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The knock was so soft that Ted wasn’t even sure he’d heard it. He went to the door more out of curiosity than expecting to be letting anyone in. But Rebecca was standing there, hands in the pockets of the loose cardigan she was wearing.
“Were you trying to knock, or just saying hello to the door?” he asked.
She smiled, but not with her eyes, and said, “I didn’t want to wake you if you were asleep.”
“I wasn’t.”
“So I see.”
“Everything okay? Do you want to . . .” He backed up to let her in, closing the door after her.
“Just couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I thought I’d see if – ” With a gesture she indicated his equally-awake self.
He muted the Premier League update on the TV. “They like our chances,” he said. “Hope the guys don’t see that and get cocky.”
“They’re professional footballers; they’re always cocky.”
“Probably true.” He looked around the room, primarily at the two uncomfortable-looking chairs which currently held, respectively, his duffel bag and a pile of paperwork, and sat down on the bed, patting the other side. “Want to find a movie, or – just talk for a while?”
“About anything in particular?” she asked as she went around the bed to the free side.
“Nope,” he said, to fill time while he decided if that was a loaded question or not.
The thing was, it felt like they hadn’t really talked in a while. Not about anything other than the club and the budget and the schedule. He couldn’t exactly put his finger on when their “girl talk” had turned into awkward pauses and silences that felt like they were filled with things purposely not being said, but eventually it seemed like there were a lot of things they weren’t talking about. Like how she’d missed a couple of their away games. Like the time Sassy had brought Nora to visit, and Nora was with Rebecca and there didn’t seem to be much reason why Sassy and Ted shouldn’t so they did, and it almost felt okay, it was almost just fun and easy, until he clocked the exact moment Rebecca figured it out the next day by the way her face froze. Like how they’d maybe hugged a little too long at the party celebrating Richmond’s promotion. Like how she’d come to Roy and Keeley’s wedding alone. How she didn’t meet his eyes when they danced.
“‘Less there’s anything specific keeping you up,” he finally settled on saying.
“I don’t think so,” she said slowly, leaning her head back against the headboard. “Will you tell me something?”
“What?”
“Anything, I mean. Tell me about anything that isn’t football.”
“I can’t tell you much that is football, so you came to the right place.” She gave him another gentle smile at the old joke, and he continued, “Did I tell you Henry got a part in the school musical?”
“No.” Her eyes lit up as she turned to look at him fully.
“Yeah. They’re doing Peter Pan and he’s the crocodile. He’s thrilled because he gets to be on stage with the bigger kids and he doesn’t have to remember any lines, only now of course Michelle’s got to figure out how to make a crocodile costume.”
Rebecca frowned over that for a moment and said, “Foam?”
“Yeah, I think she’s trying that for stuffing, anyway. The back feet are apparently the real hangup, because his knees have to go in them, but then where do his feet go?”
She was smiling, so he told her about Henry crawling around the house trying to slither convincingly and making clock-ticking noises, about how the drama teacher was insisting on Peter and all the Darling kids wearing roller skates for the flying scenes so that they could “soar” across the stage . . . and crash into the wings, about how they’d turned the Indians into – by vote of the entire cast – the “village of grownups” and replaced the offensive song and dance number with a rendition of “Dancing Queen.”
“Not that I’m sure I believe you,” Rebecca said, laughing sleepily, “but why ABBA?”
“Because it’s what old people listen to, obviously.”
“Of course.”
“Getting a little closer to being tired?” he asked. Something closed off in her expression, and he hastily added, “Not that you have to go. Just, here.” Without thinking too much he tugged the half-folded-down covers out from under her legs and pulled them up over her. “Get on in there. You want another pillow?”
She shifted downward the smallest bit in the bed. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Course not, I never say no to extra Rebecca time.”
Her eyes tightened a fraction at that, and she turned her head to look up at the ceiling. “Being tired isn’t the problem. Turning my mind off is. Not that there’s much going on in there, but it’s not-going-on very loudly.”
“I hear that. I mean – I can’t hear what’s not going on in your head. But what’s not going on in mine is pretty loud too sometimes.” Inspiration struck. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I stayed up for three whole days?”
“How are you not dead?” she asked.
“Mostly because the cows were in a good mood, but it’s a funny story . . .”
By the time he got as far as explaining where the cows entered the story, she was asleep. Which just meant he still got to use this story on another occasion, so that was handy. In the meantime he decided he’d better leave her where she was, since if he woke her up to send her back to her room she might just get her second wind and insomnia would win after all. So he turned out the bedside lamp and settled down a respectful distance from her.
He woke slowly, comfortable and content, the warmth of another body against him and under him for the first time in far too long. He was breathing in a familiar scent; there was smooth skin under his fingers, and his body was in that sleepy, languid state of thinking about beginning to stir into arousal. Then reality hit him all at once and every muscle tensed.
He opened one eye and took stock. At some point he’d draped himself over Rebecca, his head beside hers on the pillow, arm flung across her chest, hand inside the drape of her cardigan resting on her bare shoulder, one leg over her thigh, foot between her knees. Whatever the opposite of respectful distance was, he’d just about nailed it.
