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Kansas, she finds, is nothing like she expected. Instead of corn fields and cows (”Oh, no boss, that’s Iowa.” A pause and then, “Well, no, we got those, too.”), she’d found a city brimming with life and a preternatural thirst for American football, beef, and barbecue.
In the end, it hadn’t been that much effort to convince her to pack a few bags and book a ticket for a seat next to his to midwest America.
(“Henry and Michelle can’t always be the ones to come here,” he’d explained, eyes downcast and wandering out her office window towards the sunshine and the pitch. “Lawyers and custody arrangements are a little difficult with timezones and Zoom. Besides,” he’d added, reaching over to snag one of her biscuits from her desk. “Don’t you want a vacation? To just get away from all of this?” Their eyes flicked to the latest gossip rag on her desk, the one with the pictures of Rupert and a heavily pregnant Bex on the front cover. She’d sighed in defeat. She was going to Kansas.)
Ted babbles happily to her about his favorite spots in the city, insistent that he give her a tour of the Wichita’s landmarks—parks and fountains and something called Stonehenge Jr. which makes her laugh and Ted just beams at her, nudges her shoulder with his, and tells her, “Well now, maybe you’ll finally take me to see the real thing and then I’ll have a better frame of comparison.”
“Deal,” she says, looking on at the miniature, graffitied stones in disgust.
His eyes go wide and bright at her agreement and bounces on his heels, hands in his pockets. “Does that mean you’ll take me to The London Eye and Buckingham Palace and—“
He continues rattling off his list of tourist traps that he’s been dying to go to, but all Rebecca can feel is a strange sort of relief that he’s talking about coming back to London at all.
She had thought this may have been a long goodbye, that maybe being back in his hometown with his family would be enough for him to take her aside before their flight back to London and tell her he couldn’t go back with her.
(It had only been after he’d referred to London as home that she felt like she could relax.)
He’d kept her at his side the whole trip—a hand on the small of her back to guide her inside his and Michelle’s home, a small, sad smile when Henry took Rebecca by the hand to show her his sketchbook while Ted and Michelle disappeared into the kitchen to finalize custody arrangements.
Henry was content to show her around the house, too, proud of his room decked out in all manner of dinosaur, art supplies, and sports paraphernalia, including a rather impressive AFC Richmond collection of scarves and jerseys. But it was the pictures that lined the hallways that caught Rebecca’s attention, family photographs of the three of them and tell-tale empty spaces on the walls where wedding photos clearly once existed.
(Dinner with Ted, Michelle, and Henry was only awkward to start, but it was clear there was no bad blood, no pointed barbs, no stinging hurt—just the dull, aching remnants of a disintegrated relationship. Henry sent her home with a hand-drawn picture of all of them—Ted, Michelle, Henry, and a comically tall figure with bright yellow hair and a pink blazer holding Ted’s hand. When they’d departed that first night, Michelle had hugged her warmly and welcomingly, like her presence was a given.)
Despite her offers to hang back at the hotel while he spent time with Henry, convinced she could find herself something to do in downtown Wichita, Ted had just wrinkled his nose at her, shaking his head. “Not sure I can see you in downtown Wichita, boss.”
“I packed a pair of blue jeans as instructed,” she’d protested, a smile on her face. “Besides, I’ve been working on my accent. I’d blend right in.” She cleared her throat and hooked her fingers into her belt loops, voice coming out more hick and haw than a braying donkey: “Howdy, I’m from Kansas and I love barbecue.”
Ted couldn’t hold back his laughter, doubled over and gasping for breath. Rebecca laughed right alongside him, feeling freer and sillier than she had in a year.
The rest of the trip—two glorious weeks of nothing but she and Ted and Henry and occasionally Michelle (who was beyond lovely and whose number and email were swiftly added to her phone—“You can never have too many friends,” she’d told Rebecca and it was so, so easy to see how Ted had fallen for this woman) spent their days in parks, hiking along protected trails and forests, playing catch and American football and simply laying out in the soft, plush Kansas grass under a burning yellow sun.
