[Saturday, November 25]

Tami felt extremely awkward when Mr. Taylor sat down beside her in the seats reserved for them at the game against UT-Austin. His wife wasn't with him today. It seemed she rarely attended the games. Tami supposed Karen typically worked Saturdays. Mr. Taylor had no doubt told his wife about her pregnancy. The woman was to be a grandmother, after all, and one that would not seem an outsider to their child. It was strange to consider that Karen Jones and Pastor John would simply be Grandma and Grandpa to the young Taylor that was to come, and not some near strangers grafted into the family, as they were to Eric and Tami. It was strange, too, to think that Mr. Taylor would soon be her father-in-law. Would he expect her to call him Dad?

Tami knew that their old high school friends Joey and Sarah were at this game also, on the home side of the stadium instead of the visitors. They had made plans to get together at Joey and Sarah's apartment tonight, for a quiet party of friends, instead of joining in the raucous partying on fraternity row. Now that Tami was pregnant, she wouldn't be drinking anyway. She hadn't had a drink since the condom broke, just in case, though she had badly wanted one.

Tami thought either she or Mr. Taylor needed to speak to break the weighty silence, but neither did. It seemed like an eternity until the kick off. She was afraid Eric would be distracted and play another poor game. If he did, the coach might hand the reins over to his second string as he had last time. If the coach kept doing that, Eric would soon be the second string once again.

But Eric was actually less distracted than he had been during the past two games. Maybe it was because the weight of not knowing had been lifted. Maybe it was because they had made a decision to move forward together. Maybe it was because he had a new sense of ambition as an expectant father. Whatever it was, Eric was tearing up the field.

"That's my boy!" Mr. Taylor shouted more than once, heady with pride.

In the course of the game, Eric scored an unexpected rushing touchdown and also threw two impressively long touchdown passes. The crowd, Tami and Mr. Taylor along with them, were wild with cheering.

The Bears slaughtered UT-Austin, ending this last game of the season with a massive lead.

"He's going out with a bang," Tami said proudly.

"Goddamn right he is!" Mr. Taylor agreed. And then flushed and muttered, "Pardon my language."

When the crowd was beginning to disperse, and Tami began to leave, Mr. Taylor put a staying hand on her hand. She turned to him.

"Eric has dreams," he told her.

So did she.

"He has a real chance of making it to the NFL," Mr. Taylor continued. "I hope you'll support him in that goal."

"I intend to."

"I never had the support of a wife. If I had, I might have realized my dreams."

"You've done well for yourself, Mr. Taylor. You have a decent job, and your own handyman business on top of that, a fine son, and now, also, a beautiful wife." He wasn't even quite forty yet. He could still realize his dreams, Tami thought, or, at least different dreams.

He smiled. "I know. But I want even more for my son than I've realized for myself. And if you're determined to support him, which I hope you are, well..." He sighed. "For awhile that may require you to bear more of the brunt of the housekeeping and the parenting and even the income earning than seems fair. It may be rough at times. It may also require you to delay your education. But, if he makes it, all that effort will pay off for you as well."

Tami didn't tell him she didn't want to delay college. This was a discussion to have with Eric, not his father. "Your son did great out there," she said. "Let's go congratulate him."

[*]

"Holllllly shit!" Sarah said and took a sip from her beer bottle. She was sitting on the couch next to Tami. Both had their feet up on the coffee table. Eric and Joey were in the two arm chairs across from each other, both also drinking beer. "Well your life is about to change big time."

"Congratulations?" Joey said.

"Don't say it like a question, man!" Eric had been hitting the beer pretty hard this evening. He stood up and spread his arms wide. He was swaying a little. "I'm about to marry the woman of my dreams and become a dad. Congratulate me like you mean it, Joey!"

Joey laughed. He stood up, came over, bear hugged Eric, and lifted him off the ground. When he'd set him back on his feet, Eric said, "I see you can still bench press half your weight, anyway."

"Screw you." Joey sat back down. Eric went to the fridge for more beer.

"That was supposed to last us a week!" Sarah shouted after him.

"Consider this an engagement party," Eric said when he returned. "And this is your gift to us."

"What does Tami get?" Sarah asked. "She can't drink anything. And are you even going to get her an engagement ring?"

