The One And Only Part 32

I looked at him, wondering what he was getting at.

"Nothing," I said. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you have this wonderful job ... and this incredible, famous boyfriend ... but ... are you happy?"

It seemed to be such an odd burst of insightfulness from my father that I thought surely it must be a coincidence. He obviously knew nothing of the fight Ryan and I'd had the evening before. "Yes. I'm happy," I said. "Why?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "I just have this feeling ..." His voice trailed off, but then he cleared his throat and tried again. "Should I be worried about you?"

I felt confused, then touched, then annoyed at myself for being so easily moved that I actually considered retorting, h.e.l.l, yeah, you should be worried about me. That's what fathers are supposed to be. Perpetually, constantly worried about their offspring.

Instead I said, "No, Dad. You shouldn't be."

Feeling uneasy, I glanced around the restaurant, my eyes resting on a young couple with a toddler. The child was about two, sitting atop a plastic booster seat, eating a crepe, her face covered with chocolate. With blond ringlets and big blue eyes, she was exceptionally cute, and she must have just said something cute, too, because her parents stared at her adoringly, laughed, then held hands across the table. It was the sort of scene that rarely made me wistful, and it didn't now either, although I felt a pang of emotion I couldn't quite place.

My father followed my gaze, then looked back at me, as if trying to read my mind. "Do you know what you want?" he said. His question was as vague as they come, but his expression seemed purposeful.

"Yes. I'd like to beat Texas and then win a national champions.h.i.+p," I said.

"But what do you want in life? In your personal life? Do you want to get married? Have children? Do you think Ryan could be 'the one'?"

It was such a peculiar line of questioning coming from my father, who had never seemed particularly perceptive or empathetic. In fact, I'd always been able to absolve him over the years based on my belief that he simply wasn't capable of anything more. So, in a convoluted sense, his compa.s.sion at this moment was backfiring, making me feel worse.

"Did Astrid put you up to this?" I asked, thinking that grown men who have been married three times typically don't think in terms of "the one."

"I beg your pardon," my dad said, looking vaguely insulted. "Give me a little credit."

I smiled to lessen the charge, then said, "Okay. What do I want in life?"

"Yes."

"I don't know ... I guess I want what everyone wants ... To be happy."

I thought I was artfully dodging the question, but my father didn't let me off the hook. "And does Ryan make you happy?"

"Happy enough," I said, before I could think better of it.

My dad lifted his mug, pausing halfway between his mouth and the table, and said, "Happy enough? That's a dangerous proposition, Shea."

I looked into his steel-gray eyes, feeling a wave of resentment building in my chest. I wanted to say, Who are we kidding here? Let's stick to small talk, Dad. This is way too little, too late. Instead, I s.h.i.+fted gears in a radically different direction, thinking, You want candor? You want a heart-to-heart? I'll give it to you. I'll tell you who I really love.

My head told me it was a bad idea and that my father hadn't even remotely earned the role of confidant. But something inside me just didn't care. Maybe it was the burning desire to unload my secret. Maybe on some level I wanted to shock him. And maybe I wanted him to feel genuine worry for me. Concern that, due to his absence and the vast paternal void in my life, I was making bad choices, pursuing a wildly inappropriate older man. I didn't believe this, of course, but part of me wanted my father to wonder.

"The truth is, Dad," I said, now unable to stop myself. "I really like Ryan ... But I think I might be in love with someone else."

No matter how much I had felt this coming on, it still felt strange and startling to say it out loud.

My dad put his mug down, still gripping the handle, and said, "Your ex? What was his name?"

"Miller," I said. "And no. I never loved Miller."

My dad didn't ask who, likely because he a.s.sumed he wouldn't know him anyway, but I opened my mouth, and could feel the words tumbling out of me, almost uncontrollably. "I think I'm in love with Coach Carr," I announced, my voice low but steady.

My dad stared across the table at me, clearly in shock, while I tried to overcome my own feeling of vertigo. It was as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff without a guardrail. Or, perhaps more accurately, already in midair, falling. And just like it wouldn't be possible to stop a fall halfway to the ground, I knew it wasn't possible to undo my confession, though it crossed my mind to try, pa.s.s the whole thing off as a joke.

"Coach Carr? What?" my dad said, fl.u.s.tered. Floored.

I nodded.

"Are you ... serious?" he asked, his mouth falling open like a cartoon of a man surprised.

"Dead serious," I said, now riding a cathartic wave of relief.

"But what about ... Ryan?" my dad asked, seemingly confounded.

"What about him?" I said. "C'mon, Dad. You, of all people, know this sort of thing is complicated. Why else would you marry the same person twice?"

"Right," he said, looking satisfyingly sheepish.

Our waitress arrived with our food, giving us both time to process everything.

When she left, he said, "And Clive ...? He feels the same?"

"I think he might feel the same, but it's all under the surface ... And obviously all of this was well after Connie died. In case you were wondering."

In other words, no foul play of the kind you're accustomed to.

My dad looked slightly relieved, then said, "Are you sure it's not just ... football?"

"If it were football, don't you think I'd be just as happy with Ryan?"

He nodded and said, "Good point."

"n.o.body is like Coach Carr," I said. "n.o.body is half the man he is."

It was the way I felt, but it was a bit pointed, too.

I think my dad got it, because he looked down, suddenly remembering his coffee. He took a long swallow, as if gathering his thoughts, then said, "I just think ... you've always looked up to him so much. As a father figure ... You know ... Since I wasn't around when you were growing up ..."

"So what you're saying is-Bronwyn would never fall for Coach Carr because she had a father, growing up?" I looked into his eyes, and saw a flicker of regret. Though it occurred to me, not for the first time, that once he shacked up with my mom and had me, he was screwed either way. No matter what, he was going to be abandoning a woman and her daughter.

