[October]

When Eric came home from afternoon practice with the Matadors, Julie was sitting at the kitchen table and doing her homework. So was Tami. His wife had her highlighter out, and she'd just marked up about one-fourth of the page she was reading.

Eric put a hand on his daughter's head and glanced at her work. "That looks like multiplication," he said. "I didn't do multiplication until third grade."

"It's just 0's and 1's and 2's and 10's," Julie said.

"Huh." Eric took off his red Matadors cap and tossed it on the kitchen bar. "What's for dinner?"

"Whatever you decide to make us, hon," Tami replied. "You know I have that test tomorrow. I expected you home half an hour ago."

"Breakfast for dinner it is," he said.

"Can you put chocolate chips in the pancakes?" Julie asked.

Eric draped his dark red jacket on the back of his kitchen chair. "Roger that. You want to help me cook?"

Julie smiled and followed him to the pantry.

Tami finally closed her book when he put the plate down in front of her. She cleared her things to the bar.

Eric nodded to Julie when they were all seated again. "You wanna say grace, Monkey Noodle?"

"Good food, good bacon, Good Lord, let's…oh. That doesn't rhyme."

"Amen," Tami said, and dug in. She was clearly hungry. After devouring a pancake and two strips of bacon, she finally asked Eric about his day.

"The new coach is still an ass," he said. Tami glanced rebukingly at him and then moved her eyes to Julie. He winced apologetically. "I can't wait to get out of Macedonia. They're definitely losing their QB coach at Midland High at the end of this season, so…" He crossed his fingers. "Midland next year. I'll keep commuting to privately coach Jason, and then, when he's a freshman, maybe they'll bring me on as Dillon High's QB coach. By the time Jason's a junior - head coach. And when he graduates – college QB coach."

"Ambition and patience," Tami said. "I like that in a man."

"You like that I agreed to stay in Macedonia for another year."

"I do appreciate the compromise." She reached for the butter to lather her last pancake.

"Well, I appreciate you, babe. I appreciate all your support all these years."

She smiled. "Why were you late getting home today? Traffic?"

"We'll talk about it later."

Tami raised an eyebrow.

"Because I want to talk about your days," Eric said. "Tell me about school, Monkey Noodle."

"Deacon had to stand with his nose in the corner," Julie said. "And Emily had to sit out recess. Tyler got sent to the principal's office."

"Julie, honey, what did I tell you about gossiping?" Tami asked. "Do you remember that conversation we had yesterday?"

"What did you learn?" Eric asked.

"Nothing."

"You must have learned something," Eric insisted.

Julie seemed to think for a minute. "Nothing I didn't already know."

[*]

When Julie was settled in bed for the night, and Eric and Tami were settled on the couch, Tami asked him once again why he'd been late. He stood up and retrieved a manila envelope from his gym bag. "Because I was picking up these results."

He tossed the envelope on the coffee table. She leaned forward to pick it up while he sat stretched out an arm across the back of the couch behind her.

"Results to what?"

"I went to that fertility clinic last week."

"You did?" They hadn't talked about it for a long time, not since before the miscarriage. "When did you manage that?"

"That Saturday when you were in class. I left Julie with the neighbor."

She pulled out the sheet of paper that was inside the envelope.

"And I only thought of you, babe. Only you."

She snorted. She scanned the information, looking for something that made sense.

"Perfectly normal sperm count," he said.

"Then what's wrong? There must be something wrong with me the doctor missed."

He shrugged. "Or maybe it just wasn't meant to be."

She dropped the paper on the table and settled back against him. He draped his arm around her shoulders. "I've been thinking," he said. "Coaching. It's like I have a gaggle of sons every year. And sometimes they come over for dinner, and you work your magic…and they open up to you. So it's like you have sons too. And maybe…maybe we were only meant to have one kid at home, so we could have more time and energy for all our kids."

She nodded. "Maybe so."

He leaned down to kiss her. "I think God knows what he's doing."

"So…do you want me to go back on the pill?"

"Why? Do you want to?"

"No. But what if I do get pregnant one random day?"

"Then we'll welcome that gift."

[Eight Years Later]

Those kids. They didn't understand. They were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. They didn't know what it was like to be a man who had worked his entire adult life for just one real break, who had packed up his family five times for the better opportunity, who had clawed his way through all the competition, who still had a dream of being at least half the success he'd once imagined he could be when he was eighteen.

They didn't understand. To the Panthers, he was just a selfish traitor.

Coach Taylor walked into the hotel room and picked up the towel that his wife or maybe his daughter had just let lie on the floor, a thing discarded. His players felt like that, he knew. A thing discarded. He tossed the towel on the dresser.

"You all right?" Tami asked.

He sighed. "Yeah," he lied. He put a hand on his daughter's head, turned down her offer of chocolate, and walked out onto the balcony. He gripped the railing, the way his father always had in the front row of his high school football games when things got tense. He leaned forward and breathed. He felt like he wanted to vomit. He was doing the right thing, wasn't he? College football. The thing they'd been working toward for years.

