The Lateral

Chapter 10

M eadow’s frown deepened. “It’s a great idea,” she insisted. “It’s a perfect plan! Why won’t you even listen to me? Listen to me explain it!”

“I don’t have to hear any more than what you already said,” I told her. My reflection in the mirror frowned at me and at her. “I already know that it won’t work, and I already know that we won’t be doing it.” Jinkies! This concealer also wasn’t working, not at all. I squeezed another large dollop onto my finger and dabbed it around my eye but the bruises still looked terrible, no matter how much makeup I layered on. None of my usual tricks were working.

“What if Jake agrees?” she asked. “What if he’s on my side?”

“Meadow, I’m always on your side, but that idea is never—”

“Why?” she raged. “Why not?”

“Ok, go talk to Jake,” I invited. “But I’m sure that he won’t like it, either. Sorry, but no.” She made an angry noise and stomped out, and I sighed and gave up on hiding the mess on my face. I had been trying to do a better job, since clearly people were still noticing and hating it. My former boss Travis had seen right through my coverage when I’d tried to discuss my job with him the day before, and no one else at the club had been fooled, either.

“Get out,” he’d said, hardly bothering to look at me as he unloaded a new shipment into the space under the trapdoor in his office.

Calandra was very upset about my firing, almost as much as I was, but even she had shaken her head when she saw me. “Ember, you can’t even walk right! How are you going to dance? It looks like it hurts so much,” she’d continued, and I told her that I was fine and that she’d better not cry and mess up her makeup. Her regular was already waiting in the parking lot for the moment that the club’s doors opened to customers, and she’d made a face and said that he scared her.

“Calandra, get your ass in gear!” Travis had yelled, so I’d left B-Dzld and gone home. No, not exactly home…

My reflection frowned again. It was because this was Jake’s mirror, because I was standing in Jake’s bathroom, in Jake’s house, on Jake’s property. We hadn’t left and it was getting to be a problem. Meadow was starting to settle in here, into all this comfort and safety with the big, warm rooms and the dog that she let sleep on the bed with her. It was going to be so hard for her to go back to how we’d lived before and that, of course, was where her “great idea” had come from.

“Did you find the socks with the cupcakes on them in my old bedroom where we used to live?” she called now from across the hall.

“It’s not your ‘old’ bedroom and we still live there. Those socks are dirty,” I told her. But she could wash them in the huge, totally functional machines that Jake had (our rental had a combo washer and drier that did neither very well, but his appliances worked perfectly). And I had those dirty socks because he and I had gone over to my house together, in his truck this time. He’d very, very carefully lifted me into it and watched while I adjusted the seat belt so that it didn’t rub against the bruises on my side. We’d also gone back to see the trainer yesterday, the one who wasn’t supposed to be working now that the Woodsmen season was over, for another check-up.

“It’s hard to see much healing so soon,” he’d mentioned, and I’d apologized.

“Jake made me come here again,” I said. “I think he made you come in, too, and I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mind,” he’d answered.“Let’s take another look at your ribs.”He had, and we talked more about his job and how he’d gotten it as he felt around and I had tried not to wince.

I was feeling a little better, just not quite back to normal. I was tired although I was getting good rest because the bed in this guest room was amazing. It would have been easy to sleep away the day, napping just as hard as I was crashing at night. Except that Jake was waking me up whenever I dozed for too long and he was also forcing me to eat, something I wasn’t very interested in. He’d taken Meadow to school, driving her in his truck and then picking her up since we were now off the bus route. I’d had time on my hands and I’d spent it looking at rentals, cooking, searching for jobs, helping a little in the barn, and cleaning. A girl could get way too comfortable in a life like this, a life where you weren’t worried. I could settle in here…

No, I couldn’t. I looked sternly at my reflection and shook my head.

I thought about Meadow bothering Jake with the “perfect plan” she’d come up with and I had second thoughts about allowing that. After everything he’d already done for us, I didn’t want him to think that I was pushing that craziness myself, so I went downstairs to find them—but apparently, I was too late. She was already trying to convince him.

