Running Back Read online

  But I didn’t want to make my decision about Kilkarten or Ivernis if it was really me making a decision about Mike.

  The night before my flight home, I went to the pub with everyone. The amount of warmth that washed over me when I looked at these people almost drowned me, almost made me drown myself by turning into a blubbering mess. Instead, I cheered and toasted and drank down pints poured.

  Paul dropped down beside me. “So I guess we won’t be seeing you around here anymore.”

  “Why?” I swirled the dregs of my pint. “Because I’m just going to follow Jeremy?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Do you still talk to Lauren?”

  He shrugged and looked away. “We were just having some fun.”

  “Don’t give me that.”

  He shrugged. “She lives in the States, I’ll be back in France for school. And we never talked much, so it would be pointless to keep in touch.”

  “Direct quote, huh?”

  He made a face and waved down Finn for another pint. “Since we’re both sad and lonely, maybe we should keep each other company tonight.”

  I swatted the back of his head hard enough that his nose hit his glass. “Don’t be gross.”

  He laughed, and then pinned me with those serious black eyes. “You two were good together, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I told him I didn’t believe in forever. And he interpreted that as not believing in now.”

  “You’re joking.”

  I put my drink down and stared at all the rows of colorful bottles. “I’m not going to go with Jeremy. I’m not going to keep looking for Ivernis. I’m staying here.”

  “That’s grand.”

  My lip started to wobble. I’d wanted Ivernis for so long, but it wasn’t real. Or maybe it was, but so was this. What if Jeremy found Ivernis and I’d left?

  But there was so much here I wanted.

  I wiped away streaking tears. “I’m sorry. I never used to cry before I met Mike.”

  Paul regarded me with frank terror. “Come on, then. Let’s get you to Aunt Maggie.”

  She made me tea and gave me shortbread, and I felt better in minutes. I curled up on the faded couch in the fading light and imagined two men I’d never met playing here as boys.

  Maggie sat down across from me. “I fell in love with Brian when we were fifteen years old. I thought we were soul mates.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  She regarded me with frank surprise. “Weren’t we?”

  Oh. Foot in mouth. “I guess I just assumed—since you both married other people—”

  “I never loved Patrick. Poor Patrick. Maybe he would have been happy with someone else.”

  “But I don’t understand why you didn’t follow Brian. If you loved him, and he loved you. I mean, I know you were mad that he went off and that he spent all that money—but if you loved him—what was your reason?”

  She sighed. “He destroyed my dream. That’s not easy to let go of.” When I just stared at her, she went on. “I’d started up a library and I agreed to let him take a loan out against it. Which he never paid back, so the bank foreclosed on the center.” She shook her head. “I loved him, but he was a mad one. Ruined his family. Ruined me. Sunk all his money into a cause but never knew when to stop, and ended up running from the gardaí to America. Left Patrick to clear everything up. Which he did, credit to him.”

  “He sounds—” A little like me. “Like a jerk.”

  She raised a brow. “Don’t most people, when they’re so single-minded in following their dreams?”

  I blushed.

  She shook her head. “There’s a difference between having a dream and never waking up.”

  * * *

  Jeremy drove me to the airport. I cleared my throat. I felt like I was breaking up with him. “I’ve been thinking about Kilkarten. And it’s a really hard decision, but I’m going to be working on my thesis for the next few years, and I think the best thing to do is to work on this site. And it’s something I find really interesting, and I really like the community here, and...yeah. That’s what I’m thinking. And doing.”

  He was silent a long time. “I know.”

  My head shot up. “You do?”

  “You’re in love with him.”

  I turned slowly. “Jeremy. That’s not why.”

  “Yes, it is. Subconsciously, you’re hoping he’ll come back, and you’ll be tied together by this place.” He let out a long sigh. “I didn’t want to lose you like this.”

  I kept shaking my head. “That’s not why.”

  He slanted me a disbelieving glance.

  And that’s when I saw it. I was just like him. He couldn’t see what he didn’t want to see. He couldn’t see that people had other reasons, and they were fine reasons, even if he didn’t agree with them. To him, I would always be the student who left because of her ex-boyfriend. The girl who traded Ivernis for a boy, not the person who gave up an intangible dream for something real. “I hope you find it.”

  His fingers tightened around the wheel. “Oh, I will. I’ll keep searching until I do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  There was always a thrill in coming home, just like there was a thrill in leaving. Part of it was just that “Welcome to America!” video Customs played, with a waving flag superimposed over amber fields of grain. Over the top Americana, but it kind of tugged at my heart. Just like the customs officer who said, “Welcome home, Ms. Sullivan.”

  Cam proved her best friend credentials by coming all the way out to the airport so she could help me maneuver my luggage on the AirTrain and then on the subway, and then up our four flights. We ordering cheap Chinese food and laughed and told stories and went to a dive bar that gave us free pizza when we bought one drink and I remembered why I loved this city.

