[July 10, 1992]

Tami glanced into the kitchen after putting Julie to bed. Eric was listening with the phone to his ear. He gestured for her to go away. She wanted to listen in, but she supposed he couldn't talk to Javier with her hovering about, so she went to the living room and joined Garrett and Karen, who were seated on the couch. Karen was studying as usual. Mr. Taylor was watching ESPN.

Tami slid into an arm chair.

"My son can be very intimidating when he wants to be," Mr. Taylor reassured her.

A moment later, Eric joined them in the living room and claimed the arm chair opposite Tami. Mr. Taylor muted the television for the commercials.

"How did your Javier chat go?" Tami asked.

"I laid down the law," Eric said. "And he assures me he's madly in love with your sister and would never harm her in any way."

"You don't sound like you believe him," Tami said.

"He rubs me the wrong way," Eric said.

"Eric's a good judge of character," Mr. Taylor told her.

Karen turned a page in her book and highlighted a line. "You're not helping Tami feel better about her sister getting married, darling."

"How can my mom and Pastor John let her get married when we all have a sense of foreboding about this?" Tami asked.

"Let her?" Mr. Taylor said. "If she's anything like you - "

"- She's nothing like Tami," Eric interrupted him.

"Well, I mean, Shelley seems like a young lady who very much has her own mind about things. They've got that in common at least."

"Who knows?" Karen said. "Maybe Shelley and Javier will be married fifty years and all y'all will have to eat your words."

"I hope so," Tami said. "I would love to have to eat my words."

Mr. Taylor kissed Karen's cheek. "I hope we'll be married in fifty years."

"You'll likely be dead in fifty years, darling."

"And you'll be living off my inheritance with the pool boy?"

"Maybe the chauffeur."

Mr. Taylor chuckled and unmuted the TV as ESPN came back on. Tami came over and sat at Eric's feet, a not so subtle hint. He began rubbing her shoulders.

On the TV, the announcer talked about the upcoming NFL training camp. Here's one to keep an eye on, he said, and a photo of Mo flashed on the screen. Morris McArnold was quite a surprise pick, but maybe he shouldn't have been. Look at these stats. Words and numbers flashed on the screen.

Tami could feel how tense Eric's hands were on her shoulders.

"Mo won't make it past August," Mr. Taylor said. "He'll be cut in the first round of roster reductions."

"Why do you say that?" Eric asked. A little bit of the tension drained out of him and he began rubbing again.

"You had him over to the house a few times. I always thought, if brains were leather, Mo couldn't saddle a flea."

"Mo isn't dumb, Dad. He's not a scholar, but he isn't dumb."

"You don't remember when I came home three hours earlier than expected that one night, and Mo tried to convince me that bong was for a chemistry project y'all were working on?"

Eric laughed.

"And then he tried to tell me the scent that had invaded my house was a popular new air freshener?"

"You and Mo smoked pot together?" Tami asked. "You never told me that! You told me you got it from your first girlfriend!"

"I did get it from my first girlfriend," Eric said. "But then I smoked it with Mo."

"I didn't even know y'all were friends," Tami said. "I never saw you hanging out much off the team."

"That was when you were still running with the drama crowd," Eric said. "That was before you were dating him. We didn't hang out much after my freshman year. I was too busy. And I was always with Laura. And my dad kind of scared him away when he caught us."

"That was a misguided year," Mr. Taylor said. "Starting with that loser you were dating."

"Kimberley wasn't a loser, Dad! She didn't even smoke pot herself. You always blamed her, but it was all me. I asked her to get it from her brother. I was so stressed out that summer. I'd never played varsity before, they were going to bump me up early, and everyone expected so much. I just needed to relax. And I was this close" he held his thumb and forefinger apart "to getting laid when you broke us up."

"I didn't break you up. All I said was that you could only see her at our house while I was home. If she thought that made you less cool, then, well, that's not my fault."

"No, you broke us up."

"Well, I'm sorry, son. I'm sorry you have one less notch on your belt because of me. Are you aware that your wife is sitting right in front of you, while you're complaining about not getting laid by some other girl?"

"That's not what I'm complaining about! You just shouldn't have interfered. And talking about notches - over twenty women, Dad? Really?"

"Listen, most of us don't hang up our belts at the age of 18, because most of us aren't lucky enough to find our ideal match that young."

Tami was a little surprised by Mr. Taylor's use of the word ideal. She thought her father-in-law liked her well enough, but she'd never imagined he considered her an ideal match for his son. "You wouldn't rather he have married Laura?" she asked. Laura had been a good student, a regular church goer, and she'd been voted best to take home to parents her senior year.

"Laura," Mr. Taylor said with a laugh. "I never liked that girl very much."

"What?" Eric said. "You never told me that."

"Of course I didn't. She was your girlfriend. But I'm glad she didn't end up as my daughter-in-law."

"Why?" Eric asked.

"She was a bit judgmental," Mr. Taylor said. "I always felt like she was frowning on me because of my single parenthood status."

"What? No she wasn't."

"And she never treated you right. I always felt like you were doing most of the work in that relationship. You always drove up to UNT on weekends. She never drove back to Tyler."

"She didn't have a car, Dad."

"She didn't have the motivation to get a car so she could drive to see you. She was happy to have you as a boyfriend when it convenienced her. Otherwise she was just living her own life. That relationship was over at least a year before you ended it."

