Running Back

by Allison Parr

  “Hey.” Lauren’s voice stopped him. “I found us a tour to go on. It’s three nights—takes us up to the Ring of Kerry and the Cliffs of Moher and all that good stuff.” She glanced at me uncertainly. “I don’t know what your schedule looks like—if you could take Friday off we could wait until next weekend—”

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly. “The dig’s just starting in earnest. I’ll need to be here.”

  “Why don’t we go now?” Mike sounded almost emotionless. I searched his face, but he’d entirely closed himself off. At least he didn’t insult me by pulling on the charming mask. “That’d be better timing for me, since I have to go back to New York this weekend.”

  It felt like he’d ripped my guts out of me. “Wait, what?”

  “It’s the veterans’ minicamp.” His eyes caught mine and a slow flicker warmed his face. “Why, you going to miss me?”

  Relief flooded the sudden hole in my stomach. He’d be back. “I...”

  He finished the banana and tossed the peel in the trash. “Don’t have too much fun while I’m gone.” He headed out.

  We all stared after him, then Anna glared at me accusingly. “You guys had a fight.”

  “Um. Well. Just a...little...” If I kept spacing my words farther and farther apart, I’d never have to finish, right? An asymptotic sentence.

  Lauren pressed the heel of her hand against her eye. “What’d he do?”

  I felt my cheeks warming. “Did he say anything to you?”

  “Only that he didn’t want to talk about it. And—um—” She glanced at her little sister.

  “Jesus.” Anna rolled her eyes. “I promise not to faint at whatever scandalous news you have.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Well, it’s none of your business either, but you still know.”

  I raised a hand, curiosity beating out embarrassment. “It’s fine. What did he say?”

  “Well.” Lauren still obviously didn’t want to say much. “It was sort of confusing. But maybe that you’re hung up on your professor.”

  Anna’s brows shot up, just like her brother’s. “What, the old guy?”

  “He’s not that old.”

  Lauren’s eyes caught mine, and I made a face. “And no, I’m not, and that’s not what we argued about.”

  Anna just scoffed. “It’s totally ridiculous anyway. But it’s probably good to make Mike worry a little. He’s way too sure of himself.”

  Obviously a family trait. “I should head out. Work to do.”

  “Wait.” Anna bolted to her feet. “I’m coming with, just let me grab my stuff.” She was out the door.

  Lauren raised her brows. “You’re going without eating?”

  “Well.” I gestured at the soggy mess. “I have a banana and sandwich in my bag.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Uh-huh!” And then I fled too.

  * * *

  I stayed in a mood all week.

  This sucked. The O’Connors were off touring Ireland, and even if Lauren had been here, she wasn’t exactly prime material for discussing my romance problems. Cam was in California for a conference, which meant the sun always set on the Camille-Natalie Empire. I shot her off an email that night, after a fairly cool goodbye from Mike. It’s not like I was saying I didn’t want to date him! Is it my fault that I think biology is a bigger factor than cultural pretenses?

  I’d woken with a response in my inbox, which said: Maybe you shouldn’t TELL A DUDE YOU’RE DOOMED TO BREAK UP AND YOU’D BE BETTER OFF WITH ANOTHER GUY.

  Huh.

  At least I could kill my energy shoveling units and throwing buckets full of dirt through the sifting screen. Simon Daly, the eighteen-year-old holding the other side of the screen, looked at me cautiously. “You all right, Professor Sullivan?”

  Slightly better now that he’d called me professor. “I’m fine.”

  “Bad luck with Mike?”

  I stopped sifting. “Excuse me?”

  “My great-aunt Eileen told me you’re back in your own room.”

  There were so many things wrong with that. Particularly—why the hell did Eileen have to spill our beans? “Who else knows that?”

  He shrugged. “Everyone, I suppose.”

  Great. Just great. All of Kilkarten knew about my sex life.

  “Thought he was supposed to propose to you here.”