"No," my dad said. "That's not what I'm saying at all ... I'm just saying ..." He stopped, then said, "Okay. Maybe I was saying something like that ..."

I picked my words as carefully as I could. "Dad, isn't it possible that I actually just ... have genuine feelings for him? Apart from anything that happened to me as a child?"

"Yes," my dad conceded, but he still looked flummoxed. "That is possible."

We both pretended to concentrate on our food for a few seconds, until he put down his fork and said, "Who else knows? Lucy? Your mom?"

I shook my head. "n.o.body but you."

He gave me a half smile and said, "Well, I'm honored."

"You should be," I said.

"Thank you for trusting me."

"Yes. Please don't tell Astrid."

"I would never."

"I believe you."

"And Ryan?"

"Ryan will be fine," I said. "No matter what happens, Ryan will be just fine."

"Can I give you some advice?" my dad said.

"Sure."

"If you know it's wrong with him, end it sooner rather than later."

I looked at him, wondering if he was speaking from experience, and, if so, was he talking about Astrid or my mom? I considered asking him but decided I really didn't want to know, as he continued. "Figure out what you want ... whatever that is ... and go for it."

"I will," I said. "But for now ..."

My dad raised his eyebrows, waiting.

"For now, I just want to beat the h.e.l.l out of the Longhorns."

My dad laughed and said, "Yeah. You just might belong with Coach, after all."

Thirty-one.

On Sat.u.r.day morning, the day of the final Walker game of the regular season, I woke up feeling sick to my stomach. My hatred for Texas always compounded my standard nervousness, and this year was even worse, with so much more at stake. If we won, we would be playing for the national champions.h.i.+p. If we lost, Texas would forever relish their role as spoiler, and we'd finish the year ranked third or fourth, at best, in some ways more painful than a mediocre season.

I got out of bed, too rattled for coffee, too nauseated to eat, pacing and praying and fidgeting all over my apartment. I listened to music and even did some yoga poses and breathing exercises, but nothing worked. I told myself to get a grip. The game was big-as huge as they come-but there were more important things in life, fates worse than losing to the Longhorns. On this very day, people would get terrible diagnoses. Die in fluke tragic accidents. Others would get fired, lose their homes to the bank, their spouses to divorce, their best friends to petty differences. Beloved pets would be put to sleep. Suicide notes penned. Innocent men arrested. Natural disasters might even strike and topple whole villages in remote corners of the world.

This was only a game, I kept telling myself. Not life or death. But no matter how hard I tried to remain philosophical, I couldn't talk myself into that perspective. Into any perspective.

And then, a few hours later, I actually puked in a trash can at the stadium.

J.J. busted me, coming up on my left shoulder, laughing.

"Did you just do what I think you did?" His voice echoed in the cavernous corridor that would later be squeezed with bodies and vendors.

I wiped my mouth with a napkin, took a swig of water from a bottle in my bag, and popped in a piece of gum before turning around to face him.

"Yep," I said. "I sure did."

"And something tells me it wasn't bad fish."

"Ha. No. It was the emasculated bovines," I said, my favorite nickname for the Longhorns.

"So much for an impartial media."

I laughed but quickly sobered up again, J.J.'s face mirroring the way I felt.

"Do you get the feeling that it's now or never?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I do. Why do we feel that way?"

"Because," he said. "We're so close. I can't imagine getting this close again. It could take years. And I'm sixty-one. I don't have that kind of time."

"I know," I said. "You have to be so good ... But so d.a.m.n lucky, too." I crossed my fingers, stared up at the ceiling of the atrium, and prayed for the hundredth time since that morning.

"You think we'll pull it off?" he said.

I shrugged, thinking that when it really, truly mattered, I never had a good gut feeling. It wasn't so much that I didn't have faith in my team, but that I maintained the truest fans always reverted to a doomsday position in the same way that parents always worried about tragedy befalling their children. Love made things feel precarious, and, when you got right down to it, everything in life was tenuous and fleeting and ultimately tragic. Yes, someone would win this game, and two teams in the country would go on to play for a champions.h.i.+p in January. And someone would win that game. And a few seniors at one program in the nation would end their careers on a jubilant high note. But for many, many more, the college football season would end in utter disappointment. Even heartbreak. Just like life.

J.J. slapped me on the back and said, "When's the last time you tossed your cookies like that before a game?"

"The Cotton Bowl," I said.

"Well, that's a good sign, no?"

"Yep," I said, having already thought of that superst.i.tious angle. Because, no matter how pessimistic I was before a big game, I never stopped looking for signs, never stopped praying for the right alignment of stars over the Brazos River.

As it turned out, there was no need to pace, puke, or pray. Because Walker kicked the s.h.i.+t out of Texas. We were faster, sharper, and better on nearly every play. It was an art and a science and a thing of beauty and a glorious act of G.o.d, the final scoreboard glowing brighter than the moon: Walker 28, Texas 0.

Buoyant, I sprinted to the press conference, counting down the minutes until I could see Coach, hear him recapping the game with his usual matter-of-fact preamble. When he walked in, he scanned the room as if looking for something or someone. Then he spotted me, standing in the back with a couple of guys from The Dallas Morning News. Our eyes locked, and he threw me a wink. My insides melted, and I couldn't help but grin back at him.

"Let me guess," one of the reporters next to me said in a snide voice. "You went to Walker."

"Yep. And let me guess. You went to UT-Austin," I said, knowing that he had. The Austin infuriated Longhorn fans, who liked to think of their school as the University of Texas-which his irate expression confirmed.

A few seconds later, the press conference was under way, and I furiously scribbled notes and quotes, waiting until the end to ask my own question.

"Yes? Shea," Coach said, pointing to me.