"You think she was cheating on me for over a year?"

"I didn't say that. I don't think she was cheating on you at all. But she wasn't invested in you. She was invested in her social life at UNT, in her studies...you were an afterthought. A weekend amusement."

"Why did you never tell me you thought that?"

"How would you have reacted if I had?"

"Yeah," Eric muttered. "I would have been pissed off and not heard you."

"You loved her. Or thought you did. I wasn't going to try to convince you that you shouldn't. But I gotta say, I was a little bit relieved when you came home that night from UNT, that night Tami came for her first tutoring session, and I could tell from your eyes it was over with Laura."

"What? Then why did you accuse me of smoking pot and make me do a round-off if you knew I'd been..." he almost whispered it, "crying over Laura."

"I thought it would be a distraction."

"I was so upset! And you made me do a round-off!"

"You were hurt, sure, because she was your first love. But you were also relieved to be freed of your obligation to her. Weren't you?"

Eric didn't answer.

"And I'm willing to bet you went after Tami that very night."

"I…" Eric took his hands off Tami's shoulders. "Maybe," he admitted.

"Because you already liked her," Mr. Taylor said. "Took you awhile to treat her like a gentleman, though. You're lucky she stuck around."

Eric swallowed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you weren't taking her out on dates, but I'm pretty sure I kept walking in on something at the tail end of those Sunday evenings."

Tami blushed.

"I didn't know if she wanted a real boyfriend," Eric said defensively.

"You might have asked her."

"If you thought I was being a jerk to her, why didn't you say something?"

"I figured she'd get tired of it and you'd either shape up or lose her. I never liked interfering in your love life."

"Really?" Eric asked. "Never?"

Mo's picture was back up on the television again, and the commentators were still talking about him. Mr. Taylor gestured at the TV. "Seriously, if dumb was dirt, that McArnold kid would cover about an acre."

"I don't know," Eric said. "He was always smart about certain things. Like how to make money with money."

"A'ight," Mr. Taylor said. "He's not dumb. But he's not self-reflective."

"Self-reflective?" Tami asked.

"Yeah," Mr. Taylor answered. "Unlike Eric. It's hard to grow as a player if you're not self-reflective. McArnold has probably reached his pinnacle. He probably had a great coach in college, so he grew some, sure, but….his focus is too outward."

"I don't know about that," Tami muttered. "He seemed pretty focused on himself in high school sometimes."

"I'm not talking about selfishness. I'm talking about self-reflection. Eric has that. He'll mull a thing over quietly in his mind for hours, make himself better for it. That's why he could have kept going at the football even after he wasn't drafted, and if he had kept going, he eventually - Ow!" Mr. Taylor looked at Karen, who had just elbowed him in the ribs. He sucked in his bottom lip, gave her a dirty look, but accepted the warning and dropped the subject. "How do you think the Cowboys will do this season, son?" he asked instead.

[*]

That night, as they lay in bed in the guest bedroom, Eric said, "I told you. My dad will always think I should have made it to the NFL."

"Maybe," Tami admitted. "But he loves you and he's proud of you for other reasons and you have to stop caring what he thinks about that. You can't let that get in the way of your relationship with him. Don't make that mistake. Let it go."

"How can I let it go if he won't?"

"By not responding to it when he does mention it."

Eric sighed. "Do you….do you wish I hadn't given up? That's I had tried out for the CFL or - "

" - No! You made that decision after a lot of self-reflection that I'm sure began long before you weren't drafted. Like your dad said, you're self-reflective. Sometimes that might not lead to the conclusions your dad would like, but you didn't just make that decision out of frustration. You didn't give up. You switched tracks and now you're steaming forward on a new one."

"And you don't ever think...what if you had stuck with Mo?"

"Yeah, I do think about it," she said.

He frowned fiercely.

"I think how much worse my life would be if I hadn't had the sense to break up with a cheater, if I hadn't found a good husband like you, if I didn't have our Julie. I think about it, and I'm grateful I had the courage to dump him even if it might make me unpopular or mean I had to think about who I was apart from him." She raised her head to look at him. "Do you ever think what if you had stuck with Kimberley? Sounds like you liked her more than I realized."

"Oh God." He closed his eyes and winced. "I'm sorry I said that in front of you, about not getting laid."

She laughed. "It's just, the first time you mentioned her to me, you made it sound like that relationship wasn't a big deal. But tonight it sounded like you really liked her."

"I did. I mean, she was cool. She was my first girlfriend. We hung out, made out. It was exciting. And it bothered me that my dad though she was a bad influence, because she was really an a'ight girl. But we didn't have much in common. She hung with the metal heads at her school."

Tami had a sudden vision of Eric with long hair and a studded leather jacket and laughed. "So you don't wish you'd stuck with her all through high school?"

"And missed out on you? Hell no."

"You would have gotten laid by her," Tami said.

"I'd much rather be laid by you, babe."

"Well what do you think I'd rather have, sugar, an NFL salary, or a faithful husband who adores me?"

He smiled. He stroked her cheek. "We do have a good thing going here, don't we?"

"Yeah. We do." She kissed him.

He kissed back and pulled her close. They made love, slowly and gently tonight, before spooning together and drifting off to sleep.