“You know it makes sense,” she was urging. “You have to make Ember believe it, too.” She looked up at me with the same challenging expression that she always used when she said something that she knew I wouldn’t like. She was right; I didn’t like this idea at all.

“I already said no,” I told him. “You don’t have to worry that I’m the one behind this.”

But oddly, Jake wasn’t laughing or looking like he was going to throw up, even though I was sure that was how he was feeling. He must have thought it was ridiculous and/or disgusting, and all in all something he would never, ever participate in. I waited for him to say that, but he only looked back at me, his gaze very steady, and he didn’t even crack a smile.

“I don’t know why you think you’re always right,” Meadow told me angrily. “You’re wrong about tons of stuff! You were wrong to buy me that backpack, you were wrong to make me go back to that school, you were—”

“Hold on. I thought that things were better at school,” I interrupted. “Are you telling me that they’re still bothering you? Meadow,” I called after her, but I was saying it to her retreating back because she’d pulled on her boots and walked out of the kitchen, toward the barn.

I turned to Jake. “Has she said anything to you about the girls bullying her again?”

“No, not directly,” he answered, and I felt a little relief. I knew that the two of them were talking a lot when they worked together, and now they were driving together, too. It was a pretty long way to the school from out here, in the middle of nowhere, so they had time for deep discussions that went beyond football strategy.

“She hasn’t said anything about them, but she’s alone,” he continued. I shook my head, but he nodded at me. “When I drop her off, she doesn’t see anyone she knows. When I pick her up, she’s walking out by herself. I asked her who she eats lunch with and she said no one. She doesn’t get chosen for teams in gym class. The teacher was her partner when they did a science experiment. Even if those girls aren’t being mean to her directly, she’s sad because she’s isolated. Imagine going to that building every day, surrounded by people, and being totally on your own.”

It had really hurt when Christal kicked me. She’d known where to aim for maximum pain, and she was skinny but the momentum of her foot swinging in a big arc had done its damage. It had felt better, though, than hearing those words from Jake.

I sat across from him at the table. “Maybe I need to move,” I said. “Maybe she needs to go to a new school district where they don’t know her.”

“Would that help?”

“I don’t know.” I sighed. “Once you start on a path of being by yourself, it’s hard to step off it. I didn’t have any friends either, so I understand. I know exactly how it is to be surrounded by people but feel lonely. Nothing changed for me when I went from elementary to middle school, nothing was going to change in high school, either.”

“So you dropped out.”

“That was one of the reasons.” I shrugged. “I was at different places but wherever I went, I stayed the same. And my reputation followed me.”

“What reputation was that?” he asked.

“They called me ‘Ember Easy,’” I said. “Even when I was little, that was my nickname. It started because of my family, not me in particular. For a long time, I didn’t even know what it meant.” I remembered one girl laughing as she’d helpfully explained it to me. “You have friends,” I mentioned. “You probably always did.”

“Yeah, I always had friends and teammates.”

“And you were big enough to fight,” I continued. “If someone made fun of you, they only did it once. You probably took care of it like when you got insulted due to my glitter and you hit the guy in the mouth.”

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I apologized to him.” He paused. “It wasn’t only about the glitter that day. I had just found out that I was going to need shoulder surgery. More surgery.”

“What?Why?”

It wasn’t so unusual, he explained. Everybody had injuries and you tried to get them taken care of in the offseason. “I hurt my shoulder in college and I had it repaired back then, but just before I met you, I tweaked it again.”

“You tweaked it?” I repeated. “You tweaked it enough to need surgery?”

He nodded. “It happened the morning that Meadow carved up my truck.I knew something was wrong right away and I was…upset.”

So, we’d kicked him when he was down. “I’m so sorry about that. I owe you.”

“You don’t.Anyway, I found out I had to have another operation, then Robby Baines started talking about fairy dust, and I hit him. I really did apologize, and he’s not a bad guy.”

“And you’re getting an operation?” I asked. “When?”