Through it all, it felt like something seismic was shifting between Rebecca and Ted. Without football, they find other things to talk about: like Ted’s favorite bookstore back home, a tiny, musty little thing stacked floor to ceiling with yellowing paperbacks and antique printings; like his predilection for southern bourbon that comes in triples and his fondness for dark, amber liquors that make him think of his father; like Rebecca dangling her feet into the hotel pool at two o’clock in the morning because the time zones and jet lag are killing her and he joins her only a few minutes later, his own feet kicking beneath the water next to hers, their feet tangling in a way that makes her suck in a breath and blush.
It’s Ted laying down next to her in the park while Henry runs around and chases meadowlarks because little boys have ten times the energy of a couple of middle aged adults, propping himself up on his elbow above her and from behind the safety of their sunglasses where the tinted glass shields emotions, he tells her how glad he is to have her here with him, how happy he is that she and Henry are getting along.
She’s never been great with words so she touches his cheek briefly and slips her hand into his, squeezing gently.
It’s Rebecca knocking on their joined hotel door at midnight with a bowl of popcorn and a sheepish grin, “Thought you should know You’ve Got Mail is on HBO. I don’t have a box of snookers, but thought you might be interested in a movie night?” She falls asleep on his bed and wakes up with her head on his shoulder and a blanket pulled up around her, their pinkies linked in the space between them on the bed.
It all feels like these moments are adding up to something and she’s terrified that the moment they leave Kansas she’ll lose all the courage she’s been collecting over the weeks to finally do something about this frenzied feeling fluttering in her chest.
But on their last night after dinner with Henry and Michelle, long hugs and promises from Ted that they’ll FaceTime every night (and Michelle hugs her tight and murmurs in her ear, “Take care of him.” Rebecca blushes at the ininsutation but nods solemnly anyway, a silent promise made), Ted slides into their rental car and looks at her nervously, fingers drumming on the steering wheel.
“You up for a bit of a road trip? There’s something I’d really like to show you.”
There’s something gentle and tender in his voice—vulnerable. She doesn’t know where he’s taking her or why, but she knows she’ll go anywhere he asks her.
They speed down long stretches of highway, wide open plains and occasional patches of dense trees zoom by them until it becomes too dark to see anything but the illuminated concrete ahead of them. The radio plays softly in the background, filling in the quiet spaces between them. She sighs wistfully, looking out the window and up at the shining, twinkling stars that dot the sky.
“I’m going to miss those stars,” she sighs. She’s spent almost every night since they arrived in Kansas with her head tilted up and mouth parted in awe at the sheer spectacle of the cosmos.
Ted nods, leans forward to glance at the stars alongside her through the windshield. “Well, I guess we gotta just use our imaginations when we’re back home and pretend those smog puffs are clouds.”
“I would understand,” she starts carefully, “if you wanted to stay here with Henry. I could let you go—“
“No,” he says sharply, cutting her off, hand reaching over the gearshift to hold hers in her lap. He takes his eyes off the road for two seconds to glance at her before repeating softly, “No. I’m where I need to be.”
There’s not much else to say to that so she just holds his hand the rest of the long, long drive and listens to Ted tell her about driving back and forth along this exact same stretch of road with his parents as they carted him to and from football camp. “Not that I was any good,” he tells her. “I was more interested in talking to my teammates and hanging out with the coaches than anything else.” For his sake, she pretends to be shocked by this information.
An hour and a bit into their drive, they pass a sign that says Welcome to Missouri!
“Ted? Where exactly are we going?”
But he just grins in that boyish, excitable way of his, the edges of it tender. “It’s a surprise.”
And about forty-five minutes later, they are pulling into a shabby looking parking lot of an even shabbier looking sports bar, the neon and fluorescent lights of various beer brands covering every surface of the lone front window.