  I almost wrenched the screen completely out of his grasp. “What?”

  “Just talk I heard.”

  “Well, don’t. Anymore. No more talk.”

  He looked at me like I was crazy and gently began to push and pull the screen again. “All right.”

  I took a deep breath. “All right.”

  We broke for lunch around noon, settling down in circles and pulling bags out of backpacks. A bottle of sanitizer was passed around, so the amount of dirt we consumed would be slightly lessened. I generally attempted to hold my PB&Js by their tinfoil wrappers, but by this point eating dirt just didn’t faze me.

  Jeremy stopped by later as I violently scooped dirt from the unit into a heap beside it. “Are you okay, Natalie?”

  I paused to suck in some air, leaning against my shovel as I squinted up at him. The sun glinted white and sharp behind him. “I’m fine! Don’t worry about me.”

  “Err. Did you have a fight? With...” He hesitated. “With Michael?”

  “What? No. No! What would give you that idea?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, like he always did when something was bothering him. “I just wanted to make sure—as your advisor, I feel responsible—that it’s not a bad situation.”

  I wiped my arm across my brow, trying to get rid of some of the ever-present sweat, and hauled myself out of the unit and over to my pile for another water bottle. “Please, Jeremy, don’t worry about it. It’s not a situation.”

  “Okay. Just—know you can come to me, if you ever need to.”

  Poor, uncomfortable Jeremy, trying to do the right thing. I grinned before consuming half a pint of water. “Thanks.”

  Of course, as we packed up for the day, Harry Gunner asked, “When’s your man coming back?”

  And I immediately answered, “Next Tuesday.”

  And Jeremy kind of gave me a look.

  Okay. So we were maybe a situation.

  For the next week, we dug and sifted and hoped. There had to be something here, but for some reason, we kept missing it. None of the units yielded anything other than the usual cattle bones and litter, and the spike the specialist had found turned out to be nothing more than unusual bedrock, and another was just a type of soil that stunted the voltage measurement. It was hard to keep from widening the units, from thinking maybe we just missed it.

  At least it was good for my body. I could feel my muscles coming back to form, biceps and triceps building, thighs sculpted into pillars of strength. I felt like my lungs were so strong I could run a marathon.

  Most evenings, we piled into the trucks and headed down to the pub for a couple hours of beer and pool and darts. Sometimes we were invited into someone’s home for dinner. Life would have been perfect, except for the lack of finding anything. And the lack of Mike.

  On Friday, Jeremy and I ended up at our own little corner table. I watched him for a long while. I’d always been so happy around Jeremy, so comfortable. That was probably why I’d had a crush on him in undergrad. Because he was safe. Because he would never return my affection, and so my emotions weren’t in danger. But they’d barely been emotions at all. He’d never made me heady with desire; I’d never craved him. My daydreams of Jeremy had all skipped from him realizing my utter brilliance to us gallivanting around the globe, uncovering lost cities and presenting at conferences.

  And that had sound
ed fine, because I knew love didn’t really last, so falling into it was just asking for disaster. But that had been a lot easier to say when I wasn’t caught up in a swirl of emotions. When I didn’t miss someone so badly my chest ached.

  Goddamn. I didn’t particularly want to end up on the it’s better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all side of the argument. I’d better check what Yeats had to say about it when I went home.

  I put down my fork and took a deep breath. “Jeremy, do you have a girlfriend?’

  He started coughing, and I waited patiently for him to recover. He took another sip for fortification. “I do.”

  I couldn’t decide if I was surprised or not. “How come you never mention her?”

  Not that I expected him to spill every detail of his personal life, but we spent a lot of time together. I knew his favorite dish was mushroom paprikash and he knew about my parents. I could cheer him up when he was tense and he always brought me Hobnobs back from the UK. He didn’t owe me details of his personal life, I just already knew them in every category other than romantic.