  But New York was also grayer than I remembered. There were no rolling fields, and the water wasn’t wild, and nothing smelled right. Instead, it was all sewer smells and clouds of pot swirling out from side streets. Yapping rat-dogs shivered in the rain and men on cell-phones cursed loudly at ticket booths and everyone had the same boots and the same shirt and the same black leather jacket. Part of me wanted to pull out my own jacket and put up my hair just like all the rest, and go up to the bar on the twenty-fifth floor and empty my wallet for cocktails as I stared at the Empire State Building and fended off advances from men old enough to be my father.

  But most of me wanted to sleep a lot, and my stomach felt funny. I supposed it was because for the first time I wasn’t as excited to arrive as I was sad about the place I had left.

  “Maybe,” Cam said, “it’s because you’re heart-sick.”

  I considered that. “I think I’m nervous about the conference.”

  So I distracted myself for the next week by being social and remembering why I loved it here. The way I could get a veggie burger at a split second’s notice or fro-yo or good burritos, and how all the streaming sites worked and I could watch my shows the day after, like a normal person. And how the world had gone on and new blockbusters had come out and new songs were popular. I went out with my grad school friends and met up with my brother Evan for artisan white pizza in the East Village, in a tiny restaurant whose windows were papered with awards.

  “Count her lucky that she got out,” he said when I told him about my mother. “My mom was so much happier afterward.”

  “I guess. I think it is good for her. But I feel bad for Dad.”

  Evan snorted. “Don’t.” He caught me watching. “What?”

  “Don’t you ever want his...I don’t know, approval?”

  He jammed a slice in his mouth and spoke around it. “You think I want him to walk me dow
n the aisle? Come to parades? Yeah, right.”

  “But don’t you wish he would?”

  “What’s wishing got to do with it?”

  “Nothing, I guess.” I wished love was real and dreams existed, but leprechauns granted wishes and leprechauns didn’t exist.

  * * *

  Mom’s new place had high ceilings and large windows, but it was small and filled with unfamiliar furniture. Still, she’d brought several things from home—pictures of my high school and college graduations, a poster of her when she was nineteen, signed by dozens of famous photographers. She hugged me tightly. “Darling, you look horrible.”

  “Thank you, Mom.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. And I think I look great.” I held out my tan, muscled arms. “Look how gorgeous these muscles are. I’m in great shape. And my hair is all sun streaked.”

  “And you have the saddest eyes in the world.”

  Not quite true.

  “What happened with this boy? I don’t understand why you’re not with him.”

  I don’t understand why you’re not with Dad. Except that wasn’t fair, and I did. “Because.”

  “Because what?”

  “Because.”

  She stirred her tea and apparently decided to give the subject a rest. “Have you seen your father yet?”

  “No! I don’t want to.”

  Her face collapsed. “Natalya...”

  “Just... What’s the point of falling in love if you’re just going to fall out of it?”

  “Oh, honey.” She sat down next to me, letting out a deep breath of old, stale sadness as she wrapped her arms around me. “You can’t let what’s happening between Dad and me affect you.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  She smoothed my hair back from my head. “No. Look at you. You’re so successful—you have a good career, and good friends, and this boy who seems like he loves you very much...”

  “But you had all of that and you ended up in an awful marriage.”

  “Your father...he’s not always very good at emotions. I don’t think he ever really learned to develop them.”

  I drew back so I could see her face. “What if I’m like that? What if I’m—romantically stunted?”

  “Why would you think that?” She sounded horrified.

  “Because I am. I have this different world view than everyone else, and everyone sees love as this perfect, beautiful, rainbows-and-puppies emotion and I just can’t see that. Or I couldn’t, but now I do, now I feel it, and I don’t trust it, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why don’t you just follow your heart?”

  “Mom.” I swiped at my eyes. “That is so unrealistic and nonsensical. What does that even mean?”

  “It means I want you to be happy.”

  I didn’t need love to be happy. “What about you? You left all of that. But now what? Will you be happy here, all by yourself? Won’t you be lonely?”

  “Natalie. You don’t have to take care of me.”

  I pressed my lips together. “But then who will?”

  “I will.” She pulled me into her arms. My mother would never be soft and warm, physically or emotionally, but she was still my mother, and I loved her. “I will take care of myself. And right now, I want you to take care of you.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, Jane Ellington’s article on Mike and me came out.

  I read it without blinking. It was a gorgeous article, and the accompanying photography was stunning, but I fixated on a little piece of filler description: “It’s very clear that the archaeologist and the running back are in love.”

  Very clear.

  Except I’d never managed to say it to him. Not once.

  * * *

  I was on a mission.