“Day after tomorrow,” he said, as if it was no big deal that he was going to be cut open and bleeding in a cold room.

“What?” I asked. I found that my legs were shaking a little. “Ok, then I’m very glad that we’re staying here with you. I’ll take you to the hospital and wait for it to be over so I can drive you home.” Then I would take care of him like he’d done for me, waking him up to eat and making sure that he was comfortable. He could totally lean against me if he needed to.

“I’m having it done in Ann Arbor,” he explained. “I’ll fly down tomorrow morning in the Woodsmen plane.”

“And then you’ll come home afterwards?” I asked. I sounded anxious, because I was.

“They’ll fly me back after I recuperate a little. The team wants me to start rehab there, too, so I rented a place month to month.”

Did he mean he would be gone for months? “Oh,” I said. “There are probably better facilities downstate.”

“I don’t know about better, but bigger,” he answered. “That’s where my surgeon is and I have to get it done. I should have had it already.”

“Why did you wait? I mean, besides the obvious thing of not wanting to be cut open and bleed—” I stopped. “Sorry.”

Jake looked at me and then fixed his blue eyes on the tabletop. “I’m not scared of the operation, I’m scared of the result. It didn’t work great the first time. The recovery took a lot longer than it should have and I almost didn’t make it back to play. Now I’m almost ten years older. I come back more slowly from everything, every workout, every little twinge. I feel it all more,” he told me. “I don’t know if I’ll make it back from this and I’m not done with football yet. I don’t want to have the surgery if it means that it’s over.”

“Oh,” I repeated. “That’s really scary.”

“It is.”

“What do the doctors say about your recovery?”

We talked about that, about exactly what they were going to try to repair, about how long he’d be out and what he would need to do for the physical rehabilitation afterwards. He sounded very calm as he answered my questions, but I watched his leg bob quickly up and down.

“It doesn’t sound like they think that football will be over for you. It sounds more positive than anything else,” I said.

“They don’t know.”

“You don’t, either. But you can’t play with your shoulder all messed up, right?” I asked, and he nodded. “You have to do it.”

“I know.” He sighed. “I don’t want to.”

“I wish it were all like this,” I said, waving around my hand to encompass the kitchen. “I wish it was all this pretty house and sweet dogs and good dinners, and none of the stuff like shoulder surgery. I wish you didn’t have to go, but I think it will turn out well. It just sucks to do something that you’re dreading.”

“Like you reporting Christal.” He raised his eyebrows.

“I’ll do it. I’ll call it tomorrow,” I promised. “Just like you’re going to Ann Arbor, I’ll also do something that I don’t want to.”

“I’ll sit next to you. If you want,” he added.

“I would want that,” I agreed. “And if you want, I could come…no, I really can’t go downstate. Meadow couldn’t miss school. How long did you say that you’ll be gone?”

“At least a couple weeks. I want you guys to be here,” Jake said.

“We can help, absolutely!” I said eagerly. “We can come every day to take care of the animals and check the house.”

“No, I already have people doing that. I want you to live here. I have an alarm and I have the gate. I have good locks on the doors and I have the dog.” In fact, she had put her chin on his knee and made it stop bouncing. He looked down and smiled. “You’re a good girl,” he told her, and her tail thumped. She loved everyone and I didn’t have a lot of confidence in her in a guarding-type role.

“When I talk to the caseworker, I don’t want to say that I’m living in a house that they haven’t approved,” I said. “I don’t want to say that I’m staying with a man who’s not related to me or to Meadow, even if he is a Woodsmen.”

He nodded. “I got it,” he told me, which was his way of saying he understood. But his next words proved that he didn’t get anything. “Then what about going with Meadow’s idea?”

“What?” I stared. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t have anywhere to live, and I invited you here. You can’t stay with a random guy, even if I’m not. We should do it.”

“Jake, are you feeling all right?” I leaned forward to look into his eyes, such a nice color blue. They usually reminded me of a cloudless summer sky, but right now, I wasn’t noticing that. I was looking for signs that his pupils were functioning normally and that there was no blood in the white part.