He lay for a moment planning out how to move without waking her – but on the other hand wasn’t that dishonest, like hiding from her what he’d done while she was asleep; shouldn’t he let her wake up and catch him so that he could apologize? On the other hand, he could tell her about it later and apologize anyway, and then she wouldn’t have to wake up with her space being violated like this.
She stirred beneath him, taking the choice out of his hands. One hand wrapped around the arm that he still had lying over her chest and she blinked her eyes open slowly as if she wasn’t sure what was going on.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling his arm back and rolling away from her. “This was totally over the line, I didn’t mean to – literally, like there was an imaginary line down the middle of the bed here and I crossed over it and I really apologize – ”
“It’s okay,” she said, pushing herself to a sitting position. “What time is it?”
“Little after six. Seriously – if I’d been awake I never would have – ”
“I get the point, Ted.” Her shoulders were rolled forward as she swung her feet to the floor. Through everything that got thrown at her she rarely looked small, and not just because she was usually the tallest person in the room, but she looked small now. About as small as she’d looked that time when Rupert was trash-talking her and threatening her in the pub, only this time Ted had done it. When he realized how, his eyes were wide-open both literally and metaphorically.
“I don’t think you do,” he said. “I just mean – you were asleep and you couldn’t tell me to keep my hands to myself, is all.”
It might have been his imagination but he thought she looked a little less drawn into herself. “You were asleep too, weren’t you?” she said.
“Yes, but – ”
“Okay then.” She smoothed her hands over her hair. “I’m going to go get dressed. Stop apologizing.”
“Okay.”
Halfway to the door of the room she sighed and turned back. “Go ahead.”
“Go ahead what?”
“I know you’re not finished.” She waved a hand toward him. “Get it out of your system.”
He gathered himself, grateful for the opportunity. “I apologize for being all over you in my sleep. Can you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive, but if you insist, yes. Happy?”
“Very. Thanks, boss.”
“Okay.” Rolling her eyes, she went out.
Her forgiveness notwithstanding, he was nervous all day thinking about what was going on with her. With them. What had maybe almost gone on with them, or what might be going on. And to make matters worse, although they absolutely should not have lost to Wolverhampton, they lost to Wolverhampton.
To the team he said, “This was a clean one. I can’t point to any mistakes anyone made. They got us while we were down, that’s all.”
Literally – they scored on a lightning-fast rebound while O’Brien was still on the ground from taking a dive in a save attempt.
To Rebecca he said, “I don’t even know what to say. Except that we’re gonna make up for it next week.”
She told him not to apologize to her (again), that she wasn’t worried. He was, though, so it didn’t help.
Back at the hotel, after a subdued team dinner, an attempt to work off his nerves in the gym, and two reruns of Friends, Ted went and knocked on Rebecca’s door.
“You’re not here to apologize again, are you?” she asked as soon as she opened it.
Now that they were back in the hotel his mind was full of the night – and the morning, mostly the morning – before, and it actually took him a second to remember they’d lost a game. “No, ma’am. That train has left the station.”
“In that case?” She held up a minibar bottle of something brown.
“Oh, yes please.”
Her room had a couch. He sat on it while he waited for her to pour drinks.
“I never did go in search of the ice machine, I’m afraid,” she said, her back to him as she poured.
“Oh, that’s all right. Neat is . . . neat. Hey, why do they call it ‘neat,’ anyway?”
“I have no idea,” she said, handing him a glass and sitting down beside him.
He raised his glass to her and took a careful sip, letting it warm him on the way down. “Hmm. Maybe ‘cause it’s easier to drink all the way to the bottom without getting hit in the nose by an ice cube.”
Her laugh made him feel even warmer than the whiskey.
“Oh hey, look.” He pulled out his phone and found the picture Michelle had sent while he was in the gym, of Henry on the floor, limbs splayed, draped in a green snakeskin-patterned fabric. “Prototype.”
Rebecca leaned over and peered gamely at the photo. “Is it shiny?”
“The pattern is, yeah. They’ll see him coming.”
“Has she solved the back foot issue?”
“Pending.” He tossed his phone onto the low table in front of the couch.
“Sorry, I meant to ask,” she said. “Was there something in particular . . . ?”
“Oh, no. Just a roving wanderer.” He winced. “No, sorry, scratch that. Unintentional. Too soon.”
“You were surrounded by their logo all day.”
“I was also surrounded by people yelling ‘wanker’.”
“Yes, thank you for not showing up at my door telling me you were here for that.”
He choked and got a drop of whiskey painfully high up toward his sinuses. She reached over and patted him on the back.
“Ugh, okay,” he said, still coughing. “I asked for that.”
“Sad thing is, if you had done that it would hardly be unique in the annals of football,” she mused.
“Or the annals of – anything.” He finally stopped choking and took a sip of whiskey to prove it. “Should we do a . . . I don’t know. Started that sentence without having a real idea. But some kind of . . . campaign?”
“Campaign?”
“Like an anti-harassment thing. Or something. You know. Richmond hasn’t really nailed down a pet cause or anything like that, have they? We? Before?”
