“Know what I want to happen?” he asked.
“Uh …” She looked at him from under her lashes, and only realized after she’d done it that she was, yes, flirting. Maybe you just needed the right guy for that, one who knew how to tease and how to make you feel beautiful, and excited, and so desired. Almost … scared. In a good way. In a hold-your-breath way.
He smiled. It looked pained, even a little sad. “I want to see you put on a pretty dress and pretty shoes, and sit and watch the sunset with some candles burning and maybe some music playing, and let yourself enjoy being with a guy who’s willing to do whatever it takes to please you. Even if that’s just smiling at you across the table, kissing you on the cheek afterwards, smelling your perfume and having it spin his head all the way around, and telling you goodnight. Even if he wants a whole lot more than that. I want you to have the kind of night you would have wanted to tell your mom about.”
“Oh. I can’t ....” It was everything she could do not to cry.
Stupid hormones.
“And maybe,” he said, “I want to give you the kind of night I could’ve told my mom about, too. Maybe I want to be a better guy. The kind of guy who can put somebody else first.”
“Harlan. You’re already that guy. You’ve been that guy.” She had a palm on the side of his beautiful face now and was trying to smile, but her mouth kept trembling.
It was the mention of her mom that had done it. She wanted to go back to her room and pick up the phone, or better yet, most of all, she wanted to sit at her mom’s kitchen table and tell her all about it, to have her mom listen all the way through, and then say … whatever she would have said.
To wait until she was sure? To go for it, risking everything? What?
You should get out of here, spread your wings, her mom had said. But what did that mean? Wasn’t she supposed to want to do the single thing, the free thing?
Well, as free as you could be with a new baby. Which wasn’t actually all that free. But still.
She remembered, suddenly, what her mom had said the night before she’d died, when Dyma had been clearing the table after their dinner of slow-cooker Italian chicken and peppers, and Jennifer had said, “When I win the lottery, I’m going to cook with chicken breasts instead of thighs. Boneless and skinless. Organic. Free range. Eight dollars a pound. Drop them in the slow cooker, and I’m done.”
“You know what you’ll find out?” Adele had answered. “That thighs will still taste better.” Her smile was the only part of her that hadn’t changed. Her red hair had faded, and her eyes, which were only a little darker than Jennifer’s, were lined and tired, but her smile was still warm. Still alive. “That’s the dirty secret of life. Thighs taste better, pot roast is as tender as any fancy cut of steak, you can only use one bathroom at a time, the prettiest view is the one you get after you walk up a hill, and a Ford gets you to work as fast as a Porsche does. And the right man’s not the one who buys you diamonds, he’s the one who loves you the sweetest and the dirtiest and who holds you when you cry. The rest of it’s just advertising.”
“Except health insurance,” Jennifer had said.
Her mom had laughed at that. “Yeah. Health insurance matters. And not lying in bed worrying about which bill to pay would be great, too. But you don’t need to win the lottery for that. You’ll get there. Also, my advice about men might be more worth taking if I wasn’t divorced. Your dad was pretty good at the loving part. Not so good at the steady part. I should probably think up a better list before I go around offering any more life lessons.”
“The sweetest and the dirtiest, huh?” Jennifer had asked. “Geez, I wish I’d known those were the criteria.”
“Oh, honey,” Adele had said. “You always knew that.”
Jennifer had wanted to ask, “So Mark isn’t it?” But she’d known the answer, or maybe she’d thought, I need to have a talk with her about that later, when the time was right. Except that “later” had been too late.
Which part matters more? she wanted to ask her mom now. The sweet and dirty, or the steady? How about if he feels steady, but he tells you he isn’t steady? Maya Angelou had said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” and Harlan had told her who he was. Loud and clear.
And yet here she was, wearing her pale-green dress again, because it was one of the only pretty things she had that still fit, and because Harlan had taken her across the long bridge to Thirty-three South. They were sitting outside on a stone terrace strung with fairy lights, watching the setting sun turn the lake, nearly glass-calm in the stillness, to glowing turquoise as the mountains reflected the pale pink of the sky. Harlan was drinking Tennessee whiskey, and she was sipping a spiced pina colada mocktail after a dinner of steelhead trout cooked to flaky perfection, roasted asparagus that she’d all but inhaled, and an absolutely sinful warm bourbon-soaked bread pudding with whipped cream that she’d shared with him. Dipping the spoon into all that rich, creamy goodness, licking it slowly clean, and watching him watch her do it. The smile in his eyes. The breadth of his shoulders in the white button-down shirt. The scruff of beard that would give you so much delicious friction as he kissed his way down your body, letting you know that he was a man, and he was here to stay. His hard hands that could touch you so gently.
Dyma was right. No alcohol, and no drugs. Just a slow, delicious, cool swim after a long, hard, hot day, and the memory of Harlan’s eyes when he’d looked at her in her bikini. Not to mention the way he’d kissed her back in the lobby before that swim. His big hand behind her head, cradling it. He made her feel wanted. He made her feel beautiful. And that was such a dangerous way to feel.
Tonight, they’d talked about Dyma, and they’d talked about Annabelle. Now, they sat, lazy in the deepening twilight, as the server lit the candles and the colors deepened around them, and she said, “Tell me about football. You said you’d been working for twenty-five years. Is that really how it is? That much pressure?”
He didn’t brush her off, and he didn’t make a joke. He got quiet instead and said, “Yes. And no.” When she didn’t say anything, just waited, he went on. “It’s pressure, but every job has pressure. With football, you’re more aware of the pressure, that’s all, and you could say that the consequences are more immediate. Although I guess if you’re a surgeon or something, or a pilot, the consequences of screwing up are pretty immediate, too. So, yeah, football’s always pressure to perform, but it’s good. It’s always been good, for me. Besides the money and all that. Having the team, for one thing. Teammates. Coaches.”
“When it was bad at home,” she guessed. “That thing you said about your coach at the Super Bowl party.”
“Coach Gunderson. He taught me how to be a man, I guess. How to own up when you screwed up. That there were no excuses, but you didn’t have to marinate in your mistakes, either, not if you learned from them and did better. My dad was big on punishment.” His face twisted. “I guess you’ve figured that out. Coach didn’t do blame. You owned up, you fixed it, and you moved on. He had this word he used. Excellence. You were always going for excellence. You might not be able to achieve perfect every time, he’d say, but you could always be excellent.” He took a sip of his bourbon. “Which is true in anything you do, right? That’s the secret of any great high-school coach, though. He’s not just building football players. He’s building men.”