Rush Me

  I wanted to cheer him up. “I guess Babylon’s safe. Neither of us is cut out to be Alexander.”

  A corner of his mouth tugged up, and his face brightened like the sun had peeked out. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we have been squandering our potential. I should have conquered, like, the entire U.S. by now.”

  “You probably could.” I speared a strawberry and dragged it through chocolate. “You could turn the NFL into an army and sweep the country.”

  He choked, loudly, on some hash browns, and I reached over to thump him on the back. “Where do you get these ideas?”

  “It would be perfect. You already have a football team in each major city, so they could all attack, all at once. No one would stand a chance.”

  “More than one in some cities, and none at all in others. I don’t know that the divisions would play fair with each other either.”

  “Well, then, someone would have to bring them in line...”

  We spent the next half hour debating how the NFL could take over the United States. Then we got distracted when Ryan tried to explain how a certain formation would be a great attack, and we ended up watching half a dozen videos of the worst wipeouts of Ryan and the other Leopards.

  “So,” I said, after he’d done a pretty academic job of convincing me the Eastern Division would win in the all-out war for American domination, after the apocalypse when NFL teams turned into paramilitary. “You still won yesterday, even without those four guys.”

  He looked up from his map. He’d requisitioned crayons and a paper children’s menu from our bewildered waitress, and gone to town, using different colors and symbols to represent different divisions. I now had a better grasp on the American Football Conference, the National Football Conference, and their various compass-named divisions than I’d gained from any of my father’s half-hearted explanations. “We were worried for the first half. Coach’s been kinda out of it lately. Danvers, he’s the running back, was in the crash, and he’s Coach’s nephew. Coach is good,” he said, earnestly, as though I needed to be reassured. “But he took it out on Keith when he shouldn’t have.” He shrugged. “Keith can take it, but it meant Coach underutilized him. Or utilized him the wrong way, expecting him to make plays like Danvers.”

  “That’s allowed?” I asked. “A coach on the same team as his nephew?”

  “Oh, yeah. There’s all sort of football families. The Matthews. The Barber twins. And you have to know the Mannings.”

  I shook my head.

  “Rachael.” Ryan regarded me gravely. “You kill me. Archie Manning? Two sons who both won Super Bowl titles? All quarterbacks? You have to be kidding.”

  “Oh, God, they’re like the Kennedys of football,” I said, taken aback. “Or the Bushes. Or, no, remember that case in China, years ago, where the one-child policy was lifted so the Olympic athletes could have a second child—it’s like you’re breeding football players.”

  Ryan started to laugh, and then I did, and we didn’t stop.

  After another half an hour and a pot of coffee, he finally leaned back. “I have to go. Team meetings.”

  “But you just had a game yesterday. What are you doing now?”

  “Watching game tapes. Studying plays, gauging new ones. Checking our performances.” When I stared at him, he raised a brow and went on, challengingly. “Soon we’ll get game tapes from the Steelers, who we’re playing Sunday, and we’ll watch theirs, too. We don’t just sit around and look pretty every day but Sunday, you know.”

  “Oh,” I said, because I’d thought they did. I smiled. “Thanks for breakfast.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Then we sat there and neither of us spoke. I thought about saying we should do this again and then I thought about the reason we were there, and I wondered if he was thinking about John, too.

  So instead I said, “Good luck,” and he said “Thanks,” and then he leaned forward and I leaned back.

  Time stretched out while Ryan stiffened and looked embarrassed and I thought my heart might burst out of my chest. “Sorry.” He avoided my eyes, his cheeks stained with color, and he climbed out of the booth.

  “It wouldn’t work,” I tried to explain. I’d get so hurt. After the night I’d had, I wasn’t sure I could tell what I actually wanted. “Why bother trying?”

  He looked over my head as he slung on his coat, cool and reserved. “I’m not.”

  I waited, shoulders hunched in, until he’d gone. He stopped to sign three autographs before he made it through the door. Then, feeling foolish, I rolled up the crayon map and slipped it in my purse, and I left, too.