“Are you checking me for concussion symptoms?” he asked. “When would I have hit my head?”

“I don’t know what you do in your spare time! Maybe you’re juggling rocks and you dropped one on yourself from way up high, because you’re talking like a crazy person,” I told him.

“Why is it so crazy?”

I put my hand on his forehead, but his skin only felt warm, not overly heated. He wasn’t even cold even though he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. Shorts!

“I don’t have a fever, either,” he said. He removed my hand from his face but then held it. “Why is it such a bad idea? Why shouldn’t we do it?”

“Marriage,” I stated, and he nodded. “You’re talking about marrying me,” I stated further, spacing out every word so that they were all clear, but he nodded again. “Do you hear yourself?” I exploded. “Wait a minute, did they give you pre-op painkillers? Are you on something?”

“Hell, no,” he told me. “Do you think I would have driven Meadow in my truck if I had taken something that knocked me silly?”

No, I knew that he wouldn’t have. “Then what’s wrong with you?” I asked sharply.

For a moment, a long one, he didn’t answer. Then he stated, “I’m twenty-seven,” but I didn’t know what difference that made and I told him so. “I mean that I’m not getting any younger,” he answered.

“So what? You’re not old, not yet! You have plenty of time to find someone and form a relationship. You’re certainly not past the age of having kids. My mom did up into her forties,” I reminded him, “and men can go on forever, even if it’s a little gross if people have to question whether they’re the dad or the grandpa—”

“Ember, listen to me,” he said. “I’m not going to meet anyone.”

“What?” And then I clapped my hand, the one he wasn’t holding, over my mouth. “Great snakes. What is this trip to the hospital really about?” I demanded.

Jake seemed lost. “My shoulder surgery?”

“Are you going down there because you have a terrible problem, and that’s why you’re pushing this weird idea? Are you secretly having your heart removed or something like that?”

“If they took out my heart—”

“You know what I mean!” I said, and flounced in my chair. I regretted that move and had to sit still and let the pain pass.

He spoke a lot more softly when he asked, “You ok?”

“Yeah, I am. I am, but I don’t think that you are.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me besides my shoulder. Some little stuff, too,” he admitted, “but that’s the major issue. And you’re right that it has made me think a lot about my future.”

“Why does your future have to include marrying me, though?” I asked. “Why couldn’t you meet someone? You really are young, no matter what you say, and you’re handsome. You’re so sweet. You’re a Woodsmen! There are millions of women who would want to marry you.”

“I’m sweet? No. No,” he repeated, shaking his head, “and I can’t meet anyone. I can’t meet any women because…”

But then he stopped and I waited for the reason. “Yes?” I prompted. “What? Why?”

“Because I become an idiot,” he answered bitterly. “I turn red, I don’t speak. It doesn’t work.” He pointed at his head, scowling.

“You mean that you get intimidated by girls?” I remembered his friend, the other offensive lineman, telling me exactly that—but I still couldn’t believe it. “You don’t act that way with me and you never have.”

“When we met, I was too pissed off to be…” He hesitated before he said the word, and as he did, his whole mouth twisted with distaste. “Shy,” he concluded bitterly. “I’m fucking shy.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said aloud, but then I thought back more. He hadn’t talked to Calandra at Meadow’s birthday party. He hadn’t talked to the woman who’d expressed interest in him at the coffee shop when we’d waited for Christal, or to the cheerleaders at Woodsmen Stadium when he’d taken us on our tour. In fact, I remembered him turning red on all those occasions. Had he been blushing? He’d done the same thing when I’d suggested that the older woman in the restaurant where we’d eaten lunch had wanted to hug him. He’d looked at her, flushed, and then stared at the floor. And weeks ago, I’d watched him escape from the girls outside the farm stuff store rather than talking to them, and he’d said that he didn’t like it when women wanted to give him their numbers at the gym…

“You’re shy,” I stated, and he nodded angrily.

