to get down here, but my whole body heated up a few more degrees as I nodded, promising him I would.


Three hours later, after the press conference, and after I had written and filed my story, I called Coach. He didn’t answer, and the weight of the disappointment was like a great check and balance to the high of our earlier exchange. To distract myself, I called Ryan, who had just hunkered down in his hotel room in D.C. I had only seen him a couple times since talking to Blakeslee, both evenings pleasantly uneventful, and Lucy and I were both beginning to believe that, at the very least, Blakeslee had exaggerated his temper. I had decided not to tell him about the conversation, coming up with a bunch of rationalizations, including that I knew he had to stay mentally focused, in the zone, during this part of the season. With this in mind, I asked him about the Redskins game tomorrow, how he was feeling, if he was ready. He informed me that his knee was feeling pretty good, only a little tight, then asked if I’d finished my story. He knew we had won but hadn’t caught any of the game, so I filled him in on some of the highlights. Then he told me he missed me, and I said I missed him, too. We still hadn’t said I love you, but I could feel it coming soon. For the most part, I was ready.

After we hung up, I watched an hour or so of ESPN before my stomach started to growl, and I remembered that I hadn’t eaten dinner. My refrigerator was close to bare, par for the course, so I got in my car to find food, the faster and greasier the better. As I drove through town, my thoughts kept returning to Coach. It bothered me that he hadn’t picked up or called me back—but it bothered me more that I cared so much. Then, just as I was pulling into the Taco Bell drive-thru, his name lit up my phone. My heart racing, I pulled out of line, into a parking spot. I simply couldn’t do two things at once when one of them involved Coach Carr.

“Sorry I missed your call. I must have been in the shower,” he said.

The update felt intimate, and all I could say was “Oh.”

“Did you file your story?” he asked.

“Yes … And what about you? How much Texas–Nebraska tape have you watched since you got home?” I asked. The game had kicked off about the same time as ours, the score about the same, Texas coming out on top.

“How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess,” I said, feeling my chest rising and falling with excitement. “Where are you now?”

“My back porch …”

“Eating chocolate cake?” I said, thinking of our night on the track, and how much happier he sounded now. The score was just as close, but we had played so much better. Probably the best we’d played all year.

He laughed and said, “That was earlier. For dinner … Where are you?”