“Ted?” She asks uncertainly. His grip on the steering wheel is tight, knuckles white, and his breathing is unsteady.
“I haven’t been here in almost thirty years. Not since my father passed. But it seemed wrong to come back here and not—I mean, not with me leaving on a more permanent basis. And playing darts with Rupert kinda brought those memories back and—”
And it hits her all at once where they are: Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father.
There’s a shaky exhale from her left and it’s instinct to reach over and touch his shoulder, to rub comforting circles there. “Do you want to go in?” She asks gently.
“I really, really would.”
His hand takes hers as they cross the parking lot and she can feel the tremors in his grip, squeezes back hard and tries to imbue him with some of her strength.
Inside, the bar smells of cigarette smoke, a thick haze of about fifty years’ worth of it filtering into the air. The floor is a little sticky from spilled beers and peanut shells scatter around the barstools. The walls are decked out, baseboard to ceiling, in sports paraphernalia—professional and collegiate and local high school teams and little league teams. There’s a weight to this place, a history.
Beside her, Ted freezes for a moment, breathing deeply. “Okay,” he says under his breath, just low enough that she can hear him. “Okay.”
“Do you want a drink?” She asks, gesturing to the bar. It’s a Tuesday night, but the bar seems to be relatively busy with what she can only imagine are locals. Their eyes are glued to the dozens of TVs hung haphazardly in the place, various games on—both current and older games, judging by the ESPN Classic logo on some of them.
They grab their drinks from a young girl behind the bar (Ted leans over to whisper in her ear, “She’s giving off some serious Mae ‘no bullshit’ vibes.) and make their way over to a corner where a dartboard hangs crookedly, stacks of darts sticking out of a plastic Budweiser cup, a faded white line etched onto the floor a regulation’s distance away.
Rebecca watches as he reverently places his fingertips to the bristled fibers of the board, wrinkles his nose when it comes away dusty and wipes it off on his pants, “Oh, gross. You know, some things are just better as memories.”
He sits at the rickety tall table with her, unusually quiet. But she can wait. She swirls her vodka tonic in her glass and dutifully clinks it against his drink when he lifts it for a silent cheers—no doubt to his father and the memories here.
“This used to be my favorite place in the world,” he starts, looking around. “Hell, it’s barely changed in thirty years. After church on Sunday, my dad would sneak me in here—he was good buddies with the owner back then—and we’d watch the Chiefs play football and then play round after round after round of darts with whoever hung around after the game long enough. He never played for money, but I think he liked it when he got to show up and show off.”
She smiles into her drink, nudges his foot beneath he table with the tip of her shoe. “Reminds me of someone I know.”
He ducks his head bashfully. “Yeah, well, that was a special circumstance.”
“Tell me more,” she prompts gently, keeping her ankle pressed his beneath the table. If it’s out of sight, she rationalizes, it’s fine, it’s safe.
Ted lets out a long exhale, propping his chin in his hands. “Well, one time when my dad went to the bathroom, I chugged a good portion of his beer. I thought it was disgusting as all get out but I’d always seen him with one and I just wanted to be like him, I guess.” He smiles at the memory and then adds, pointing to a spot by the dartboard, “And then I puked it all up pretty much right after that.”
She laughs, can see it so easily—an eager, desperate-to-please young Ted. “What did he say?”
Ted sat up straight and put on a mock-stern expression. “He said, ‘Theodore, I raised you better than that.’ And then he wiped my mouth and put a dart in my hand and told me the first rule to kicking ass at darts is to be just this shade of drunk. He was right, hit my first bullseye right then and there.”
“Theodore,” she muses, considering him. She’d forgotten he was a ‘Theodore.’
Ted half-shrugs his shoulder, waving her off. “No one calls me that, not really.”
“I like it,” she decides resolutely. “I’ll sneak it into conversation every once in a while.”