“I always have been. I’m a dumbass with women, just stupid.” He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know what it is. I can talk to any man, anytime and anywhere, and I can knock them onto their asses on the football field, too. But I get around a woman I like and my throat closes. Even women I don’t like,” he said, and rubbed harder. “I’ve tried everything to fix it. I’m ok after a while but by that point, it’s usually too late.”

“That can’t be right.”

“The only ones who stick around aren’t interested in me, because they haven’t gotten to know me.The ones who keep trying want something else. They want me as a Woodsmen, or the guy who can buy shit. That’s not a woman I want in return.”

“But you had a girlfriend,” I pointed out. “Noah Boone told me.”

“Boone should keep his damn mouth shut,” he growled.

“If you had one girlfriend, you could also have another one…oh.” I understood him, finally. His ex, the person who had run off and deserted him, had broken his heart. He was rebounding! He thought he’d never meet anyone like her, that was the problem.

“There are a lot of women in this world. Millions,” I said, pretty sure that was true. Weren’t we half the population? “There could be someone just like her, someone out there waiting to fall in love with you.”

He stared at me. “I don’t want to meet someone just like her,” he answered, and of course that made sense, too. It would only rub salt into the wound of not having the actual person that he missed and loved.

“Then you could meet someone totally different,” I suggested. “Someone great, though. And when you do, you don’t want to say, ‘I really like you, but I have this wife issue.’ Trust me when I tell you that no reasonable girl will want to date you if you’re already married. The unreasonable ones might, but you don’t want them.” I thought of my sister Elara. She had dated plenty of married guys and shockingly? It had never worked out for her, for the men, or for their wives, either.

“No, I’m not interested in that,” he told me, shaking his head. “I don’t want to try to date.”

“Really? You’d rather be alone?” I felt like that was wrong for him. He had friends and he had animals, but he needed someone permanent. He could get past his problem with shyness, I was sure. “Don’t say that you’re not interested. I think you need a wife and kids.”

“I agree. So we’re decided,” he said, and the tension left his face. “Good.”

“Wait, wait!” If I’d had a yellow flag in my pocket, I would have thrown it. “What do you think we decided?”

“We’ll get married,” Jake said, satisfied.

“No!” I told him, and that started the argument again. At one point, Meadow came in from the barn and she added her two cents, which were that obviously it had been such a good idea and why wasn’t I listening when I was always trying to get other people to listen to me?

“Ember, what’s wrong with Jake? Why don’t you want him?” she asked, and silence descended. They both looked at me, waiting for my answer.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I told him. “It’s not about you! I mean, it is, but it also isn’t.” I put my fingers against my unbruised temple, which was pulsing as my heart pounded with emotion. “I don’t know what we’re even talking about anymore.”

“Is your head hurting?” he asked. He got me a glass of water and pills, but I didn’t think they’d make me feel any better.

“You’re being so mean, Ember,” Meadow continued. “You’re always saying that bull about kindness to others and then you treat him like this? What’s so bad about him that you won’t marry him?”

“There’s nothing bad, and I’m not being mean!” I had to stop and breathe. “Meadow, this isn’t your business.”

“It is, because it was my idea and it would change a lot for me,” she countered, and I pointed at her but looked at Jake.

“Did you hear that?” I asked him. “It would change a lot for her because Meadow and I go together. I’m planning to adopt her and—”

“What?” she burst out, and another silence descended.

“If your mom isn’t able to take care of you, then I’d like to adopt you,” I said calmly. “I would like you to live with me, permanently.”

I watched a few emotions play across her face. One was definitely anger, and that came out of her mouth: “What makes you think my mom can’t get better?” she demanded. “She can! She can change.” But I also saw hope. “Would you really do that?” she asked next.

“If you need me, I’ll always be here,” I answered. “I want your mom to get better, too, but you should know there’s backup. Me, forever.”

