Allison Parr - Running Back

“But he was dead. He wasn’t supposed to change.” He reached his hand up, and I met it with my own. Our fingers tangled, his warm and strong. “I can’t imagine him loving anyone other than my mom. It feels wrong.”

I turned my head and smiled. “Because he had a life before her?”

He turned with a slight smile. He was upside down, his eyes turned the wrong way. “Okay, I’m being unfair. But I wish my mother had told me.”

“I guess she didn’t think it was any of your business. The nerve.”

He growled and then kissed me. Our lips met, upside down, almost unfamiliar, and then we were laughing and spinning and climbing on top of each other, seeking comfort and warmth and happiness.

On Friday it rained so hard there was no point going into the field. Drizzles were fine; deluges were not. Outside, the wind roared, like the inside of a seashell. I curled up against Mike’s chest and glared out our window. “Great. Now what?”

“I vote we stay in bed all day.”

“Vetoed. Too many people will know we’re having sex, and that’s embarrassing. Like my advisor. And your mother.”

He started to grin when I mentioned Jeremy, and then the smile flatlined. “Okay. Maybe not ideal.”

“I guess we can play more board games.”

“No. You cheat.”

Valid point. Two nights ago we’d been playing Stratego, and when it became obvious I was going to lose, I started moving the immobile bomb pieces.

Well, it made the game more interesting.

Someone pounded on the door. “Mike! Mike!” The knob rattled. “Open up!”

He groaned and rolled out of bed. “Go away, Anna.”

“Open! Now!”

He pulled the door open. “What?”

Anna threw herself on the loveseat, caught sight of me, and barely managed to restrain her eyes from rolling. “You have to drive me over to pub. The adults have been interrogating me for two hours about my college plans.”

Mike crossed his arms. “The pub where you’ve been underage drinking.”

She turned her eyes on me. “ Natalie! ”

I jumped up and headed for the shower. “Oh, hey. I am not part of this conversation.”

“Tell him it’s legal here!”

“Shirker,” Mike muttered as I closed the bathroom door.

When I came out, an agreement had been reached. It turned out no one wanted to stay indoors, so we all headed out to the pub. It was already packed, but Mike and I managed to squeeze in at the end of a table next to the O’Brien family and their four children. Five-year-old Kelly kept sticking her elbow in my side and stealing peeks at me, but other than that it was a pretty good fit.

As Mike spoke, Kelly stopped watching me and started watching him. Her little brother got jam all over Mike’s arm, which he absentmindedly cleaned off.

And then, in the middle of our happy, light-hearted conversation, he looked up with this half smile, like he’d forgotten it on his face. “I’m going back home in three weeks.”

“For another weekend?”

“No. For good. I have training camp on the twenty-sixth.”

I shook my head, oddly numb. Of course he had training camp. He was a New York Leopard. “Are you excited?”

He shrugged. “I’m always excited for a new season.”

Right. Right.

“If you find something, you have flexibility about where you’re based in your off-season, right? But what if you don’t find anything?”

“Then I’ll probably stay here and keep looking.”

He took a long drink. “Then I really hope you find Ivernis.”

A lump formed in my throat. I tried to clear it away with the same grace as a cat with a hairball. “I’ll definitely be back in New York late September, to present at the conference.”

“What will you guys give your talk on if you don’t find anything?”

Our talk was registered as a Field Report, and I was fairly certain the American Academy of Archaeology had accepted it because they figured Ceile and Jeremy’s feud would provide some much needed entertainment at the conference. “I was thinking about just crying for a straight hour if we have nothing to say. Or maybe Ceile will come and throw tomatoes at us.”

“Sort of like performance art.”

“Yeah. Maybe we’ll hold different tools as we do it. Trowel—tiny tears. Shovel—big wail.” I took a bite of my sandwich. “It’s funny—the conference is actually at the Javits Center, so right next to your stadium.”

He grinned. “The season will’ve started. You can come to a game while you’re home.”

Under the table, I hooked my ankle around his. “Without a doubt.”

That evening, Lauren and I were playing checkers before the fireplace when Mike came in with a slight smile. I rolled over and looked at him. “You know those charts where there’s a different smiley face for each emotion? We should have one of you, except instead of frowns and tears they’d all be different versions of you smiling.”

Kate made a mom noise. “That’s such a sweet idea.”

Well, I wasn’t sure about sweet. I was going for clever.

“We should have one of Anna,” Lauren said. “Except instead of smiles, it would be scowl variations.”

Anna demonstrated one. “You’re so funny.”

Mike sat down next to me. “And which smile is this?”

“You have a secret.”

He raised his brows. “Not a very long lasting one. Want to go somewhere this weekend?”

“Dublin?”

“Paris.”

Anna cried out, “ I want to go to Paris!”

Her mother and sister swatted her.

“Ryan called and said he and Rachael are stopping by after her work trip in Italy, and that Malcolm and Bri might fly over as sort of a last fling before training starts. You in?”

Paris. For a fleeting moment I juggled ticket prices, but then a line of can-can dancers kicked through my budget. “I’m in.”

Lauren stopped by the library the next evening while I went over data. “Hey. Just wanted to check—do you have a dress?”

I blinked at her. “What?”

“Thought not. My brother’s a space shot. You’re going somewhere fancy, right? He’ll almost definitely get a tux delivered to the hotel.”

“He didn’t say we were going anywhere.”

She just gave me an oh-poor-you look. “You’re meeting up with Rach and Bri? You’re going somewhere fancy. It’ll be for charity. But it will also be for dresses.”

I frowned uncertainly. “I have that black dress I wore for the month’s mind...”

She dropped down next to me, shaking her head. “Nope. Won’t cut it. Don’t worry, you can rent cocktail dresses online and have them delivered to your hotel. Easy.”

I stared at her. “Crazy.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” She pulled the computer toward her and started a search. “Look, this site has two hundred different options. And it’s in English.”

“I speak French,” I muttered. But I was already being drawn into the sparkly gowns, which Lauren clicked through without stopping, until we reached one golden ball gown that made us both oooh.

“Maybe over the top, but see? You can find something nice.”

I suffered a thirty-second moral quandary about spending money renting a dress, and then the dress won.

Anna wandered in ten minutes later. “What are you guys doing?”

“Renting a dress in Paris for Nat.”

She plopped down beside us and tore open a bag of chips. Crisps. Whatever. “Sweet. Don’t get that one, it’s ugly. That one’s super skanky. No, that’s gross.”

Kate joined us after another twenty minutes. “What are you all studying so diligently?”

“Dresses,” we chorused, in what was possibly the twee-est moment of my life.