  I stormed into Cam’s bar, brushing past the surprised doorman, and almost knocking into three customers as I marched to the front of the bar. Cam looked up and waved. I stopped before her and took a deep breath. “Cam. Have I even told you I love you?”

  A couple of the patrons looked up at my brusque, almost aggressive tone. Cam just raised her brows. “Why? Did I do something? Are you taking it back?”

  “No. I mean—it’s a real question.”

  Surprise crossed her face, and then she shrugged. “I’m sure you have.”

  “Really? You can remember?”

  She paused to think about it. “Well—I guess I can’t explicitly remember.”

  I knew it. I hadn’t. I planted my hands on the bar and leaned forward. “Camille Chan. I love you.” I immediately felt lighter.

  Cam didn’t seem to notice. She just screwed up her face affectionately. “Aw, I love you too.”

  “Ow-ow!” a frat-ish guy hollered from behind me.

  Cam jerked up her head. “Shut up or you’re kicked out.”

  I slumped on a stool. “Oh my God. I’ve never said ‘I love you’ before.”

  Cam started putting together something blue and high-proof. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s true. Who would I say it to? My parents? My dad and I don’t. My mom. I can’t remember. I think she tells me, occasionally—noticeably when she moved out, but I don’t. And you’ve been my best friend for seven years.” I shook my head. “I’m emotionally stunted I’m a freak. Maybe a sociopath.”

  “You are not a sociopath.”

  “Maybe I am!”

  “Stop it.”

  I took a deep breath. “He said he loved me, and I wasn’t able to say it back.”

  She raised her brows. “Maybe you don’t actually love him.”

  I met her gaze, and her face softened. “Oh, Natalie.

  “I just miss him so much and I want to see him and I don’t know how.” I tried to subdue the misery in my tone.

  I must not have done a very good job, because Cam handed the blue concoction to me along with a sympathetic smile. “Maybe you’ll run into him somewhere. On the subway.”

  I smiled wryly in return. “Maybe. If we lived in a rom-com.”

  “God, I wish. Then work would always just be a montage of me doing dishes and pulling pints but thirty seconds of fast music later I’d be out having fun.”

  “I don’t think dishes would make it into the montage.”

  “Huh. Yeah. I guess they’re usually about the couple moping. Like you’re doing! Aw, what a cute montage moment.”

  “Maybe I should just give up.”

  She set down her cloth and focused entirely on me. “Why? Because you’re scared?”

  “Because...” I gestured wildly, unable to get rid of the tight, frantic feeling in my chest. “I don’t know what to do with it. It’s too big. It’s pointless. Maybe I should just shelve it. It seems so unnecessary.”

  “Natalie. I love you. You make me happy, and laugh, and think, and I like spending time with you. Is that pointless? Is joy pointless? No. Tell him.”

  And she was right. I knew she was right.

  But first, I had to get through the conference.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The American Academy of Archaeology Conference took place in the Javits Center in New York, a complex on the Hudson River within spitting distance of the Leopards’ Stadium, if you were a very excellent spitter. It had little charm, lots of space, and thousands of archaeologists and grad students frantically running around.

  I arrived with a half-dozen grad school friends. We picked up our badges on the ground floor, one of the few places flooded with natural light. I took a moment to admire the blue highlight across my name that marked me as a panelist, while my friends oohed appreciatively.

  Then the panic set in.

  Without Jeremy, I
’d be carrying this all by myself. I’d never presented a field report entirely alone before. I wasn’t even sure if anyone would show up, now that Jeremy wasn’t appearing since Kilkarten had nothing to do with Ivernis.

  We spent the morning wandering around the floor, picking up the few free pens and bags and hoping and failing to find free food. We broke up to attend different lectures, but they all promised to come see mine, and at two o’clock I made my way to a small room hidden off a side hall. I’d almost reached it when a harried organizer hurried up to me, frowning down at her tablet and then back at me. “Ms. Sullivan?”

  I stopped. “Hi. Yes?”

  “We’re moving you to 1C. One of the larger exhibition halls,” she clarified when I looked at her blankly. “You’re up in twenty.”

  “What? Why?”

  She shook her head. “More people than we expected want to see your lecture. There’s a line forming outside right now.”

  “Really?” But I was just a grad student with a tiny little site in Ireland...

  We stared at each other, and then recognition bloomed on her face. “Oh. You’re that model dating the football player.”

  “No—I’m not, that was my mother—I mean, yes, I dated—”

  She shook her head, not interested in my muddy clarification. Not, apparently, all that interested in me now that she realized I was the nightclub singer sidekick.

  I followed her to the back entrance, and then waited there while the current speaker finished up. He walked past me when he left, and I did a double take, since he’d just wrapped a miniseries on the Olmecs. He grinned. “Ah, the model. You’re up next?”

  “Yes, sir. But—”

  “Aren’t you dating the Leopards’ running back?”