  A touch of color stained his cheekbones, and he settled his glasses more firmly on his nose. “I suppose because...” He trailed off, then valiantly rallied again. “You never talk about your own personal life.”

  I looked out the window at the cobblestones and brightly painted houses. “I’m thinking of dating Mike.”

  He looked ready to start coughing again. “But I thought...”

  Oh, right. “That we were already dating? Actually—”

  “No, that—” He stopped, flustered once again. This was fascinating. I’d never seen Jeremy so embarrassed. “I thought maybe you had a—deal.”

  My mouth dropped open. What, like I’d sleep with Mike for Kilkarten kind of deal? For God’s sake, if he’d suspected that why wouldn’t he say something?

  Wait. Maybe he meant a friends-with-benefits deal.

  “Well, I think we might try it, for real.” I smiled, more pleased than I’d imagined to be telling Jeremy this. “So tell me about your girlfriend. Where’s she live?”

  “London. She works at the National Archives. We’ve only been seeing each other for around six months.”

  “That’s great.” I took a quick swig and regarded him fondly as he went into detail. After a while, he trailed into a comfortable silence and I took a deep breath. “Hey, I’m sorry if I was ever...too much.”

  His eyes softened. “Natalie—you are the best student I have ever had. I want you to know that. You are intelligent, and dedicated, and easy to work with. And we’ll find Ivernis. Don’t worry. We’ll find it.”

  My chest filled with so much—with bittersweet pleasure and pride, with sorrow. “Thanks,” I told him, from the bottom of my heart. “And you’re right. I’m sure we’ll find something.”

  I was sure of it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The O’Connors didn’t come back until the next Tuesday. After Mike flew to the States, the women spent the long weekend on the Aran Islands. Lauren invited me, but I figured they needed some legitimate family time. Besides, it gave me a weekend of kicking a ball around and drinking my feelings in the pub with Paul. I kind of liked doing that. Paul was refreshingly ticked off at the world, and good at grumbling about O’Connors.

  But when I came back from the field Tuesday evening, I found the O’Connors in the dining room. I hovered in the hall, watching as they laughed and scarfed down a platter of scones. Anna noticed me first. “Hey!”

  I stepped into the room. “How was your trip?”

  Anna was off, but I couldn’t look away from Mike. He smiled, but it didn’t go much further than the surface, and I couldn’t tell if he was still angry or if we were okay. I wanted to get him alone, to talk to him, to hold him, but Anna was still talking.

  “—and then we went to the Cliffs of Moher, which are the Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride, and they’re crazy. It’s like the end of the world, and the wind made our hair looked like small monsters and you could lean into the air and it practically supported you. Did you guys find anything?”

  The abrupt switch—Anna had decided it was time for her to eat, and me to talk—made me start, as did the sudden weight of all the O’Connors’ eyes. I pulled my shoulders back and tried to smile. “There’s always some things to find. We’ve come across some pottery sherds. And cattle bones. But, uh—nothing to support a harbor.”

  Kate’s sympathy nearly killed me. “That’s too bad.”

  “It’s still the early stages. I mean, it’s a huge amount of land to cover. And while I thought my calculations were spot on—well. I guess I shouldn’t have been trusting maps based off Roman reconstructions of Greek sources, now, should I?” I laughed. The O’Connors didn’t.

  I shoved my hands in my back pockets and my eyes found Mike’s. “I was going to go for a run. I don’t know if...?”

  He was already standing. Anna started to speak up, and both her sister and mother kicked her.

  This time my laugh came out a little more genuine. That was my kind of subtlety.

  Mike was changed and downstairs in a moment. “You’re disappointed.”

  “Dumb, right? I didn’t have any guarantees.” I broke into a jog, taking the northern path. A veil of fog covered the land, so every movement was oddly fascinating and disruptive. My gut knotted up with anxiety, and I tried to handle it by increasing my pace until we cleared the top of the fog and the cliff. Below us, blankets of white rolled in from across the sea like some actual, sentient creature. Above, the waxing moon hung low and pale in the gray sky, drifting in and out of ghosting clouds. I slowed and faced him. “I missed you.”

