“Tim’s a Booster now, apparently.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know you would be here.”
“Of course I’m here.”
“This may come as a surprise to you, but football, sports — that’s not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of you.”
“What do you think of?”
“I don’t know.” She started to turn away, embarrassed, and he reached for her arm, awkwardly grabbing her, at the elbow. She took a tentative step toward him and he made up the difference, kind of leaning into an embrace without even trying to kiss her, which he could tell surprised her, but he wanted the warm weight of her body more than anything.
“Sorry,” he said, releasing her. “I heard you’re getting married.”
She stepped back, as if chastened. “I was going to tell you. He asked me on Thursday. It was my birthday. Everyone says it’s the best present.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“Well, I do feel like he kind of co-opted my birthday. The day was supposed to be about me and now it’s about us.” She made a face. “That sounds so petty.”
“It sounds like you’re looking for an excuse.”
“To do what?”
Dean took a step toward her to kiss her lightly on her lips, which were dry. She licked them quickly, and he put down his beer, which spilled immediately on the uneven ground. The smell of beer wafted up, mixing with the smells of new construction — wet cement, Sheetrock, sawdust. Dean was aware of the house just a few inches above their heads, the party above them.
“Let’s go to my car.” Dean felt high, buzzy, excited by his transgression. He felt as young as he had felt old, minutes before.
“I can’t,” she said. But she wrapped her arms around him and held him more tightly. He slid a hand beneath her sweater and touched her bare back. She shivered. “I have to get back to Tim.”
“No, you don’t. Go make your excuse and meet me at my car.” He didn’t know where this recklessness was coming from, unless it was Nicole’s ghost.
“We actually drove separately,” she said thoughtfully. “Because I thought I would get bored and want to leave early.”
“You’re bored,” Dean said, taking her hand. He kissed the inside of her wrist. “You want to leave early.”
Chapter 8
The next two weeks were all about Laura. How to see her. When to call her. They met in the clubhouse, near the football field, and behind the concession stand. Once they unrolled a tumbling mat in the equipment room near the girls’ locker room. Dean felt as if he was discovering the high school his students knew, a place full of secret sexual corners. He and Laura even happened upon a young couple once, a girl and a boy Dean recognized from freshman gym. Their lips were so red and swollen that it was as if they’d spent the entire class period kissing. Maybe they had. Dean thought he and Laura would, if they could. But they didn’t have as much time.
One morning Laura met him in the parking lot with coffee and doughnuts. “Remember our old breakfasts?” she asked. “I liked you from the start.” He couldn’t say he felt the same without sounding like a cheater. He felt like he was cheating now. He wasn’t convinced that Nicole didn’t know. Somehow she was watching him. And yet that sense that he was getting away with something, the idea that being with Laura was some kind of cosmic betrayal, made their sex all the more satisfying. This, he knew, was the particular pleasure of adultery, enjoyed by many before him. For some reason, he’d thought he’d be immune to it.
Laura was cheating, too. She removed her engagement ring when she arrived at the middle school, putting it in her desk drawer. She told Dean she didn’t want to see it on her finger. She hadn’t broken up with Tim. It was complicated, she said. The complicated part, Dean guessed, was that she wasn’t ready to throw over the promise of marriage for him. Once, when Dean embraced her outside the clubhouse, still vaguely in view of the school, she pushed him away, saying, “I could lose my job!” But he thought there was something gleeful at the edge of her voice. Like some part of her wished to blow apart her life, to detonate all her uncertainties about Tim, about marriage, about small towns. You didn’t have to be a raging romantic to believe that love — or sex — could obliterate doubt. It could, for a time. Dean knew that from experience, from falling in love with Nicole for the first time — and for the second and third times, for all the times throughout their marriage that she was lost, and then returned to him.
He wasn’t falling in love with Laura. Or at least, he didn’t have romantic feelings about her; he didn’t walk around imagining a future with her and the boys, the four of them living together as a family. His emotions weren’t blurring his thoughts. His senses were sharper; he noticed more details: the subtle changes in Bryan’s and Robbie’s vocabularies, the variances in the strides of the cross-country girls, the moods of his students. The weather was changing, and the newly cold air seemed a piece of the sharpening, his alertness. Food tasted better. Laura looked more beautiful, the color high in her cheeks after they’d been together. And rosy from the cold, too. Sometimes she stopped by practice, ostensibly to talk about Robbie. That was the excuse if anyone ever asked. But no one ever asked. And they never discussed Robbie. There was too much guilt there, on both sides, and it wasn’t the kind of guilt that made things more exciting.
Worries about Stephanie faded. He let them fade. He stopped calling her. But he was reminded of her every morning during his second-period gym class, when he saw Missy. For a week, she refused to come to practice because she was so offended by the way he’d scolded her at the meet. But he didn’t apologize. Instead he made her run during her gym period. The fact that she obeyed let him know he had a chance.
He was optimistic because of Laura. He was passionate because of Laura. It started to rub off on the girls during practice. They ran harder. On race day, Missy showed up. Dean wouldn’t let her run because she had missed practice. She stood with him on the sidelines and watched as See-See and Aileen got personal records. Dean could feel her impatience.
The next week Missy came to every practice. Dean worked on pacing. He was trying to teach the girls what a 6:30 pace felt like, versus 7:00 versus 8:00 versus a slow-jogging 9:00. The only way to learn was to run the different paces. They went to the track and did quarters, one fast, one slow, one very fast, one very slow, one kind of fast, one kind of slow. He tried to get them to think in numbers, something abstract to distract them from the pain. It was hard to get them to go really fast because they were scared. He told them they had to feel the pain so they would know how fast they were running. How fast they could go. And so they would know how quickly pain could fade. He told them running was managing pain. He wasn’t sure this was true. He felt it was true of grieving. He thought you had to get close to the bone sometimes. And then you had to back off. He worried that Laura was a kind of drug for him. That he was using her to dull his sadness. He would remind himself that he knew her before, that there was real feeling involved. That it wasn’t just sex and sensation. Other times he felt defiant — so what if it was just sex, just sensation. He wasn’t married. He was alone. Nicole was dead; he could do what he wanted.
MEGAN STOOD IN the doorway of Dean’s office. Her shoes were bright, toothpaste white, as if she’d scrubbed them that morning. Her hair was up in a tight, high ponytail, the hairstyle pulling at her temples, making her entreating gaze even more intense.