“Not unless you count hitting on as many women as possible, no. This would be an ironic cause for a club formerly owned by my ex-husband to adopt.” She looked thoughtfully into her almost-empty glass. “Hmm.”
He thought he knew the answer, but just in case he said, “Now you’re not thinking about – ”
She held up a hand. “No, I’m not thinking of doing it just to piss him off. It would go over his head anyway.”
“But hopefully not over the heads of some of the fans,” he said before draining his glass.
She nodded slowly, then said, “Would you like to stay?”
A shot of panic went through him at the idea that this might not be a foregone conclusion. They weren’t even halfway through the season yet. “I – I mean,” he stammered. “You mean – beyond? – because we haven’t won the league yet, for one thing. Yeah, it’s complicated and I miss Henry . . . all the time, but I thought – I’ve been thinking, you know, we’re building something pretty good here, and – yeah. So. If you’ll have me.”
Her face barely moved except for the slight raising of one eyebrow. “And – if I were in fact asking whether you would like to stay here, tonight, in this room?”
Right. That was another quick little spike of panic that went right to the core of everything he’d been nervous about all day, but – putting the ball in her court couldn’t be a mistake. The one thing he did know was that he wouldn’t mind waking up with her again, though maybe without the shame and guilt.
He held her gaze and said, “If you’ll have me.”
She took that in, nodded, and set her glass down, and then she was leaning a bit closer and his heart sped up. But she stopped herself, though her eyes did drop and lift again and he thought maybe . . .
It wasn’t the first time, with her, that he’d decided to be brave so she wouldn’t have to be. And she already had been anyway. She’d asked.
He leaned in, paused to look her in the eye and give her time to change her mind, then closed the remaining inches between them and kissed her. A small kiss, but he thought an eloquent one; slow and gentle, his mouth capturing her lower lip. When he pulled back, her eyes were closed. Without opening them she leaned toward him, her hand lifting toward his face, and opened her eyes only just in time to make sure she was reaching in the right direction. With her hand at his jaw she held him still and returned the kiss, both of them quickly deepening it.
He broke it off for a moment just to collect himself, and against his lips she said, “If you apologize, I will punch you.”
He laughed, completely forgot about collecting himself, and captured her mouth again.
Long moments later, when his hands were running up and down her sides and he was thinking about getting bolder, he stopped again to say, “This is all right? Really? The whole – owner, gaffer . . .”
This was as much for his own benefit as hers; he still couldn’t quite believe it was actually happening. Even through all the tension, even as they’d grown so much closer, even when he could see her hurt – he’d sort of still thought this was out of reach. That they’d never actually cross that line.
She took a deep breath and said, “It’ll have to be, won’t it?”
And maybe that was it. They’d already let it happen.
“Ted,” she said then, licking her lips and looking down at where their thighs touched. “Can we – would it be all right if we just slept tonight, though?”
“Of course,” he said immediately, glad he hadn’t gotten bolder and willing his body to get on board with the message.
“It’s just – ”
“I don’t need a reason.” He gave her a quick, soft kiss. “If it’s not right for you, it’s not right for me.”
“Good campaign slogan,” she said, tilting her head.
“But also true.” He hadn’t thought this far ahead, but since he apparently wasn’t going to bed naked – and he really needed to not think about being naked right now – his khakis-and-sweater wardrobe needed a downgrade. “I am going to go change, though. I’ll be back. I promise. Five minutes.”
“All right, but a second longer and I’m moving on down the list.”
He grinned. “Who’s next?”
“Hurry up and don’t find out.”
He loved her being willing to joke with him. With another kiss, he sprinted back to his room to brush his teeth and change into the same t-shirt and sweats he’d been wearing the night before (putting both to the sniff test first). By the time he knocked on her door again she’d also changed, into the leggings and tank top he remembered from the previous night, and the sight triggered such a rush of emotion that he had to kiss her again, immediately, the way he’d woken up wanting to kiss her.
“It’s been seven minutes and you’re lucky Coach Beard didn’t answer my knock,” she said with her mouth against his cheek.
“I don’t think I’ll be telling him what he missed out on.” He kissed her forehead and asked, “Think you’re tired enough?”
“Exhausted, honestly, but I wouldn’t mind lying with you anyway.”
Just, wow.
“Left or right?” he asked, to cover his reaction.
“Oh . . .” She frowned at the bed. “I, um. Right?”
“You don’t have a side?”
“I do, I just – I think I’d like a change.” She lifted the covers on the side she’d chosen.
“That’s the left,” Ted pointed out.
She turned to face him, facing the foot of the bed, held up her hand, and said, “Right.”
“Oh see, I thought you meant right, facing the bed.”
“Stage right,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Get in.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They settled in a tangle of limbs that made it hard to tell who was on what side anyway. Ted brushed his nose against her hair and found himself, all at once, unexpectedly, forcefully wanting to say something he hadn’t said to anyone other than his son in almost two years. Something that he’d last said to a woman in a desperate moment, out of the need to let her know where he stood, even if she didn’t want to say it back. He swallowed it now, afraid it would feel like too much, afraid it would seem manipulative. There would be time.
All in all, when it was balanced with this, he’d take the loss to Wolverhampton in stride.