Chapter 2 #2
But he was the one to break the eye contact, then the physical contact when he dropped her hand. “Yeah, Mary Lou. Just some trouble with a door.”
Ty didn’t care for that strange…thing. He didn’t even know what to call it. It wasn’t like he’d never noticed his best friend was a woman. An attractive one at that.
He wasn’t blind, and she’d been on top of him.
It was just, he’d learned early on not to dwell on it. Lara was far too important of a friend to mix hormones up in it. Not once in all these years had either of them been stupid enough to blur any important friendship lines.
That moment, though, had involved some dwelling. And some awareness he really wished he didn’t have, about the shape of Lara’s body…pressed up against his.
Well, get it together, Wagner.
They tromped upstairs together. Mary Lou gave him a few tasks, then her and Lara put their heads together and talked about the museum. Fieldtrip schedules and exhibit maintenance. He replaced lightbulbs that required getting on a ladder, and dusted ledges that required the same.
“Now I’ve got my walking club to get to. If you finish that list, you just have Lara add to it. Plenty to be done around here.”
“Sure thing, Mary Lou.”
“You know, Principal Stolt’s wife is in my walking club. I could ask her about—”
“No need.” He didn’t explain himself further and she didn’t push. But he knew that was temporary. She’d give him maybe a few days to settle, then Mary Lou was going to start pushing.
Which meant he needed to figure himself out and right quick. He’d stay with them, because of friendship and care, but he wasn’t going to let the Townsend women fix his life for him. That was his job.
And he wasn’t taking a job coaching baseball, even if there was an opening. He needed to figure something else out. He was leaving baseball behind. Cold turkey. Besides, what did a washed up failure like him have to offer a bunch of eager kids?
He’d find something else. Something… But his mind was blank as he went through his task list. The problem was, baseball had always been the center of his life, and he’d never given any other interests room to grow.
When he went back inside after cleaning a clog in the gutter of the building, he found Lara behind the counter, giving a family the whole museum spiel.
The kids looked bored, but the dad was all in and happily forked over the museum fee before leading his family into the theatre that gave a welcome video.
“Was the gutter cooperative?” she asked him, stepping out from the counter and then crossing the room to a closet.
“I think I got it.”
She opened the closet door which then hid most of her from his vantage point, but when she bent over to dig something out, it pushed her…
posterior into view, and even with the thick sweater-looking tights, the skirt hugged just a little too close to curves for him not to remember what it felt like to have her land right on top of him.
Which was just…wrong. He needed to remind himself of a few things.
“So, how’s the old ball and chain?” He never did like calling Adam by his name.
Which wasn’t really fair. Adam was a nice enough guy, far as Ty could tell.
Ty couldn’t even hold the jealousy thing against the guy.
If Ty had a girlfriend, and she had a guy best friend—one who showed up and slept on her couch bed, even if her grandmother was around—he’d be jealous as hell.
“Oh. Well, I suppose he’s doing okay,” Lara said vaguely.
“You suppose? Shouldn’t you know how your boyfriend is doing?”
“I… I guess I didn’t tell you,” Lara said, her head burrowed in the closet so her words were muffled. “We broke up.”
She was rummaging around in a pile of what he determined were costumes. She was decidedly not looking at him as she pulled a stack out of the closet.
“When?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she hedged.
But of course she knew, and he wasn’t letting her off the hook. “Lara.”
“A couple months ago, I guess.” She moved past him, carrying the costumes over to the children’s corner and then kneeling down to carefully hang them up on little hangers.
He followed her, a very irritating suspicion itching to the surface. “A couple months ago? Or after he pitched a fit about me staying with you guys the last time I was home?”
“It was Christmas,” Lara said. “You had every right to stay. It’s my grandmother’s house and—”
“You don’t have to go defending it to me. Why didn’t you tell me he broke up with you?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed in that way she had that always made him want to fight her battles for her. “I guess it didn’t come up. And…”
“Listen, this is silly. I get where he’s coming from. I’ll go explain to him. Man to man. Hell, I’ll go right now. Is he still working at the insurance company?”
“Tyrus Wagner, don’t be ridiculous.” She got to her feet and glared at him.
He frowned at her pulling out his full name on him—cruel and unusual, to his way of thinking. “Why is that ridiculous? I’ll fix it for you. It’s not sexist to say man to man. It’s just…”
“It’s not about if it’s sexist. I don’t want you to talk to him. Period.”
“But—”
“I don’t want Adam back. I don’t want anyone.
” She got that stubborn look about her, narrowed eyes and upward tilted chin.
A look that had come straight from her grandmother.
“I have come to the conclusion that I think I’d rather be like Grandma.
Alone and happily doing whatever I want, whenever I want. Forever.”
Alone forever? Lara? It just…didn’t make sense to him. Besides, Mary Lou hadn’t been alone forever. “She had your grandpa. She always tells stories about how much she loved him.”
“Yes. And he died before he should have. And her son died before he should have. And her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren. It just doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
She didn’t often bring up her family. Not that she avoided it exactly. She just didn’t like coming out and saying they were dead—even if they were. So he wasn’t quite following what she was getting at. “Does what?”
“Loving people and making a family.” She made a sweeping gesture with her arm, encompassing the entirety of the museum. “Everything dies.”
“Well, sure, but…” He didn’t know how to argue with that since it was a simple fact of life. But his sweet best friend saying it made the simple truth sound… depressing and dire.
“What about coaching?” she asked him, changing the topic completely. “If the high school doesn’t need anybody, I bet you could find something in one of those programs you grew up in. Someone would be ecstatic to have a professional.”
He thought of the hours of being yelled at in a batting cage, on a poorly lit backfield somewhere chasing down increasingly erratic fly balls.
He’d had some good coaches, some really good role models who had cared about their players more than they’d cared about winning.
But when he thought of coaching, he thought of his father telling him he couldn’t eat dinner that night because he’d gone hitless in a tournament they couldn’t afford.
Like it was a ten-year-old’s fault Bruce Wagner spent what little money he made on baseball.
Ty shook his head. No, he couldn’t stomach those memories. Wouldn’t. “I don’t know that I’d have much to offer.”
“You have everything to offer. You didn’t spend so much of your life playing not to have some wisdom to impart.”
“Those who can’t do, teach?” he returned, then winced at the bitterness in his own tone. He didn’t want to be bitter. He wouldn’t take that Wagner mantle and wear it. He was going to be fine, damn it.
“You did do,” Lara insisted. “Don’t undercut it just because he does.”
Since Ty didn’t want to talk about his father, or baseball, he turned the subject right back on her. “Lara, if you loved him…”
“I didn’t.” And she met his gaze when she said it so he had to take it as the truth. “Not really. Not enough. I don’t think I have that in me, Ty. Not anymore.”
Which he didn’t like, at all.