The One & Only(89)

I changed the subject as quickly as I could and asked Ryan if he was ready for the game tomorrow. He said yes, then detailed some of the reasons: great practice, sound strategy in place, knee feeling good, Philly’s secondary sucks. I never tired of the inside scoop, and never would, but the starstruck feeling had finally, mostly, faded, replaced with the belief that I belonged in his world.

“What are you going to do tonight?” Ryan asked. There was an edge in his voice tipping me off that the Third Rail might be the wrong answer—and that I probably shouldn’t confide that I was suddenly craving beer freshly poured from a tap as opposed to one opened from my refrigerator.

So I said, “Oh, I don’t know. Not much. Just laying low.”

“Good girl,” he said in a way that was equal parts condescending and nurturing. I decided to focus on the latter, especially when he asked me for the tenth time if I had my VIP parking pass, and then reminded me that the tickets were under my name at will call.

“Yes. Thank you,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t need a couple more?”

“I’m sure. Thank you,” I said, thinking that, for a pampered star with multiple assistants, housekeepers, personal chefs, trainers, and sports psychologists on his staff, he really could play the caretaker, too.

“You’re ready to meet my folks?” he said.

“Yes. I can’t wait,” I said. The statement was true, but it had as much to do with curiosity about his father and a sick need for one-upmanship over Astrid and Bronwyn as anything else.

“Good,” Ryan said. “It’ll be a fun day. If we win.”

“You will,” I said. “All right. I better hang up before I rear-end someone. I’ll text you before nine.”

“No. Call me,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, bristling just a bit. I told myself that I was being completely unfair to him. He simply wanted to say good night before he went to bed. That was it—and it was sweet. A sign of a good boyfriend. A great boyfriend. I told myself to go home and get some rest. That I might not be playing football, but that I had a pretty big day tomorrow, too.

Yet I couldn’t resist the magnetic pull of the Third Rail, and forty-five minutes later, I was saddled up to the bar, ordering a Blue Moon on draft with extra oranges. The place was unusually packed, and I knew, or at least recognized, a good dozen people, including several girls from my high school class. In the way of small towns, most had stayed put in Walker after graduation, many not bothering with college at all, so it wasn’t unusual to bump into classmates. But around the holidays, there were always a few homecoming surprises—faces you hadn’t seen in years.

That night, I spotted Michelle Sheffield, a girl in the class behind me whom I’d always really liked and who now lived in San Francisco. We gave each other a big hug, then exchanged updates. I told her about my job at the Post, while she shared that she was practicing patent law. It was refreshing to discuss jobs—rather than mommy updates, which was the typical conversation when I ran into someone from Walker.

I glanced at her bare ring finger and said, “So you’re still single?”

“Yep,” Michelle said.

“Me, too,” I said.

She smirked and said, “Yes, but I hear you have a boyfriend.”

I nodded.

“So it’s true? You really are dating Ryan James?”

I tried to smile modestly.

“Wow. That’s so cool. How did that happen? Did you meet him through your job?”

“We went to college together,” I said. “So we’ve been friends for a while now.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s cool … He’s … really nice.”

She stared at me, waiting for more, so I added, “He’s very intense. Competitive. Focused. What you would expect of a quarterback playing at that level.”

“Does he get recognized everywhere you go?”

“Yeah. But we really don’t go out that much. He lays pretty low during the season. We mostly just stay in and watch movies. Stuff like that. Although he’s pretty outgoing and extroverted … Very smart. He’s great,” I finished.

“That’s soo cool,” Michelle said again. “Do you think you’ll get married?”

I shrugged and said, “Oh, who knows? He just got divorced—so I can’t imagine that that would happen for a long time, if at all … Though we are doing the whole meet-the-parents thing tomorrow. But enough about Ryan James. You’re the one with the glamorous California life.”

Michelle smiled and gave me her updates, as we ordered another round, and then another, playing pool and bumping into various other friends and acquaintances. It was a nice commingling of groups from high school and Walker. At some point, I spotted Miller with a bearded hipster type and went to say hello. Miller introduced me to his friend Lion, explaining that he was an artist, originally from Boston, now teaching a sculpture class at Walker after a gig at UCLA. Clearly Miller had met him through his professor girlfriend, and I thought how amusing it was that someone like Miller had found his way into an academic clique.