The One & Only: A Novel (41 page)

“Get off me!” I said again, moving my head from side to side, crying. “Get off me, Ryan. I mean it!”

He loosened his grip just enough for me to start struggling again, and I might have screamed something, too. I can’t recall exactly what happened after that, and have no idea if several seconds or several minutes passed. All I remember is looking up and seeing Coach Carr in the doorway of my bedroom, his silhouette backlit.

I don’t know what he saw or heard, but it must have been clear that I wasn’t a willing participant in whatever was happening because he then yelled, “What the hell’s going on in here? Get off her!”

Ryan leapt to his feet and headed for the door, but Coach blocked him like a scrappy defensive end, his hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Ryan said, in so many words, that he begged to differ and pushed his way past Coach, toward my living room. I sat up, and Coach looked at me for a beat, as if to determine if I was okay. Then he turned and followed Ryan. I stayed put, frozen on my bed, listening to Coach shouting, “What the hell were you doing in there? You might as well tell me, because she’s going to tell me!”

Ryan said something in response, but I couldn’t make it out, other than the word
liar.

“Shea Rigsby is not a liar. You’re the liar, Ryan. And I’d take back that Cotton Bowl championship and sit your ass if I could.”

Ryan said something that sounded like “Sure you would, Coach.”

Then I heard sounds of two grown men fighting, followed by a loud crash of furniture hitting the wall. That’s when I got off the bed and ran down the hall and saw Coach on top of Ryan, pounding him amid an overturned end table and a scatter of magazines. He hit him three times, maybe four, until Ryan said, “So I guess you’re sleeping with her, too?”

Coach popped him once more for good measure.

Ryan didn’t throw a punch back. He just laughed, the same way he’d laughed at me in the bedroom, as blood trickled down his face. “You know what, Coach? It’s what I’ve always thought about you,” he said, sitting up, catching his breath. “You’re a hypocrite. You see what you want to see when you want to see it. It’s all terribly convenient, isn’t it?”

“You’re a disgrace,” Coach said, grabbing his knees to catch his breath. “An absolute disgrace.”

“Well, maybe I am,” Ryan said, now on his feet and almost to the door. “Maybe I am. But then what’s that say about you? Huh,
Coach
?”

He looked at me over his shoulder, shook his head, and was gone.

“
A
re you okay?” Coach asked after he had righted my table and we’d both found our way to my sofa. He was still winded and disheveled, his shirt untucked, wrinkled, and a little bloodstained.

“Yeah. I’m okay,” I said, staring straight ahead, both hands tucked under my thighs. The only light in the room came from the hallway and the orange glow of a streetlamp working its way through the slatted plastic blinds covering my windows. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “My first fight in thirty-five years. If you can call it that …”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure you can call it that,” I said. I made myself look at him, taking in his shell-shocked expression. It was as if he was still processing everything.

“He never took a swing back at me …”

Coach seemed to be talking to himself, but I offered a theory. “Maybe he was afraid of you.”

He snorted. “Yeah. I don’t think so. An NFL player in his prime? And an old coach?”

“You’re not old,” I said reflexively.

“Feel old now,” Coach said under his breath, staring down at his knuckles, a cut on his middle finger.

Several long seconds passed before he spoke again. “Well. He deserved what he got.”

On the face of things, it was a plain statement of opinion. There was no rise in his voice suggesting a question, but I knew he was asking me something. I could tell he was looking for reassurance that he hadn’t overreacted. That he’d done the right thing.

“Yeah. He did deserve it,” I said, hoping that would suffice.

“What exactly happened?” Coach asked. “Leading up to … what I saw? Will you tell me?”

“Yes, I’ll tell you,” I said. “But let me make some tea first … do you want some?”

“No, thank you,” he said.

I could feel his eyes on me as I stood and walked to my kitchen, filled my kettle with water, turned on a gas burner, then assembled a mug, a tea bag, and a large spoon because the little ones were all in the dishwasher that I’d forgotten to run. All of this, and I didn’t even want tea. I was stalling. The last thing I felt like doing was reliving what had happened back at the bar, much less in my bedroom, but I knew that it could only make Coach feel better to know the truth. He
deserved
to know the truth. So I turned off the stove and went back to the sofa, sitting a little closer to him this time, but still half a cushion away.

“I changed my mind,” I said, glancing at his profile.

“About what?”

“The tea,” I said.

Then I told him everything, uncensored, right down to the call from Blakeslee. When I finished, he reached across the sofa for my hand. I met him halfway, our pinkies grazing.

“Thank you,” I said, realizing I hadn’t said it yet.

“Don’t thank me. I just did … what any man would do. Neil, Miller, anyone.”

“Maybe. But you’re not Neil or Miller. You’re his
coach
,” I said, the unfathomable part of tonight starting to sink in. I could accept who Ryan was more easily than I could swallow what had happened between the two greatest legends in the Walker program.

Coach covered my hand with his, and I flipped mine over, our palms touching. “His
former
coach. That was a long time ago.”

“Still. I feel bad for putting you in this position,” I said, processing that we were actually holding hands. It was as if the trauma of the evening had dulled my reaction time, caused a tape delay.

“You didn’t do anything wrong … And what position do you mean, exactly? The position to defend you?
Shit.
” Coach shook his head. “You don’t know how grateful I am that I walked in when I did.”