"That's not on our list of priorities right now," Tami said.

"When I'm in the NFL, I'll get her a 22-carat diamond ring," Eric said, and took another sip of beer.

"Man," Joey said, "don't be one of these idiot athletes who squanders it all and leaves the NFL broke. You know like over half of them leave broke, even though they have financial planners assigned to them."

"I've gotten that lecture from my father 632 times, Joey. I don't think I need it from you." Eric tapped his head. "I'll be smart. I'll bank half my salary immediately. We can live for years after I leave the NFL."

Tami smiled. She felt a small shiver of excitement to think that she might actually have a glamorous life one day. She wasn't banking on it, of course. It felt, at this point, that Eric's odds of making the NFL were about 25%, but it was fun to fantasize. She wanted a house with a pool, and a huge, walk-in closet, and a car that had just rolled off the lot that year. She wanted to stop living paycheck to paycheck, to be able to go out to eat twice a week, to hire someone to do the cleaning for her.

Eric was looking at her with a sloppy grin. "We're gonna be a'ight, you know," he said. "You're so pretty, babe. You look so damn good right now."

"Do y'all want to go to bed now?" Joey asked. "I mean, you can if you want, but we haven't seen you in like…a long time." Joey had offered to sleep on the couch and give Tami and Eric his room.

"No, we don't want to go to bed yet," Tami said.

"So, Sarah," Eric said, lacking inhibition and being more gregarious than usual in his buzzed state, "You dating anyone?"

"Yeah," she said. "As a matter of fact, I am. Joey and I are dating again."

"Really?" Tami asked. They wrote letters to each other, but Sarah had not mentioned this development. "When did that happen?"

"When she got smarter," Joey said. "Which happened around about….November 12th I think."

Sarah smiled at him. "We're giving it another try," she said.

"We just have to break up and get back together once more after this," Joey insisted. "Because third time's a charm."

Sarah laughed.

"So you're not sleeping on the couch tonight," Eric said to Joey.

"We just started dating, man. And I'm a gentleman."

Eric chuckled.

"Who wants to play Pictionary?" Sarah asked.

"I do!" Tami chimed.

Eric and Joey both shook their heads.

"We're playing Pictionary, boys," Sarah insisted. "Unless you prefer Trivial Pursuit."

"How about strip poker?" Joey asked.

Eric pointed a beer bottle at him. "You will never see my fiancé naked. Never."

Tami smiled. It gave her a strange, warm feeling to hear Eric call her that.

There was a lot of laughter that night, and Joey and Sarah agreed to witness their wedding, which they had tonight decided would be toward the start of winter break. The courthouse would still be open, and that would leave enough time to apply for married student housing.

As Tami led Eric off to bed at 1 AM, Joey said, "Just put the sheets straight in the washer in the morning."

Tami did, though they had done nothing to soil them. Eric had fallen almost immediately asleep, his arm draped across her waist, when his head hit the pillow. She'd lain awake for another hour, staring at the ceiling, alternately worrying and daydreaming about the future, and praying on her own for the first time in years.

[Wednesday, November 29]

This semester, Tami had switched her waitressing schedule to evenings, Sundays through Fridays. She'd have to get a less active job soon, but she felt fine for now.

When she came out of the place a quarter past 10, Eric startled her. He took her hand, walked her to her car, and looked at her seriously. "My dad called me this evening," he said. "You haven't told your mother yet?"

"Oh God. Did he?"

"Well, she called him over to do some repairs at the parsonage. And he assumed you'd told her by now. So he mentioned that he and Karen were taking the whole day off for the wedding, and that my aunt might be coming down for it. And your Mom clearly had no idea what he was talking about."

"Oh no."

"Tami, how could you not have told her yet?"

"She'll guess I'm pregnant. And I don't want to hear it from her! You don't understand. The lectures Shelley and I got about being good girls, about virtue and chastity, and…." She shook her head. "Did your dad tell her I was pregnant?"

"No. But she asked what the rush was, and why you hadn't told her, and Pastor John was there, clearing his throat, so….my dad thinks he guessed. And I suppose Pastor John might have opened your mom's eyes to the possibility by now. You need to talk to your mother, Tami."