Now she looked like she was going to cry, but she only nodded once and walked out fast. The dog followed, tail wagging. I was pretty sure Meadow kept treats in her room to make sure that at least she had the dog as her friend, because I wasn’t enough. She wanted to have Jake, too, and who could blame her? I had also dreamed about a father, someone who would bring me to school, teach me things, and love me.

I pushed that old, painful fantasy from my mind. “You can’t be serious about this,” I said to him. “You haven’t thought it through. You’re worried about the future, that’s all, but you’ll see that everything is going to work out great with your surgery. And then, when your life is back on track, you’ll be sorry that you even brought it up.” I stood, nodding. “I really think everything is going to turn out great.” Jake would be fine, he had to be! And as for me? I could still convince Travis to rehire me, and that was a lucky thing because I wasn’t qualified for anything else. I didn’t even have a high school diploma and Christal was right when she had said that everyone in our family was dumb, everyone but Meadow. But I’d also entered a contest to win free oil changes for life, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to have that expense and worry taken off my hands?

Yeah, it would have been just great.

“I wasn’t trying to make you cry,” Jake said.

“I think it’s the concussion,” I answered. “I think it made me more emotional. For the past few days, I haven’t felt right.”

“Maybe it’s because your niece attacked you and you had to leave your home to hide from her. Before I go tomorrow, you have to call that in.” He looked at me as I wiped my eyes. “We can talk about the rest of it later.”

I nodded and went slowly back upstairs, and when Meadow came and said that it was time for dinner, I answered that I wasn’t very hungry. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep when Jake stuck his head in, too, but I thought that the lying behavior was necessary. I just couldn’t face him right now.

I was worried about him losing his football career, something that meant so much to him. How would he react if it were gone? On top of that, I was worried about him having surgery, because wasn’t that always dangerous? He’d be at a great hospital with a good doctor, but you never knew. Then he’d stay downstate for even longer to get better, and the thought of him leaving for an undetermined length of time? No, I didn’t want that at all. It was exactly what I’d worried about for Meadow’s sake, and it had happened to me, too: I’d gotten used to being here, way too comfortable, and that both shocked and scared me. I hadn’t been so attached in years.

And then…marriage? Was he crazy? How could he have even considered it, let alone have presented it as a feasible plan for our future? Because it wasn’t. Maybe Jake wasn’t actually crazy, but marrying me would have been. He just wasn’t thinking it through. He was caught up in the idea of a lasting relationship exactly as my brother Cassius had been, and his wife had almost killed him. Really, she had tried to and was still in prison.

I carefully turned onto my side, but the movement still hurt. A marriage between us would be so great for Meadow, absolutely wonderful for her in a million different ways. No matter when we got divorced, he would never drop her…wait, I was already thinking about our divorce? Good gracious, was I actually considering this idea?

Well, it really did make sense for Meadow and it wasn’t like me to turn down an opportunity, either. When I got the chance at something good, I usually took it and held on until my fingers were pried off.

So what was my problem now? Why was I fighting so hard against this? Why on earth wouldn’t I have jumped up and said, yes, of course! Of course I’ll marry a nice guy who has a job, a house, a car, and three horses! Of course I’ll marry a guy who will take care of Meadow! Of course I’ll choose to live in safety and comfort with someone who didn’t seem to notice or care that he was sacrificing his own life…

I rolled a little further and reached for my phone to look at the time. It was late and I was tired, but I wasn’t going to sleep. I thought that maybe I’d check on Meadow and everyone else, just to make sure that they were all right. There was freezing rain coming down, after all. Maybe it was keeping them up.

But she was asleep in her bed, curled comfortably with both the dog and the cat, who was awake and gave me a look of total scorn. I went further down the hall, to the large bedroom at the end of it. We’d seen it the first time we’d come here, when Jake had said, “I sleep there.” He wasn’t doing that right now, though. The door was ajar and through the crack, I could see that the big bed was empty.

I walked carefully down the stairs, not jostling myself and staying quiet, toward the light that glowed in the kitchen. He was seated in the same place that he’d been when we’d talked earlier, as if he had never moved. He looked up at me when I walked in and I waved and went to sit in my former spot, too.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he answered. “Can’t sleep?”

