The One & Only: A Novel (46 page)

“No,” I said, staring at his car. “Her mother’s far more important than we are. That’s the point.”

“But … she’s not here. This never would have happened if Connie were still with us.”

“Of course not,” I said, appalled at the mere idea that
anything
, even the most minor of flirtations, would have ever begun if Mrs. Carr had been alive. I thought back to that dreadful time when she was really sick, and how I couldn’t even look him in the eye. “Do you think Lucy knows that?”

“Yes. She knows that. She knows
us
 … Nobody cheated here. Nobody lied.”

“We sort of lied.”

“No. We just didn’t tell her right away … This thing
just
happened … Nobody planned it … Lucy’s just upset … She needs time to process it.”

“She’ll never accept it,” I said.

“She has to.”

“She won’t,” I said, wondering what in the world I’d been thinking. How did I
ever
think this could work?

“Yes. She
will.
Now c’mon. Follow me.”

I hesitated, then decided that where I went at this moment really wouldn’t change anything. So I put my car back in drive and said okay.

A few minutes later, we were together in his kitchen, both of us checking our phones.

“Did she call you?” I asked.

“Nope. Did she call you?”

I shook my head.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I let you,” I said. “I forgot where we were. You make me forget everything …”

He gave me a thoughtful look and said, “Maybe it’s for the best that it came out now. There was never going to be a
good
time for that announcement.”

“Yes, but I feel like we ruined Lucy’s news.”

“Nothing can ruin that news.”

“You know what I mean. Tonight was important. Really special to her. And we were reckless …”

“I know … But it’s done. We can’t change it now,” Coach said, always one to focus on the things he could control.

“But we have to fix it.”

“Time will fix it,” he said. “Trust me. She’ll come around.”

I studied his face, wanting desperately to believe that he was right but thinking it was a lot easier for him to be patient, wait her out. He didn’t talk to Lucy three times a day. He didn’t need her the way I needed her. I honestly couldn’t fathom what I’d do if our friendship ended.

I sighed, then went to sit at the kitchen table, resting my chin in my hand. Coach followed, sitting across from me, as I remembered the last thing he had said to me in Lucy’s family room. “So what did you want to tell me?” I asked him.

He blinked a few times, his face blank, as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

“You said you had something to tell me,” I said. “Right before Lucy came downstairs.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“Well?” I said. “What was it?”

Coach looked tense as he took a deep breath.

“Is it Mrs. Carr?” I made myself ask. “Because I know how hard this must be. I mean, I understand that your loyalty will always be to her … which is the way it should be,” I finished awkwardly, wishing I hadn’t brought her up.

Coach shook his head and said, “No. It’s not about Connie. I mean … I’ve had some pangs over the past few weeks. I feel guilty for being happy. For being excited … But I feel that way about football, too. After we win. Like how dare I be happy about a game when she’s not here? Then I always come back to reason and remind myself that whatever you and I do or don’t do isn’t going to bring her back.”

I nodded, familiar with his rationale, but aware that he was evading my question. “So what was it, then?” I said.

A few more seconds ticked by before he cleared his throat and said, “It’s about the past. Something that happened a long time ago.”

I froze, my mind flitting through the possibilities, praying that there hadn’t been another woman while Mrs. Carr was alive. Maybe he’d had an affair with a colleague. Or a random woman he met on the road. Or, most sickening of all, a ripe, bubbly coed. Maybe it was someone I knew, someone I had gone to school with. I couldn’t bear the thought of any of these possibilities, but told myself it wouldn’t change my feelings. Nothing could change the way I felt about him.

“
How
long ago?” I asked.

“Back when you and Ryan were in school.” He took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, “Do you remember that gal Ryan dated in college? Before the one he married? Tish Termini?”

“Yes,” I said, my thoughts racing.
Surely
Coach hadn’t been involved with Tish.

“Well … the night before we left town for the Cotton Bowl, I was in my office, doing some work, when she came to see me.”

