Dream of You (23 page)

             
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Randy said as the growl of the engine moved toward them. “You’ve got school, work, and the baby to get ready for. The rest will come along.”

             
So you say
, he thought to himself, but kept silent. Jo was home and he was trying to keep his worries suppressed when he was around her.

             
Her dark blue Mustang turned up the drive and rolled to a stop just behind his Malibu, the world going silent in the sound vacuum left behind once she killed the engine.

             
“Hi, sweetheart,” Randy greeted the second she popped the door.

             
Tam watched her eyes cut between the two of them as she pushed her shades up onto her forehead and could read the question in them:
everything alright with you two?
Clearly, he wasn’t being as covert as he thought he was.

             
“Hi, Dad.” She had ditched her scrub top and was in the white tank she wore beneath it, jeans, dirty from work, that she’d complained of as getting too tight that morning, and scarred old Timberlands. She looked tired and beautiful and concerned about whatever they’d been talking about.

             
“Hi, baby,” she greeted as she walked up the length of the car and slipped an arm around Tam’s waist. The look she flashed up to him was questioning. “You have a good day?”

             
He’d spent two hours juggling a customer who
needed
him – personally – to track down her misplaced order and who’d held him hostage with a string of curses and the threat of a lawsuit before he’d finally patched her call through to his supervisor. He’d dunked the end of his tie into his coffee, had dropped half his lunch all over the break room floor, and had experienced a minor panic attack when Mike called and asked him about a possible internship with his company.

             
“Great,” he lied, and because both his hands were wet, dropped a kiss against her upturned forehead. “You?”

             
So fast he thought he might have imagined it, a dark look skittered across her face: a twitch of her brows and a downward curl of one corner of her mouth that could have meant anything to anyone, but that set off the softest of warning sirens in his head.

             
“Yeah,” she said, though, and gave him a squeeze. “Oh, Delta called me.”

             
“Delta called
you
?” Tam and Randy asked in near perfect unison, and she scrunched up her nose.

             
“Yeah, she wants to give bowling night another go. Jess and Dylan are coming too. And apparently, poor Jordie has been asked to bring his girl.”

20

             
T
he air was starting to taste like fall. Like damp leaves, grass gone brittle, the first hint of wood smoke. Layers of cooler fog interlaced with the warm. The spheres of mature trees were turning red and orange around the edges, the hazy first brush of color. Ellie watched her breath plume like smoke, snuggled down into her chocolate corduroy jacket and clicked the stopwatch in her hand as Lane and Jonathan crossed the finish line.

             
“Good,” Jordan said before they’d slowed. He was in the infield and had been timing only Anton, while she timed Lane and Jonathan. His voice was uncharacteristically enthusiastic, a quick, pleased punch of sound in the otherwise quiet morning.

             
“How was it, Coach?” Anton asked as he fell forward with his hands on his knees. It was a sharp seventy degrees, but he and his other runners were shirtless, all of them breathing like race horses. Jordan had staggered their starts, pushing Anton all the way back a half a lap in an effort, he’d told her that morning – before the boys had showed up and they’d shared a too-expensive Starbucks latte in the predawn – to see if Anton was better served at a longer distance.

             
Jordan stepped onto the track and showed his runner the face of the stopwatch, earning a wide, white grin in return. “You kick in a little later, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I definitely want you in the fifteen hundred at our meet next week.”

             
“And me in the four, right?” Lane asked between deep, gulping breaths.

             
“Yep. Jonny, you’re my eight hundred.”

             
Ellie couldn’t really justify it, but she was proud of the boys, even prouder of their coach. He had no passion for teaching her HPS class, but on the track, she’d watched him transform into this Yoda who held the rapt attention and respect of his runners.

             
“We will
kill
next week,” Jonathan said as he scrubbed his hands back through his dark hair, to which Jordan rolled his eyes.

             
“How ‘bout we start with surviving, yeah?”

             
“Hey, Ellie.” Lane tossed her a grin that probably left most girls swooning. “You gonna come to the meet?”

             
She had always wrinkled her nose at the notion that sleeping with one’s professor had its perks. That was for girls without the chops to get by otherwise. Yet here she was, sleeping with the prof, and they’d long since dropped any pretenses of her working out. Most mornings, she had a stopwatch in hand, helping Jordan keep time. She brought the guys Gatorade and homemade granola bars and though neither she nor Jordan had admitted to anything, the runners had put two-and-two together. Aside from the suggestive eyebrow shrugs and grins, they had been respectful, if not overly attentive. She’d overhead Jonathan mention “your girlfriend” to Jordan and he’d blushed.

             
“I don’t know,” she said, and her eyes moved to Jordan who was watching her with an expression she still found difficult to read. She knew without asking that they weren’t to a hand-holding-in-public, boyfriend/girlfriend stage, but on the flip side, she had no idea what they were. No idea if he saw her as future potential, or a moment-by-moment diversion. “I’ll have to wait and see,” she said, evasive, and studied her nail polish.

             
“You should totally come,” Anton said. He chuckled. “Keep Coach company.”

