Chapter Seven

Tami sits on the short bench before her vanity and brushes the thick hair that billows over her shoulders, frowning at how many gray strands have begun to creep in this past year, and wondering if she should start dying it. The new burgundy Flacon's T-shirt Eric brought home for her yesterday clings to her chest, and she's chosen to wear her most comfortable gray sweat pants. In her mirror, she watches Eric close the bedroom door softly and lock it.

He always locks it, ever since that time a six-year-old Gracie walked right in on them. Back when that happened, Eric froze on top of Tami and reached behind himself to yank the blanket up as high as he could without surrendering his position. Undaunted by the sudden movement, Gracie came right to the bedside and asked where "Mommy's lipstick" was. Tami, breathing a little heavy, told her to grab it off the master bathroom sink and go back to bed.

"Why are you on top of Mommy?" Gracie asked on her way out, lipstick in hand.

"We're cuddling!" Eric barked. "Shut the door on your way out!"

Gracie did, and Eric immediately started moving again, but by then Tami had lost interest, processed her daughter's request, and could only say, "Wait, why does she need lipstick? And at midnight?"

Gracie knows not to enter a room without knocking by now, but Eric still locks the bedroom door every night. He doesn't look like he's hoping for sex at the moment, however. He looks weary.

They haven't talked all day. When Tami got home from work, he was just leaving to go out with his two assistant coaches, who were taking him for a drink and to give him some tips on understanding "deaf culture."

He takes off his cap and throws it on his tall dresser before unlatching his watch and putting it beside the cap. Then he pulls off his shirt.

The brush stills in her hair. He's started exercising more these past three years, secretly afraid, she thinks, of middle age. He's not vain about it, but he's determined. She tells him he doesn't have to work so hard, but the truth is, he looks good.

Tami pulls the brush slowly through her hair and continues to watch him in the mirror as he drops his pants. Green-and-black plaid boxers will be his PJs tonight. He peels off his socks, picks up all his discarded clothes, and tosses them haphazardly in the vague direction of the laundry basket that sits on the floor of his closet. He misses of course, but at least she doesn't have to share a closet with him anymore. She can simply shut the door later and not have to look at any of it.

His feet pad across the plush, brown-and-tan flecked carpet of the floor. Tami lowers her brush to the table and closes her eyes when his hands fall on her shoulders and he begins to knead.

"That's nice, sugar," she says.

"I meant to tell you this last night, but you were out cold." His fingers dig gently into her muscles. "You were right and I was wrong. I've been preoccupied lately with Liam and the new job and improving my sign language, and I've been having trouble connecting with Gracie. Tomorrow afternoon I'm taking her to the Franklin Institute. Just her and me."

"I think that's a good idea, hon."

He continues his massage. It's slow, as if he doesn't have much energy.

"You all right, hon?" she asks.

He sighs. "I'm really worried about coaching these deaf kids."

She swivels around on the bench and looks up at him, a hand resting gently on his hip. "It's a challenge. But you've never balked in the face of a challenge before. Look what you did with the Lions. With the Pioneers."

"This is different. This is…I don't what the hell I'm doing, Tami."

One of the first things that attracted Tami to Eric was his easy confidence. He seemed so sure of himself without at the same time being cocky. It was a confidence born of hard work, self-respect, and a subtle but innate romanticism. Only after they'd been dating for almost a year did she begin to unearth the secret self-doubts and realize just how much he needed someone to build him up and how little his own parents had.

Tami's family had been a hot mess, but he'd had his own set of less obvious problems. Her parents had no expectations for her, while his had unobtainable ones. She wondered, sometimes, if it wasn't almost harder for him…she could rage in rebellion against her parents' condemnation of her, but he lived damned under a faint praise in which he was never quite good enough.

She stands up now and takes his hand and leads him to bed. They settle in side by side and she strokes the fine, dark stubble on his cheek. She loves the rough feel beneath her fingertips. She presses her body against his, kisses his lips, and then pulls away to look into those expressive, hazel eyes, which so often search hers for approval. "I know you," she says. "You will rise to the occasion."

He smiles and then lets out a low chuckle. "I'm already starting to."

"Oh, Lord, Eric," she says, miffed that he can be so simultaneously masculine, vulnerable, and juvenile. But she can't help laughing. She slides her hand down his bare chest, tickling him and making him squirm as she goes, until she reaches his boxers. She skillfully unfastens the two buttons on the flap and eases her hand inside to stroke him slowly, teasingly.

His eyes clamp shut and his voice grows raspy as he mutters, "Damn, Tami."

She kisses his cheek and whispers in his ear, "You're so tense. I want to relax you, sugar."

"You do?"

"Mhmmmmm…."

/FNL/

Half way through the lovemaking Eric starts drawing play diagrams on the dry erase board of his mind, hoping it will distract him enough from the perfect feel of Tami's body, from the slow, excruciating way she moves her hips as she straddles him, from the little, satisfied, feminine noises she makes that send violent shivers through his nerves. He somehow manages to hold out until she takes her pleasure, bending her head down over his shoulder and silencing the sound of his name with a muffled cry into the pillow.

When she draws her mouth back away from the now damp pillowcase and catches her breath, he asks, his voice thick with wanting, "My turn?"

She smiles that wicked smile that thrills him every time he sees it and asks, "You want to stay like this or shift positions?"

He doesn't answer with words, but he slides her off himself and rolls her onto her stomach, and it's not long before he's shuddering above her. He stays there for a while, propped up on the flats of his hands, trailing breathless kisses across the back of her neck and down her spine, before he rolls off and to his side. She turns on her side too and snuggles face to face with him.

"Thank you," he whispers.

"I love that you always say that after sex, as if I'm giving you a gift."

"You are." He nuzzles her cheek.

"Well, you know, I get a little something out of it too."

"A little something!" he protests in mock offense, until her kisses have him smiling again. He can feel himself already drifting off and murmurs his apology.

"No. Sleep, sweetheart," she says. "God knows you need it, as stressed out as you've been lately."

"I love you." He lets his eyelids fall completely closed.

"I love you too."

"Even if you're out of my league?" he asks, his eyes still shut.

"What?"

"The other day Liam said you're still out of my league."

"Eric, sugar, we've formed our own league."

The last thing he feels is her soft lips on his shoulder, and the tickling sensation of her hair somewhere against his chest, and then sleep overtakes him.