A/N: Tweaking and restoring an old deleted piece to archive. Heavily betaed - - read co-authored ;) - - by ICanStopAnytime.

Chapter One

"You know what I think, babe? It's time." Tami nodded to herself from the passenger seat.

Eric turned into the campus of Braemore. He was dropping off Tami on his way to work. She'd totaled her car. His first question had been, "Are you a'ight?" When she was, his second question hadn't been, "What the hell were you thinking? Do you know how much this is going to cost?" He'd probably thought that, but he'd hadn't said it. He'd just said, "I'm glad you're a'ight, babe. I'm glad you're safe."

"Time for what?" he asked, stopping at a crosswalk for some college kids to pass.

"To take that vacation, just the two of us."

"What vacation?" he asked. "The one you've been talking about ever since Julie was born?"

"Yeah, that one. Do you realize we've never gone away alone together? We've taken family vacations, and we've had an overnight here and there at nearby hotel, but we've never gone away, just you and me, for more than one night."

"I took you on a honeymoon."

"To Houston."

"Yeah, it's a nice city."

"Twenty-two years ago."

"We drove cross country together," he insisted. "From Dillon to Phili."

"Yeah, in two separate cars."

"We stayed in hotels," he reminded her.

"Motels. After driving for ten hours a day."

"A'ight, you want a vacation, I'll take a vacation. I'd like a vacation alone with you. Why wouldn't I? But who's gonna watch Gracie?"

"Well, I was thinking we'd go the first week of summer, when you're off. Julie'll be off from school, maybe she can come down and watch her, just three nights, three days. A little getaway. She's got that job, you know, but she does all the work from home anyway. She can bring her computer."

Eric pulled up to the curb by the Dean's office. "You know we're going to have to fly her down then, right? We're going to have to pay for that ticket. And we've got to repair the car. And then if you and I fly somewhere – "

"We won't fly, we'll drive. Let's drive down to Virginia. Visit all those wineries."

"What's that? Three hours?"

"That's not a long drive, hon. Three hours wouldn't even get you a third of the way out of Texas."

Eric turned off the car instead of letting it idle. "I didn't say it was a long drive," he protested. "I just asked how long it was."

"We could stay at a nice bed and breakfast."

"Nah, I don't want to stay at any b&b."

"Why not? They're so quaint and romantic."

"It's weird," he said. "It's like being a guest in somebody's house."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is. And then you have to sit down to breakfast with all these people you don't know. And you have to talk to them."

"Aww, poor baby," she said. She reached out a hand to tussle his hair. "It's hard for you to talk to strangers, isn't it?"

"It's not that it's hard. I just don't like it. And they yap. They yap and yap about their European vacations and how this is their sixteenth time in wine country and how they couldn't decide between the $100 bottle of Chardonnay or the $90 bottle of Pinot Noir. "

"I don't think Virginia has any $100 bottles of Chardonnay. And who are these people, Eric? You know about these people because of all the bed and breakfasts you've been staying in while I wasn't looking?"

"I just imagine that's what it's like," he said grumpily. "I'm never going to see them again. What's the point of having an hour-long breakfast conversation with someone I'm never going to see again? You know who I want to talk to on my vacation, Tami? You. Just you."

"Well we could stay in a cave," she said, grabbing up her purse and adjusting her sun glasses.

"Yeah," he said, "That'd be nice. A nice, private cave."

She laughed and kissed him. "Think about," she said.

"A'ight."

She opened and closed the door. He started the car again. Three nights alone with his wife, no child to interrupt them. The sex would be fantastic. Unless it was sex in somebody else's house. In their old, "quaint," creaky-floored b&b. And he'd been thinking the whole time about how the inn keeper could hear the bed moving. That wouldn't be so fantastic.

Wait, would they have cable at a b&b? Would he be able to watch football?

Three nights. Three days. They hadn't done that since their honeymoon. What the hell were they going to do with all of that time? What were they going to say to each other? Suddenly, he was a little nervous. Maybe what had made this marriage work so well was the fact that they had never spent a really long stretch of time completely alone together.

/-*- /

Coach Taylor blocked out the sound of the laughter and the shouting from the locker room. He'd locked the door of his office and shut the blinds. The baseball team was out there now. Football season was over. But his office was still attached to the locker room. At least there was a door that opened to the outside hallway, too, though. He liked Tami to be able to stop by every now and then for lunch, and she sure as hell wasn't going to walk through the boy's locker room.

He stared at the computer screen. He clicked on the Internet icon. It took him straight to Google. Assistant Coach Thomas had some kind of passionate hatred for Google. Said it was a conspiracy. That Google was working with Amazon to take over the world and establish a consumer slave class or something like that. Coach Taylor didn't know quite what to do about Coach Thomas. The man was an absolute nutjob. But he'd been on staff when Coach Taylor got the job. He'd known the team. And he knew football. Coach Taylor just did his best to avoid any non-football related conversations with the man. When Coach Thomas would get to spinning his conspiracies theories, Coach Taylor would change the subject just as fast as he could. But Thomas wasn't just weird about corporate conspiracies. He'd say other strange things and trip Coach Taylor up. Like the first time Tami had stopped by and surprised him for lunch, and after she'd left, Coach Thomas had asked, "Why is your wife so hot?"

"What?" Coach Taylor had asked.

"Why is your wife so hot?"

"Well…uh…she was born that way I guess. And she works at it some too. Wait. Don't call my wife hot."

"But she is."

"Yeah, but don't notice. I mean – - don't announce that you notice." Coach Taylor had grunted, shook his head. "Nevermind." Then he'd walked away.

He clicked on the Google search box now and typed in "Romantic private hotels Virginia wine country." He clicked search. He scrolled down through the results, skimmed the words beneath the links, kept seeing "bed and breakfast," "bed and breakfast," "bed and breakfast."

He went back up to the box and typed "Leesburg Virginia hotels."

Comfort Suites came up first. That would not fly with Tami. A little further down there was a resort. Oooh…that looked good. Oh, a golf resort. That also would not fly with Tami. Well, maybe. It's not like they had to golf. He didn't even like golf. He golfed with Buddy in Dillon every now and then. He always lost. Nobody ever ran in golf. There was no tackling. There was the whacking sound when the club hit the ball, but that wasn't nearly as satisfying as the thud when a man hit a man. He wasn't even sure where his golf clubs were anymore. One of the six unpacked boxes in the garage, no doubt. But resorts had pools and spas and fancy mints on the pillows, and that would make Tami happy.

He clicked on the link to the resort. Then he clicked on "packages and special offers." He skimmed quickly. He had only ten minutes before his Driver's Ed class and knew he had to be efficient. He clicked next on "Romantic Escape Packages." There was a picture of lots of fall leaves and a couple kissing. A young couple. A very young couple. Maybe people who'd been married twenty-two years weren't supposed to go on romantic escapes.

Why didn't they just put the damn prices on the packages? You had to pretend like you were going to book something just to figure it out. This was going to take time. He glanced at his watch. Eight more minutes. He did the typing and the click throughs as fast as he could and put in a random late-June date before clicking "check for availability." He glanced at his watch again. Six minutes. The little circle thing on the screen kept circling. Well, crap. He'd have to do this later. Maybe after school. He didn't have to pick up Gracie right away, but he'd wanted to get an idea and have something to offer Tami. Something to talk her out of that nonsensical b&b idea.

The circle stopped spinning and the price popped up. "Oh, hell no," he said. "Hell no!" He sighed and shut down the computer, grabbed his room keys from off the desk, and headed to Driver's Ed.