I waited, bracing myself for the worst.

“She said she had to tell me something important and was very emotional. I told her to have a seat. So she sat down and told me this story … about the big blowout breakup fight she’d had with Ryan the night before … I think we can both picture that now.”

“Yes,” I said, my insides clenched as I mentally switched gears.

“Then she told me that Ryan had attacked her. I asked what she meant by
attacked
, and she spelled it out pretty clearly. She said that he pushed and shoved her … And then … Then she said he forced her to have sex.”

“He
raped
her?” I said, the word leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

“Well, she didn’t say that
exactly.
But yeah … That’s what she alleged. That he had sex with her against her will. So yeah. That would be rape.”

I stared back at him, everything inside me deflating as I remembered how I’d felt on my bed the other night. How scared I had been even as I tried to tell myself that it was only Ryan. My boyfriend who would never
really
hurt me. Even with my own awful memories, I found it impossible to grasp what Coach was telling me now.

“So then what?” I said, feeling frantic. “What did you say?”

“I said it was a really serious charge and she’d better be very sure about what she was saying.”

“And?”

“And she said she was sure.”

“Then what?” I pressed.

“I asked her why she hadn’t gone to the police. She said she was scared and in shock and that she wanted to come to me first. She asked if I believed her, and I told her it really didn’t matter what I believed. I told her that if she had been raped she needed to go down to the station. Or at least to the campus police.”

“Did you think she was lying?”

Coach stared at me for several seconds before answering. “I didn’t
see any marks on her … There was no sign at all of a physical struggle …”

“But there doesn’t have to be,” I said. “Sometimes there aren’t marks.”

“I know that,” he said. “But I also knew that she had quite the reputation. My assistant coaches had been telling me for months that she was bad news. Bad for Ryan. Always out at the clubs. Drinking and smoking and carrying on … And I’d even heard she was up before the honor council for cheating on an exam … So she wasn’t the most reliable girl … And Ryan was … well, he was
Ryan.
The golden boy. Heisman candidate. Good student. Squeaky-clean reputation.”

“So you didn’t believe her?” I said, boiling it down to its essence. “Did you?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t believe her.”

“So you didn’t do
anything
?” I said, my heart pounding in my ears.

“Shea … You have to understand … I didn’t know what I now know … I only had the facts that I had at the time. And, based on those facts, it just didn’t add up. I really thought she was manufacturing the whole thing … exacting some kind of revenge because Ryan had broken up with her. I thought she wanted me to bench him for the bowl game. Get even. Hurt him the worst way you can hurt a ballplayer … And, beyond that, beyond destroying a football career, I was aware that this type of accusation could ruin a young man’s life. It’s serious if it’s true, of course, but it’s serious if it’s
not
true, too … And I didn’t think it was true. Not a shred of me believed that girl.”

“Did you at least
talk
to Ryan?” I asked. “Ask him about it?”

“Yes. Of course I did. Right after Tish left, I called him into my office and asked him what had happened. He told me a story that made more sense than hers. A story that I could … wrap my head around.”

“What did he tell you?” I said, knowing how convincing, downright slick, he could be.

“He told me that he’d broken up with her and that she was very hurt. Very angry … He said she came after him pretty hard, and he just defended himself. Like this.” Coach held up his arms, blocking his
face. “He said he did push her out of his apartment, but only after she refused to leave. And he swore to me that he didn’t hurt her … And that was it …”

Coach threw his hands up in the air and shook his head. “It was a classic he-said, she-said, and, bottom line, I just didn’t believe that girl. In my mind, she wasn’t credible. He was. So yeah. I took his word over hers. A few days later, I did follow up with her.”

“And?”

“And she changed her tune … She changed her story. At least part of it. She maintained that he
had
roughed her up but said that the sex was ‘a little bit consensual’ …”

“A
little
bit?”

“Exactly. It either was or it wasn’t. Right?”

“Maybe she was scared. Maybe she knew you didn’t believe her.”