  Chapter Ten

  On Tuesday, Eva talked me into coming to her rehearsal after work. “You need to think about something that isn’t a boy.”

  “I do. I think about having to dip into my savings to pay for rent. I now have one-thousand, three-hundred eighty-two dollars and nineteen cents in the bank.”

  “You can’t think about rent all the time, either,” Eva lectured. “Unless you’re singing about it.”

  I smiled. “Don’t be clever,”

  “Just giving you a taste of your own medicine.”

  That evening, I sat in the back row of Eva’s theatre, surreptitiously munching through chocolate trailmix while I watched the letter sequence. Mr. Darcy sang a three-page explanation of his seemingly arrogant, prideful actions to Elizabeth, while evil Wickham twirled Georgiana Darcy around and around, seducing her for her inheritance and breaking her heart. Jerk.

  They performed a graceful supported pirouette, and then kissed passionately.

  I sighed.

  On the ride home, I stared blankly at the posters plastered to the train’s wall, and then blinked them into focus. Malcolm caught a pass in a full-page advertisement for the NFL, dressed in full gear. I’d never noticed the picture before, but it must have been there for months.

  Eva nudged me with her shoulder “Snap out of it.”

  “I screwed up. I always screw up.”

  “That did not sound like snapping.”

  “Sure it did. My sanity snapped.”

  Eva sighed, ever so long-sufferingly. “You know, there’s this thing called the Bechdel Test. It’s when you watch a movie and you check to see if there’s a conversation between two or more females that focuses on something other than guys. Half of all films fail.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you’re bored?”

  “No.” Eva relented. “I just wish you’d give yourself a break. You can’t keep obsessing about Ryan, or beating yourself up about John. So you slept with someone you didn’t like. That’s okay. It doesn’t make you a bad person. And you don’t have to do it again.”

  “But I shouldn’t care about not liking him. I should be above that. I should be sexually liberated.” The older woman on my other side smiled slightly.

  Eva shook her head. “Sometimes I think you have too many rules and ideas in your head about how the world should work. Why don’t you just try doing whatever makes you happy?”

  “That sounds way too practical. Besides, look at Georgiana. She thought Wickham would make her happy, and he ended up breaking her heart.”

  Still, I tried to follow her advice. I had manuscripts to read, after all, and jobs to apply to on long, complicated online forms. I had companies to research, cold calls to make, parents to appease. I had friends and coworkers and really awesome bagels. I didn’t think about Ryan at all, really, except in those last few moments before I fell asleep, and that hardly counted.

  At least, I told myself it didn’t until the phone call I received Thursday afternoon.

  I was toiling up my stairs after work when my phone rang, and I was a little surprised to find Abe on the other end. “Ryan reamed me out about letting you pay for dinner last time.” He sounded like a sad puppy. He perked up immediately afterward. “So I already ordered everything! And it’s being catered, too.”

  “Huh?” I was too breathless to comprehend. In three more steps I landed on my floor, and started to
search for my keys. We were playing an endless keep-away-game, and they were winning. “What are you talking about?”

  “For tomorrow. Oh, and we invited a few more people. But I don’t know if people are going to dress up again. I wouldn’t count on it.”

  I stopped searching for my keys, and just stared at my wall. “You want to have another Shabbat dinner?”

  “Yup.”

  “Where?”

  “Ryan’s.” The “duh” was implied.

  “And he agreed to this?”

  “Of course.” Abe sounded baffled. “He suggested it.”

  I was blown away.

  I finished the call and entered the apartment to find Eva scrubbing dishes and singing at the top of her lungs. “Jane’s Ballad.” All sad about stupid Mr. Bingley. She stopped when I came in. “Aloha! How went the temping?”

  “Um.” I looked up from my cell, still somewhat confused. “Fine. Tedious. Ryan Carter wants to have dinner with me on Friday. And like a dozen other people. But still.” I collapsed onto the sofa and kicked off my shoes.