“I’m sure nothing terrible would have happened,” I said, thinking that it was a Catch-22. I didn’t want Coach to regret hitting Ryan—for
his
sake—but I also didn’t want to exaggerate what had happened. Ryan was a bully with a terrible temper—but he wasn’t a full-blown criminal. Surely he wouldn’t have
really
hurt me. Or would he? Why, in the face of violent proof, did I still want to believe that he wasn’t
that
bad?

“I can’t stand the thought of anything even
remotely
bad ever happening to you,” Coach said, squeezing my hand.

I squeezed back, thinking that, although this thing with Ryan had brought us to the moment we were in, our hands clasped in a darkened room, I also had the unsettling sense that it had eroded something. The romantic undercurrent so clear in the final conversation before he’d entered my unlocked apartment was gone. It was as if the blows he’d dealt Ryan had set us back to the long-standing dynamic I had hoped we could transcend.

I released his hand and turned to face him, sitting sideways, one knee bent against the back of the sofa, the other dangling to the floor.
“Coach, I appreciate what you did tonight. So much. But I don’t want to be another person in your life that you have to look out for. Protect.”

He turned toward me, touched my cheek, and said, “And why’s that?”

I struggled to explain, wishing I had gone ahead and made the tea so I had something to do with my hands. “Because,” I said. “Because I don’t want to be like … your daughter.”

“You’re nothing like Lucy.”

“You know what I mean. I don’t want you to
see
me as your daughter,” I said, calibrating my words. “Or someone you mentor. Or a journalist on your beat. Or an old family friend. I don’t want to be your friend at all …”

“You don’t want to be my friend?” Coach said with a beseeching half smile. I couldn’t tell if he was confused, playing dumb, or simply asking me to give it to him straight.

“Well, I
do
want to be your friend. Of course I want that. But I might …” I looked into his eyes, telling myself not to lose my nerve, hearing his voice in a huddle telling his players to
man up.
“I might want
more
than that, too.”

“You
might
?”

My heart pounded in my ears, my throat burned. “I
do
want more than that. I
definitely
want more than that. And I’m telling you this now … at this moment … not because you just burst into my apartment and defended me …”

He was staring at me so intently, nodding slightly as I spoke, as if connecting with every word. It emboldened me to keep going even before he said, “Please. Go on.”

“I’m telling you this right here, right now because … I
have
to. I can’t stand it another second. No matter what you think—and I really have very little idea about that—I need you to know that I have feelings for you.”

I took a breath so deep that it felt more like a sob, and he gave me
another tender nod, permission to continue. “And maybe it’s wrong,” I said. “Because of Mrs. Carr … Or because you’re too old—”

“Hey, now,” he said, cracking a small smile.

“Too old for
me.
Not too old,” I qualified. “Although what’s a couple of decades in the scheme of life? Not much … But the age difference aside, maybe I shouldn’t feel this way because you’re my best friend’s father. Because let’s face it—Lucy would freak if she heard this conversation.”

Coach murmured his agreement.

“But I have never been more sure of my feelings. More sure of
anything.
And I had to tell you …”

It was the bravest thing I had ever said to anyone, and possibly the dumbest, too, especially given what we’d both just been through, but I felt enormous relief getting it all out. A burden lifted.

“So that’s it,” I finished. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

Coach looked rattled but not unhappy.

“Coach? Say something.”

He shook his head, as if at a complete loss, but shifted toward me, closing the gap between us completely, then putting his hand on my shoulder. “Maybe you should start calling me Clive,” he whispered.

Then he pulled me toward him, wrapping both arms around me.

His breath in my ear made me shiver, and he held me closer.

“Okay. Clive,” I said, breathing him in.

“This is crazy,” he said.

“As crazy as you coming over and roughing up your only Heisman Trophy winner?” I murmured.

“Maybe not that crazy,” he said. “But still crazy.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

“Neither do I.”

“I want you to kiss me.”

“I
want
to kiss you,” he said. “I
will
kiss you. But not tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Because enough has happened tonight.”

I pulled back a few inches. If he wasn’t going to kiss me, I wanted to see his eyes. “You mean beating Texas or Ryan?”

He smiled, then cupped my face in his hands. “Both,” he whispered, a current flowing between us, more intense than any kiss I’d ever known. “But for now, just know that … your feelings aren’t one-sided.”

“They aren’t?” I said.

He shook his head.

“When did you know?” I said. “When did you feel it?”

“There you go. Miss Reporter.”

I smiled. “Tell me.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I felt something during that Trivial Pursuit game at the lake. Then that first time you asked me a question at a press conference. That one about Reggie’s fumble … You were so cute and nervous.”

“You hated that question.”

“I pretended to … And then the night we went running over at the track?”

I nodded, waiting.

“I had a hunch then, too. And the night you brought over Taco Bell.” He whistled and shook his head. “I was definitely attracted to you all those times. I felt something … But as far as knowing for
sure
?” he said. “Not until tonight.”

“When tonight?” I said, thinking that it made a difference. Was it when he came in to rescue me? Or was it only right now, in this quiet aftermath?

“After the game,” he said. “After the press conference. After all the commotion and noise, when I was finally alone, at home. I sat down in my chair, picked up my phone, and saw all the texts and missed calls. Dozens and dozens of ’em … But I realized that there was only one person I wanted to call. Only one person I wanted to see.”

I smiled, feeling shy and unsteady, wondering if this was actually
happening. It was surreal—and as sweet as a hundred undefeated regular seasons.

Coach smiled back at me and said, “God, you’re beautiful, Shea.”

I remembered to breathe, then told myself yes, this was finally,
really
happening.