Shortly after the Panthers' had won the 2008 Texas High School State Championship game, Eric left a 12 week old pregnant Tami and 15 year old daughter, Julie in Dillon, Texas to pursue his dream job coaching at TMU. Their lives became a matter of hour long phone calls before bed and weekend visits that never lasted long enough. It wasn't long after Gracie Belle was born that Tami realized just how hard it was to not only care for a newborn on her own, but also maintain some sense of control over her teenage daughter. She felt as if she had lost all control of her family and was slowly losing Eric to a job in the process; it was that moment that Tami needed her husband. When Eric learned just how stressed his wife was and slowly began to see the crumbling of his family due to the separation that his new job had put on them, he made the decision to do what was best and go where he was needed most, back to Dillon. Back to his family.
Eric had been away for a little over 10 months total from his wife and daughters, being in Austin throughout Tami's entire pregnancy was something that he wasn't entirely comfortable with; leaving his wife and daughter behind in another town was not what he wanted. It wasn't the family life he had wanted for them. He had only been back in Dillon for a week and a half and things were far more complicated than Eric ever imagined. His team was falling apart due to disagreements between his two key players, his teenage daughter was still angry about the choices her parents had made the last 10 months regarding their family, and finally his wife - was managing to take care of everything all before she went back to work in a few short weeks.
It had been over a year since Tami and Eric had spent any alone time together, romantically-between him being in Austin and Tami being extremely pregnant, one of them was never in the mood on his weekend trips home. Now, that Gracie Belle was 6 weeks old and Tami had gotten that fateful green light on intimacy again; Eric was ready to rekindle that spark with his wife, Tami however was not as ready as her husband. Eric had already had two failed attempts on getting back in the saddle with Tami and was running out of ideas and hope that it would be happening anytime soon.
After Eric's first game back as Head Coach of the Dillon Panthers, Tami retreated home directly after the game to relieve the babysitter, and Eric went out for a couple of beers with Buddy. Roughly, two hours after Tami had returned home, she was sitting in the rocking chair in the master bedroom nursing baby Grace back to sleep - she heard the front door open and Eric walk quietly into the house. He noticed the bedroom lamps were on and knew that Tami was still awake.
"Hey, babe." He spoke quietly, stepping into the bedroom and walking over to her, leaning down to give Gracie a kiss on her head while she nursed and then pressed his lips to Tami's cheek.
"Babe, I'm busy." Tami responded, lifting her eyes from a nursing Gracie to look at him.
Eric backed away from the rocking chair and nods at Tami. "I'll leave you to it then.", he responds and backs out of the bedroom and retreats to the living and pours himself a scotch.
About 20 minutes later once Gracie was done nursing and had been fallen back asleep, Tami stood up from the rocking chair and placed her back into the bassinet, draping the baby blanket over her. Tami walked out of the bedroom, down the hall and into the living room where she found Eric sitting on the couch with a scotch in hand. She walked around to sit on the couch next to him, and rubbed his knee.
"Can we talk?" Tami asked quietly, turning her head to the side to look at him.
Eric turned his attention to Tami and nodded his head, lifting his glass of scotch up to take another long sip of his scotch. "Let's talk.." He replied softly,
"Why didn't you come home right after the game, like you said you were going to?" She asked quietly, looking down at her hands.
"Babe, I'm sorry that was a tense game, my team is falling apart...I didn't want to bring home that kind of frustration home with me." Eric explained leaning his elbows on his knees.
"You could have called. You should have called instead of telling me you'd be home right after the game and your talk with the team. Instead, I dropped Julie off at Lois', I relieved the sitter and took care of the baby. Our baby." She spoke softly, her face dropping to look at her hands in her lap.
"You're right, I should have called and told you. I'm sorry.", he responded, "I'm here now. I'll help now." he added reaching for her hands taking them in his.
"You are forgiven." Tami smiled faintly at him and squeezed his hands.
"I'll take over for the rest of the night with Gracie." he spoke softly, kissing her forehead.
"You're nice to me." Tami whispered lowly, lifting her head to look at him.
"I'm a man who takes care of his wife.", he replied smiling at her.
Tami smiled at him lifting her hand up to his cheek running her thumb over his cheek. "You know she just went down and won't be up for another couple of hours, do you want to fool around?" She asked, smiling at him.
Eric looked at her and raised his eyebrows. "Do you?" He asked dropping his eyes to her lips and back up to meet her eyes.
"I do, I would like that very much." Tami spoke quietly and pressed her forehead up against his. "I'm ready."