He felt Tami's hand on his back. "You all right babe?" she asked.

He straightened up and nodded. Another lie.

She didn't believe him. "I saw that news came out." The news that he was leaving the Panthers for TMU.

He opened up to her, as best he could. "Hell, I tried talking to those kids. Those kids don't understand."

"You're a good man, babe."

He looked away from her. He loved and hated it when she said that. He loved it because he'd never stopped longing for her approval, but he hated it because she said it when she knew he wasn't feeling like a good man.

"Honey," she said, "I've got something I've been meaning to tell you all day, and I just haven't been able to, and it's the worst…it's the worst timing."

He turned to look at her. It wouldn't be the first time she'd had poor timing. But what could this be?

"I know we haven't talked about this in a long time…"

He stared at her. What? What haven't we talked about in a long time?

"…and I just don't know how you're going to take it."

Take it? It's something to be taken?

"I'm pregnant."

She had to be joking. "What did you say?"

"I said I'm pregnant."

Was she joking? He smiled. It was too cruel to be a joke, but it couldn't be true, could it? After all these years of infertility, how could it be? "You're pregnant?"

"Really."

That was a dream, like playing for the NFL, that he'd simply written off. He'd completely wiped that hope from his slate. "You're pregnant? As in you're going to have a baby pregnant?"

She smiled faintly and nodded. She was scared. He could tell. They'd last talked about this eight years ago. They'd agreed they would always be open to the possibility, but then time and life had rolled on. If his feelings on the matter had changed, she wouldn't have any way of knowing. She was scared about what his reaction might be. It must be true, if she was scared to tell him.

He could feel the joy mounting, the heavy burden of the evening lifting, but he couldn't let it out. Not yet. It was too good to be true. "You look me in the eye and you tell me that."

She laughed. He laughed. It was true. This was happening. "Okay, honey," she said, looking him in the eye, "We're going to have a baby."

She stroked his cheek and said something. He didn't hear what. He didn't care what. It was too much, too good, for a dream to come true, years after he had given up dreaming it.

The laugh erupted.

He kissed her. His wife. The mother of his child. The mother of his children. "I luuuuuhhhhhhhve you."

[*]

When Eric came to Tami after winning the State Championship, and he said that "this little one" had him thinking and that "there are more important things than football," she knew what he was going to suggest. He was going to give up his dream for his family, the way his own father had done when he'd left the AFL for his wife. Eric's father had kept that a secret for years, had let his wife believe he hadn't been picked up after the merger. At least Eric was giving Tami a chance to say no.

And she did say no. They hadn't worked this hard and moved this many times so he could settle for coaching high school. If he gave up his dream for her and their children, the resentment would come out somehow. Eric's own father had tried to force him to fulfill the dreams he hadn't. What if Tami was pregnant with a son right now? What if Eric gave up this college job, and then did the same thing to his own son? Or what if he came to resent Tami? She wasn't going to risk it.

Tami thought, too, of her friend Angie's advice so many years ago, when Eric got his first job offer – "If you don't let him take this job, he's going to feel emasculated…Don't turn him into that boy. You won't like him." This was the vision he had pursued for so long. This was his big break, and there was no way she was going to throw up a roadblock on the way to it.

"There is nothing more important to me than you," he said.

Tami nodded. She believed he meant those words, but she also believed that giving up his dream could negatively transform him.

"So here's what we're going to do." Eric outlined his plan to stay in Dillon. "And that's the way it is," he said decisively. "Yes?" It was a question, but not really.

"No!"

"What do you mean no?"

"You've got to go to Austin! This is your dream!"

"That's what I'm telling you though! You are my dream! This baby is my dream! Julie is our dream! I'm living my dream right now!"

It reminded her of what she'd overheard Mr. Taylor say, when his wife told him football was his life: "You were my life. You still are." But Tami was not Eric's mother. She was stronger. And their marriage was stronger – more honest, more open, more equal. She wasn't afraid of temptations or distance. "I don't want to be responsible," she insisted, "nor do I want this baby to be responsible, for you not living out your dream." Hadn't that very fact affected Eric's relationship with his father? She wasn't going to let that happen.

"And that's what I'm saying! You ARE my dream!"

"I have walked with you all these years to get to this place." From Houston to San Antonio, from San Antonio to Dallas, from Dallas to Macedonia, from Macedonia to Midland, from Midland to Dillon they had walked hand in hand – each football team bigger and better than the last – one long trail to the goal post of college coaching, to the dream he'd established for himself at the age of twenty-one. "You and I together!"

She had her dream too, here in Dillon, and she wasn't giving it up for him, but nor was she letting him give up his dream for her.

Why should either of them have to give up a dream? Why should marriage require one side to give up? For years, Betty Taylor had, according to her counselor, "sublimated" her desires, and Mr. Taylor had surrendered his dream, but it didn't have to be like that. This was a new generation.

It was a different time.

They could have it all.

THE END