“And maybe she had made that part up.”

“Maybe,” I said, acknowledging that this was definitely a possibility. “So that was it?”

Coach nodded, avoiding my gaze.

“You didn’t do
anything
else?” I asked, my heart sinking.

“You have to remember, Shea … There are rules now about this sort of thing. Rules that say coaches have to report all incidents to the university president or athletic director or police. Or all three. But back then … there was nothing in place. I had never dealt with anything like that before …”

“Did you tell Connie?” I asked, unsure of why this mattered to me.

“No.”

I stared at him, frozen, out of questions.

“Does this … change things?” he asked softly.

I started to say no, because I wanted it to be the truth. But then I thought of Tish. It had changed everything for Tish. It had also changed everything for Ryan. Maybe even for Blakeslee and me. Hell, it had changed the course of history. If Coach had believed Tish’s story, at least enough to report it, the trajectory of Ryan’s entire career would have been different. Even if ultimately cleared of the charges, he
likely wouldn’t have won the Heisman the following year, or gone nearly as high in the draft. It would have hurt Walker, too. Without Ryan on the field, we certainly wouldn’t have won the Cotton Bowl; and, without that win, we might not have had the recruiting classes in the years that followed, success begetting success. Walker might not be on the brink of a championship this season, and Coach and I might not be sitting here tonight, in his kitchen.

Coach said my name, looking far more worried than he’d been in Lucy’s living room.

“Yeah?” I said.

“If I could go back, I would change how I handled everything. I would have done more. I really thought I was doing the right thing, but now I can see that I let that girl down.” He paused for a long beat, then cleared his throat. “The other night, when I walked into your room and saw Ryan there on top of you … It was almost as if I were standing up for both of you …”

I nodded, as if I accepted this explanation, but couldn’t help feeling that throwing a couple of punches in my living room couldn’t fix the past, and I felt myself withdraw from him in a way that scared me.

“Talk to me, Shea,” he said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “This is a lot to digest …”

“Are you angry?”

“No,” I said, wishing that it were that simple, knowing that anger has a way of subsiding and passing more quickly than this brand of disappointment.

“Then what?” he said.

I opened my mouth, but couldn’t find the words to describe the disoriented, disillusioned feeling I had. The feeling of questioning everything I had ever believed in. The NCAA investigation was one thing. But this was another matter, one I couldn’t so easily dismiss or explain away.

“I’m really sorry, Shea,” he said.

“I know you are,” I said, thinking of Lucy, then Ryan, wondering if sometimes apologies were simply too little, too late.

“What are you thinking?” he said.

“I’m thinking I better head home now.”

As soon as the words were out, I changed my mind and hoped that he’d protest. I wanted him to say and do all the things that made him a great coach. I wanted him to make everything better the way he always had.

But he simply nodded and said okay. Then he walked me to the door, where he gave me a quick platonic hug, followed by an equally platonic kiss on the cheek, as if he, too, realized that something had shifted between us and was surrendering to a new status quo.

“So, you’re going to Chicago tomorrow?” I said, stalling, feigning normalcy. As if anything had been normal about this entire evening. Even decorating the tree had been a charade set to a Harry Connick, Jr., soundtrack.

“Yes,” he said, also pretending. “I’ll call you from the road.”

“Great.” I nodded as he reached beyond me for the storm door, propping it open with his outstretched arm. I stepped onto the porch, still stalling. Moths danced around the lanterns, and one collided with my cheek. I swiped at its soft, powdery wings, but kept staring at him, waiting for something more.

When he still didn’t speak, I said his name.
Clive.
There was urgency in my voice, neediness.

“What is it, Shea?” he said softly, still holding the door open.

I didn’t answer, and he pulled me back into the darkened foyer, letting the storm door snap closed. Then he pushed the front door shut, and put his arms around me, this time in a real embrace. “Please don’t go,” he said. “Not yet. Not like this.”

I held on to him as tightly as I could and said, “Why do I feel like we just lost?”