  He looked back at me. “I missed you too.”

  All I wanted was to kiss him, to cling to him, but my stomach still hurt. “Are you still mad at me?”

  He closed the space between us. “No.”

  “Why were you mad at me?” I inched forward.

  He stroked his fingers along my temple and behind my ear. “I didn’t want to get hurt.”

  “I don’t understand.” But even so, the knots in my stomach were slowing coming undone.

  He smiled wryly. “Maybe I’ll explain someday.”

  And then our mouths met, and it was like we were erasing all the time and distance apart. He was warm and strong and right under my hands, and as we kissed the horrible tension of the last week faded away and everything made sense again.

  We sat near the edge of the bluff, our legs pressed together, his arm around me. His voice had the cadence of music. “Tell me about Kilkarten.”

  I sighed. “What if I was wrong? How can I have been so wrong?”

  “You can’t know yet. It’s only been two weeks.”

  “But what if there’s nothing?”

  “Then you try again. You start over somewhere else.”

  A strangled laugh came out. “How can I do that?”

  He stretched his legs out before him. “I do it every year.”

  It took me a moment to process what he meant. “But that’s different.”

  “No, it’s not. I know exactly how it feels to want something so badly, and to fail and have to start over again. And again. To keep going even when you’re losing.”

  I turned, slightly worried for him. “But it’s not your fault if you lose.”

  “Sometimes it is. And it’s my career on the line. My reputation. And I have thousands of people watching. Counting on me. Hoping I’ll fail.”

  “You shouldn’t carry that whole weight on your shoulders. It should be the whole team.”

  “Natalie.” He shifted to face me. The moon brightened his hair to cold fire. “You shouldn’t be taking this completely on yourself, either.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if there’s
nothing.” To my embarrassment, my voice cracked and I started to sniff. “I’m sorry.” I pressed my hand to my nose and mouth, and then when that wasn’t enough, I pulled up my knees as though that would pull in my emotions. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “You’re stressed out.” He placed an arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him. His warmth seeped into me and edged out the damp air. “It’s okay.”

  Was it? It didn’t get things done. Oh, it was useful enough as a way to release stress, but indulging in long crying jags always seemed pointless, when I could instead be working on how to solve the problem. “I don’t cry.”

  He sounded wry. “So you’re not human?”

  I laughed, and then pressed my hand to my head. “I have such a headache.”

  “That’s what happens when you spend so much time trying not to cry.”

  I flicked my eyes toward him. “And what would you know about that? Spend a lot of time bottling down tears?”

  He leaned his head back, offering me a clear, strong profile.

  I breathed out a long sigh. “No, but it’s the same when you’re bottling any emotion, isn’t it? And you keep your anger wrapped up in a charming smile.”

  “No more than your anxieties are bow-tied with laughter.”

  He had me. I shrugged. “Why cry when you can laugh?”

  “Why yell when you can grin?”

  We both stared up. “You think we’re kind of fucked up?”

  “Utterly.”

  I started laughing, and he started laughing, and then we were kissing in the cold night air. He twisted his upper body over mine, and I fell down into the grass, pricks of moisture chilling my arms until Mike’s hands swept over them.

  We lay there, me curled into him. We watched the stars brighten. “I’ve spent my entire life thinking I knew what I wanted to do. I’m beginning to think I was wrong, and that scares me. It scares me to think that I might have to go to the conference and admit that there is no Ivernis, and Dr. Ceile was right and I’m just a dreamer.”

  “Natalie. None of us are perfect. And you shouldn’t be scared at the conference. If there’s no site here, and you’re able to admit that without clinging to Ivernis—that’s brave. And I’ll come. So you can just pretend you’re telling me, and I’m not going to judge or care, I’ll just want to hear what you know.”