His foot jerks against hers beneath the table as he looks down into his drink. “Alright.”
They linger in the bar for another round—they still have a long drive back to Wichita, after all—just people watching and reminiscing. Rebecca is content to watch Ted relax back into the high-backed chair, alcohol and memories making him loose and more animated than usual, as he tells her what it was like to grow up in Kansas City, how he never fit in with any one group because he was never enough for them—not theatrical enough, not sporty enough, not nerdy enough, not cool enough.
She surprises herself by opening up—really opening up to him—in kind. She echoes the difficulties of growing up without knowing your place in the world, the way it was difficult to love school but hate everyone in it—the way girls could be cruel about gangly limbs and boys even crueler.
It’s not until Ted checks his watch and says, “Shoot, we gotta start heading back if we wanna get any sleep before we leave for the airport,” that they settle the tab and step out from the bar and into the warm, sticky night.
She stops him beneath a street lamp in a near-empty parking lot. “Ted? Why did you bring me here?”
He twists the keys around his fingers and jams them into his pockets, looking nervous and unsure. “You know, I’m not really sure,” he starts, eyes flicking to hers. “I just—it just felt like something I had to and I wanted you there with me.”
She feels her heartbeat pick up, racing beneath her skin. She steps forward, gathers a little courage and a little intuition, and puts her hand on his cheek, forcing his eyes to hers.
“I’m glad you trusted me with this,” she tells him, voice low and gentle. He covers her hand with his, holding it to his face, his thumb stroking her knuckles.
“Ain’t no one I trust more,” he promises. He shuffles forward, presses his forehead to hers, his breath warming her face and making her shiver. “Rebecca,” he breathes out. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.”
“Me neither,” is all she manages to say before she closes the gap between them and presses their mouths together, tongue brushing the seam of his lips and sliding into his mouth when he opens for her, eager and desperate. His hands dance along her spine and settle low on her hips, fingers tracing along the waistline of her blue jeans.
Everything about their kiss is pent-up, frantic, frenzied fantasy made reality. He stumbles when she drags her hands through his hair and she ends up pressed between him and their car. They break their kiss out of shock, adjusting to the new position, and then more carefully, more deliberately, he kisses her again, gentle and certain. She kisses him right back, realizes that somewhere between London and a flight over the Atlantic and a few weeks in Kansas, she has fallen in love with the impossible man currently trailing kisses down the line of her neck and on the underside of her jaw, gasping her name into her skin.
She absolutely refuses to fuck him for the first time in a public car park—even if the thought sends the tiniest of thrills through her—so she tugs his head away from her neck, kisses him softly, easing some of the frenzy.
“In less than 24 hours,” she reminds him, fingertips tracing over his eyebrow and down his cheek, settling at the cut of his jaw. “We will be back home—“ His eyes darken at the word, his hands on her hips tighten. “And we can pick this up then.”
“So practical,” he grins, turning his head to kiss the center of her palm. “Why don’t you get the car started, I just need—I just need a minute.”
(And she is tempted—so very, very tempted—to tilt her hips just so to find out how hard he is, how much of a minute he’ll need, to cup him through thin material of his khakis and see if his hazel eyes can get any darker, if his expression can look any more wrecked.)
The drive back to the hotel feels longer than the drive to Kansas City. Ted reaches for her hand, holds it nearly the entire way, and they whisper tiny confessions beneath the midwestern stars—all the things they’d been too scared of or not ready to say, but are ready now.
They stop for coffee at a brightly lit gas station and it feels so liminal and strange, like they’re the only ones in the world who exist in this moment. He catches her hand before she slips back into the car and presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth which she course-corrects, kissing him properly, shivering at how cold his tongue and mouth are from the coffee-milkshake monstrosity he picked up.
“This is real, right?” she murmurs, kissing his cheek and nuzzling her nose against his, just breathing him in.
“As real as barbecue sauce and biscuits,” he promises.
It’s enough for her.