Eric thought Tami would be happier in Fort Worth. She hadn't been able to find a job in the last town they'd lived in, and so she'd thrown herself into being the best stay-at-home mom she could be, but Julie was headed into 6th grade this fall (middle school, they called it these days), and the girl was suddenly uninterested in being seen with her mother. Tami needed a new focus in life, and they'd both agreed it was time for her to get back to work, which is to say, Tami had agreed, and Eric had decided it was advisable not to rock the boat. After all, she was moving for him again, for the fifth time in twelve years.

Tami had started sending out resumes as soon as he got the offer to be the QB coach at Oliver Loving High. What the hell kind of name was that anyway? Oliver Loving? Some cowboy, Eric was told, but when you said it, it just sounded odd. Not that it mattered. Oliver Loving High was a 5A school, a big step up from the school where he'd been coaching.

Tami had gotten a job offer, as a counselor at a Women's Center in the sketchy part of Fort Worth. Eric wasn't too pleased about that, and he made her promise she'd never work past 5 PM. But she'd gotten the job, and she was happy about it, so he couldn't exactly tell her no. She'd been hired within just three weeks of applying.

"That girl gets jobs faster than a knife fight in a phone booth," Eric's dad had told him the last time they talked on the phone, and it was true – every time they'd moved, it seemed Tami had merely had to turn around once and smile and she had a job. Every time except the last town, the town Tami and Julie both insisted on calling "East Podunk."

Tami had worked on and off over the past twelve years. Eric preferred the years she was home, even if the extra money she earned had meant they'd been able to pay off her college loans, save a little, and trade up each time they moved. Yesterday, they'd been handed the keys to the very livable three-bedroom, two bathroom, one-story house that now stood before them. It didn't have the his and hers closets Tami was always talking about, but it had a two-car garage he could use to store all his game tape, and Tami would be glad to see those tapes out of their closet.

"Want me to carry you over the threshold?" he asked her.

She laughed – that laugh that was all tangled up with affection and love and fondness, with just a little hint of sultry – and in that instant he remembered falling in love with her. He swept her up, and her long hair streamed back like a flash of fire, like those yellow-red tongues that had leaped up from the logs on the lakeshore that night he'd had her for the first time, that night he realized what people meant by that euphemism "make love," that night he understood that everything else he'd done up until then had just been sex.

Julie rolled her eyes and said, "You're supposed to open the door first, Dad." She sighed. "Guess I have to do that then."

Eric shook the keys that were in his hand, half under Tami, and Julie wedged them out and opened the door for them. When Eric put Tami back down on her feet, she kissed him, and their daughter said, "Do you have to do that?"

"We have to, Julie, babe," Tami said. "It's in the marriage contract." And then she walked into the living room, twice the size of the old one, and she twirled in a circle, her arms outstretched and said, "I love it, Eric. I love it!"

"You ought to," he drawled, "You picked it."

He glanced at his watch. Two hours until his meeting with the head coach and his fellow assistant coaches. Two days until summer training started. Two weeks until his first teacher in-service. And, if Coach Ramsey stuck to his retirement plan, and Eric proved his mettle, two years until he himself was the head coach of a 5A school. "I better start unloading the truck."