  Eva frowned. “But aren’t you in a fight?”

  “Yes. I don’t know. Is this a really bad idea? Apparently he suggested it.”

  Eva’s grin broadened and her dark eyes twinkled. She peeled off the rubber dish gloves and dropped down next to me on the sagging cushions. “I think it’s a great idea.”

  “But what if he’s a Wickham?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe you’re a Lydia.”

  I shuddered. “Don’t say such things.” Lydia might have caught Wickham in the end, but she was still vain and flippant and unlikeable. “I want to be Elizabeth.”

  Eva gave me a look.

  “Fine.” My head dropped against the back of the couch. “I’m a Jane. I’m a Jane, okay?” The staid older sister.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a Jane.”

  “That’s what the Elizabeths always say,” I muttered darkly.

  She laughed. “The Elizabeths also don’t have steady jobs or practicality.”

  “Practicality! Next you’ll call me a Charlotte.”

  Eva rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly. You’re in publishing, right? Which is definitely not practical. As long as one of your temping gigs doesn’t turn into some real officey-job, you’re safe.”

  “I’ll probably have to. If they’ll even have me. I got two more rejections today.” I made a face. “At least they bothered to send rejection letters instead of just stringing me along.”

  Eva waggled her brows at me. “You could always marry rich.”

  “Don’t be disgusting.” I tossed a pillow her way.

  * * *

  I changed into a vintage black dress after my temp job on Friday, despite Abe’s warning that the others might dress down. If they didn’t, I didn’t want to host a dinner in jeans.

  Not that I was hosting. Ryan was the host. I was just the ceremonial presider. Or something.

  This time, when I walked through the marble lobby, the thin, impeccably dressed concierge inclined his head marginally. “Ms. Hamilton.”

  I resisted nodding back and saying, “Mr. Jeeves.” “Good evening,” I said, instead. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Mr. Phillips, miss.”

  “Mr. Phillips.” I smiled widely as I stepped over to the elegant elevators. “Nice to meet you.”

  Ryan opened his door almost before I knocked, and I smiled at him tentatively. “I suppose I’m the first one here again?”

  “You’re a positive Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Nancy Drew.” I slipped out of my coat before he could slide it from my shoulders. “I do a very poor British accent.” I held my coat out to him, expecting him to put it away, but he just stared at me. Was I being rude? Should I put it away myself? “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head, blinking a couple times, and then took my coat and hung it. “Nothing.”

  “No, what?” I pressed, a little nervously. If Abe actually had sent out a memo saying not to dress up, I was going to look awful silly. I loved my dress, with its plunging back and slight sleeves that looked like they might slip off my shoulders, but it didn’t exactly blend. I smoothed my hand over the full skirt and wondered if I should change into my work clothes.

  He looked me dead in the eye, flicked them to the side in consideration, and then met mine straight on. “Okay. Fine. That dress looks like it’s meant to be taken off.”

  I shivered right to my toes. “Well,” I said, primly as I could. “Not by you.”

  “Don’t worry, I get it.” He shook his head. “You obviously have some issues, so I’m just going to leave you alone until you work them out.”

  “Oh, like you don’t?” I snorted.

  He grinned at me. “Trust me. I work them out.”

  Yeah, I just bet he did.

  I followed him into the kitchen, where he’d already unloaded the bags the deli had sent over. I set my addition of challah and candles on the counter. “You call Johnny-boy again?” he asked as he finished setting the table, utterly failing at nonchalance.

  I grinned. “Every night this week.”

  For a moment, he looked startled, and then he laughed. “You wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole. Never dressed up for him, either.”

  “Oh, like you know me so well?”

  “You, and your many, many issues.”

  “I didn’t dress up for you; I dressed up for Shabbat,” I said loftily.

  “Well, you look beautiful.” Ryan met my gaze dead-on before sweeping past me into the back of the apartment. “Come on, we’re short four places.”