             
“Yeah, okay, you shits,” Jordan said evenly, “go stretch it out.”

             
When they were out of earshot, he dropped down beside her on the bleachers, not close enough to draw any undue attention, but close enough that she could smell his pear-scented shampoo.

             
He looked cute, she thought, in blue basketball shorts and a gray polo layered over a white waffle weave long sleeve t-shirt. He’d gotten his hair cut in the last week and its wavy curls were a little better tamed with gel.
Cute
, because he could slant his eyes at her, touch her, and make her hot, but what she most appreciated  were the moments when she was overcome by how much affection she was storing up for him.

             
“You don’t want to come?” he asked and she thought he almost looked wounded by the thought.

             
Or maybe that was her school girl imagination.

             
“I do if I’m not going to be in the way,” she said with a look she hoped he interpreted correctly. “If you want me to.”

             
His mouth twitched to the side in a not-quite smile. He hadn’t expected her to say that, apparently, the surprise clear in his eyes. She felt his fingertips through the thin fabric of her black leggings as he ran a fast hand down her thigh. He smiled. “Yeah. Of course.”

             
Ellie returned his grin, and loosed a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She’d been wondering for three days now if there was any way to bring up Sunday without actually talking about the day they’d shared.

             
He’d spent the night Saturday: one of those unhurried, dinner and drinks and a movie on the couch nights. Jordan had brought wine, to which she’d smiled, blushing with happiness because he didn’t seem like a wine drinker but he’d said he thought she’d like it. Pink Moscato. Totally girlish. And they’d sipped it out of everyday tumblers while they discussed the improbabilities of the action movie de jour.

             
Sunday morning she’d stirred before dawn as his body heat left hers.
“Going for a run,”
he’d said and pressed a kiss to her temple. She’d showered, dressed, tidied and made breakfast. Home fries and bacon were had on the blank places between cookbooks and cake boxes at the kitchen table. And then the most unexpected thing had happened: Jordan had stuck around.

             
Sitting on opposite ends of the couch, their feet overlapping in the middle while he watched football and she wrote, her laptop balanced on her knees, Ellie had been struck by how uncomplicated it felt to just exist alongside him like she was, and that frightened her. Everything about that day – the early afternoon sex in the butter yellow light of day; the Mexican restaurant where he took her for lunch; his hand finding hers as she towed him down the long bank of windows outside her favorite antique shop; the weight of his head in her lap as he’d stolen a glance at her computer screen and asked what she was writing about with nothing short of boyish curiosity; and especially the big, sad squeeze of her heart when he’d kissed her goodbye for ten minutes against the side of his Jeep – had frightened the hell out of her.

             
Her stubbornly independent streak refused to acknowledge the day in any sort of significant light. But the dreamy, romantic side of herself she couldn’t seem to remove wanted to know if he was becoming just as invested; if his emotions were digging in roots the way hers were.

             
For some reason, him keeping her close after that day of ordinary intimacies, their day of not just feeling like, but actually being a couple, seemed significant. As if maybe – and she cursed herself for hoping it – he was starting to see the potential way out ahead of them, glimmering like a heat mirage along the pavement of the horizon.

             
“Okay,” she said, a relief that fizzed with wonder surging through her.

             
Ellie waited on the bleachers with a half a chapter of
Pride and Prejudice
while Jordan convened with his guys one last time and then dismissed them. She was in street clothes – wedge booties, leggings and a light sweater – so without the need to change, it had become ritual for Jordan to walk her to class…or at least as far as they could get before they looked suspicious.

             
“Always with the books,” he said as she fell into step beside him and they started across the track at a snail’s pace.

             
“You know, that might be cute if we’d just met,” she said as she stowed the book in her bag.

             
He shrugged, the sun dancing along the shiny-smooth skin of his profile. “I run out of jokes; what can I say.”

             
She studied him as they walked, the thick curls of gold in his hair, the translucent half disks of his turquoise irises from her sidelong perspective, and became curious about something. “Do you read?” she asked and was not expecting the sharp look he tossed in her direction. “That sounds bad,” she amended. “I know you do read, but I meant - ”

             
“Do I read like you do?” he said, and his face softened.

             
She grinned. “Yeah. The odds are slim, I know, because I take bookworm to the extreme.”

             
“I read.” He nodded. “Not as much as I used to now that you keep me busy.”

             
He tossed her a sideways grin and Ellie felt warmth blossom in her cheeks.

             
“But I like my geek classics.”

             
“Such as?”

             
“Oh, you’re gonna make me fess up to my geekdom?”

             
“Absolutely.”

             
He made her wait a long moment, their shoes whispering through the wet grass as they topped the short slope that led down to the parking lot. “I’m a
Lord of the Rings
guy,” he said at last, and Ellie felt a lightning quick grin steal across her face. “A Song of Ice and Fire
too. All that fantasy shit.”

             
“That’s not shit,” she said.

             
He came to a stop when they reached the curb, silent, a contemplative look coming across his face as he stared toward the woods through the dissipating mists. Ellie started to speak, and then didn’t, an odd sensation that she needed to wait for whatever he would eventually say stealing over her.