“No, even though it’s the nicest bed, in the nicest house, in the nicest place in the world.” I looked at his jiggling knee. “Are you worried?”

He hesitated and then nodded. “I keep trying to think about what I’ll do if the surgery doesn’t go well.”

“You said before that you had a lot of plans if football didn’t work out,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, I did have plans. But that’s not what I want. I want to play.”

I sighed, a shallow one. It was absolutely true that we humans didn’t usually get what we wanted, and I thought there was even a song about it, at least one. But it was also true that when you were down, the last thing you needed to hear was that things weren’t going to get better. “I think it’s going to be fine. I think you’ll recover and smash people down again next season,” I told him. “I really think that.” To make sure he knew I was serious, I reached across the table and took his hand, and I squeezed it.

“Thanks,” he said. I started to pull away, but he held on. “I was also thinking about our marriage discussion.”

“I don’t want you to worry about that,” I said. “Not on top of everything else.” I wouldn’t try to force him into the crazy idea he’d proposed—no, that was the wrong word.I wasn’t going to force him into the crazy idea he’d confusedly agreed with while he was in mental distress. “We can just pretend that Meadow never said it.”

“I don’t want to pretend that.”

“I don’t understand why you’re pushing it,” I admitted. “Is it because you’re concerned about the future and you think that having me and Meadow would give you stability? Is that it? I know that people need stability.”

“What do you think about marriage? In general,” he explained, “and not specifically to me.”

“My mom was married four times. No, five,” I corrected myself. “I saw the reality of that, how it started with idyllic love and promises, and then it turned into utter crap and fighting. But I guess that I also had a dream that marriage would be like…” I hesitated. “I’m not saying that this kind of relationship exists, but I imagined that it would be more like how I love Meadow. I always want to make her life better, and I always want to protect her. I want to see her secure and not need anything. I want her to be happy, and that was how I hoped I would feel about a guy someday. That would be my ideal marriage. Plus sex, of course, and that part would be ok,” I added, shrugging. “And sex would lead to kids, if you planned it that way. I always wanted my own kids. I would do a good job with them, I really would.” I paused. “What do you think about marriage?”

“I want something like you said, stable and happy,” he answered.

I nodded. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” But what I’d just described, that love I’d feel for a man and the security and everything else…I never thought I would have it, and I was ok with that. It was just a dream.

“Meadow said she taught you all about football,” Jake said suddenly, and I had no idea where that had come from.

“She tried to,” I answered. “Why?”

“Did she tell you about a lateral pass?” he asked, and I shook my head. “You know the quarterback usually throws the ball forward and it has to go to an eligible receiver,” he continued. I nodded because I had a bit of an understanding of what he was talking about and fortunately, he went on to explain more. “Under the rules, only a few guys are allowed catch that ball and in my position on the line, I’m not one of them. But a lateral is a throw that goes backwards or to the side, and anyone can catch it. I could, and I could score a touchdown. It’s a trick play, sometimes, or out of desperation.”

I thought I got it. “You’re saying that’s what our marriage would be. It would be a trick, because we’re both desperate?”

“I’m saying that it wouldn’t be what either of us expected to happen,” he answered. “It would be a surprise, but it could work. We could make it work.”

I still didn’t totally understand, though. Yeah, I got the part about the lateral, but not his reasons for trying to catch it. “Are you sorry for Meadow because she’s stuck with me? It’s ok if you feel that way,” I told him. “I do, too. Is that why you’re so bent on this all of a sudden?”

“Meadow and I had talked about it before and I’ve been thinking about my future for a while. You and I both need something. We both need to move in a different way from how we’ve been going,” he said.

No, because I was moving forward and doing ok. Wasn’t I? If I looked at my life…well, there was room for improvement, but his was great! He just didn’t see it…but why was I arguing again?

“Do you really want to marry me?” I asked tentatively. “Really?”

“Really,” he said.

We looked at each other across the table, and I made up my mind.