  Shocked into silence, I snapped my mouth shut and followed him. Guerilla compliments; conqueror of sarcasm.

  I did an even better impression of running into a brick wall when I realized we were entering his bedroom, which must have taken up a quarter of the apartment. Like the main room, one of the walls looked out over the park and Manhattan skyline, but the huge navy bed that dominated the space drew most of my attention. I quickly refocused on the walls, which were lined with framed pictures of teammates, brothers, and a woman whose image nicked my memory. Hanging below her photo were three brightly patterned, delicate silk scarves. Memorabilia for the Leopards and yellow and blue Wolverines pennants took up more wall space, while built in shelves held books with white-creased spines and a smattering of trophies.

  In the middle of the long wall, atop of a decorative mantel, stood a cast bronze statuette of a lunging, helmeted man cradling a football. He was balanced against a taller mounted trophy of an ellipsoid, whose particular angle made me think of a Martian’s head. A closer inspection revealed it to be a silver football. Above the mantel, a dark oak Jesus hung suspended on his cross, nails biting through his hands, his face a fingernail of agony.

  Ryan headed for the small square table against the glass wall. “Grab the chairs.” He hefted the table up, and I awkwardly looped my arms around the chair set and dragged them out to the main room.

  “So, are you religious?” I asked, as we set up the extra seats and then unloaded the food.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”

  I wasn’t sure how someone guessed if they were religious. “Do you go to church often?”

  “A couple of times a month.”

  “Oh.” I stared at him. I’d assumed he was Catholic like I was Jewish—big on the family, food, culture, and guilt. Except for Stephen, most of my Catholic friends had stopped regularly attending church after Confirmation. “How come you go?” I stopped. “Sorry, I’m not trying to be insulting. I’m just curious. Is it organized, or do you just drop in?”

  “Drop in. If I need a moment. My grandparents were really big on Church, and during high school and college I didn’t have that much to do with it—but I find it—comforting.”

  “Where are you from, again?”

  “Outside of Dubuque. The rest of my family’s still there.” He looked skyward when I remained silent. “Iowa.”r />
  “Iowa?”

  He laughed at my incredulity. “You Yankees. You’re all so shocked the rest of the country exists.”

  “That’s not true. I admit California’s a state.”

  “Yeah, I’d hope. They only have, oh, the eight largest economy in the world.”

  “What can I say?” I teased. “I’m New England born-and-bred. Wigs me out just being in New York.”

  He adopted a falsely surprised tone. “New York isn’t part of New England?”

  I shook my head at him, pouring out the wine. “What sacrilege. We wouldn’t even take them if they wanted in.”

  The same crew showed up, plus two new players and a woman by Malcolm’s side. She wore a knee-length sky blue dress that flattered her long, thin form, and black, springy curls haloed out several inches. As soon as they entered, I elbowed Keith, who stood beside me. “Is that her? Has he asked yet?”

  “’Course not, he’s a coward,” Keith whispered back.

  I studied her. Her expressive eyes and full lips looked vaguely familiar. “Wasn’t she...”

  “Yup,” Keith said. “Briana Harris. Actress in Boomerang. Malcolm met her when he was with the Chargers three years ago. She moved out here for grad school. Something about hydraulics.”

  “Smart and gorgeous.”

  He scowled grumpily. “I know. I keep waiting for her to dump him.”

  I laughed. “Aw, poor Keith. What about you?”

  “I am way too evolved for relationships.”

  The candles melted, hot wax dripping down, wicks burning away until they danced on a pool of molten wax. Gold encased the black strand, shrinking, flickering, until it disappeared in a wisp of smoke. Full plates crumbled into crusts and torn leaves, while people yelled and laughed and interrupted each other. There was no silence in this room, no calmness or restraint. The guys were so comfortable with each other, so close, that it seemed like it didn’t occur to them not to treat the girls any way other than inclusively. Outside my own family, I’d never been anywhere with such a cohesive mentality.