The One and Only

by Emily Giffin

  “So I guess you heard I got shitcanned, too?”

  He nodded. “But you probably don’t want to talk about that either?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Well, let me know if you change your mind … I have some ideas on that front.”

  “Maybe later,” I said. “Let’s get through Christmas first.”

  “Let’s get through Christmas?” he said. “Okay, Ebenezer.”

  “Bah, humbug,” I said, only pretending to be joking.

  Christmas Day was a surprisingly pleasant one, spent in the luxury of my dad and Astrid’s Fifth Avenue pad. Bronwyn and Wiley were in St. Moritz skiing, so it was just the three of us, and Astrid was on her best behavior, a restrained, humble version of herself. She must have known a little of what was going on in my life, but kept her conversation general, avoiding her usual nosy questions, and not once bringing up my job or Walker. It was almost as if my father had warned or bribed her—or enrolled her in a crash course in discretion.

  Right after dinner (which Astrid had catered), she gently raised the subject of Ryan, very tactfully addressing our breakup and asking how I was doing.

  “I’m doing fine. Thanks, Astrid,” I said, feeling sincere.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out. But for what it’s worth … I think that would have been really hard. Having such a famous husband. Women throwing themselves at him. And, you know … just living in the spotlight.”

  I smiled and said, “Oh, c’mon, Astrid! You know you thrive in the spotlight!”

  “Okay. Okay. I think it would be marvelous! But I have the feeling that you would have hated it,” she said as my father refilled all of our wine glasses. I searched for the hidden dig, out of cynical habit, just as she added, “I admire that about you. You like to keep things so … simple.”

  I gave her a look.

  “In a good way.”

  “Authentic,” my dad chimed in.

  “Yes, that’s what I meant,” Astrid said, nodding effusively. “Authentic, that’s it.”

  “Well, thanks, guys,” I said, taking a long sip of my wine, thinking of Ryan and the short email he had sent me a few days ago. There was no mention of wanting to get back together, only a few lines thanking me and telling me that he was seeing a therapist and working through his issues. I had written back that I was so happy to hear it, then wished him luck in the playoffs—and in life. Although I didn’t believe that Ryan was capable of rape, I did believe the rest of Tish’s story, and Blakeslee’s, too, sure that he had been as rough with them as he had been with me. Yet I surprisingly felt no bitterness toward him, only relief that I was no longer with him, and hope that he really could change. I reached up now to touch my diamond earrings, the first time I had worn them since our breakup, and said, “Ryan’s not a bad guy. Just not for me.”

  After that, Astrid changed the subject to Bronwyn’s fertility treatments, explaining that she’d be heading to Cornell in February for her second round of in vitro. This was news to me, and I said how sorry I was to hear that she was having trouble. As Astrid prattled on about the process, I covertly checked my phone for the hundredth time that day, still hoping to hear something from Coach on Christmas. But there was nothing from him. Nothing from anyone in Walker, for that matter, except for Miller, who had sent me a text that said, Merry Christmas to my favorite ho ho ho! I had written back, Why is a Christmas tree better than a man? Because it stays up, has cute balls, and looks good with the lights on!

  As the night wore on, I missed Coach more and more, and tried to dull the pain with Barolo and cheesecake. The two-thousand-dollar check from Astrid and my dad helped, too, and I calculated that it would buy me a couple of months in my job hunt. Feeling slightly embarrassed, I went through the motions of saying it was too much, but Astrid reassured me that she had spent just as much on a handbag for Bronwyn, then kindly added, “And I assume you’d want to select your own.” As if anyone in the room believed that I’d spend that kind of cash on a purse. It was absurd, but to each her own, so I smiled and said, “Well, thank you. Really. This is so generous of you both, and I appreciate it. Especially this month.” It actually felt good to receive such a nice gift from my dad without the weight of the chip on my shoulder.

  Then, after I gave them my gifts (earrings from Lucy’s store for Astrid and plaid socks and a coffee table book on cigars for my dad), we opened another bottle of wine and hunkered down to watch A Christmas Story. It didn’t seem like the sort of movie my dad would appreciate, but he cracked up over every single “You’ll shoot your eye out” and lost his mind during the tongue-on-the-flagpole scene. He told me that his brother, my only uncle, had done the same thing when he was little and that it really does stick. Then, right when Ralphie got his decoder ring in the mail, my phone finally rang, Lucy’s home number appearing on the screen.

  “Don’t pause it. I’ll be right back,” I said, scrambling for the safety of my lush guest suite before answering.

  “Weren’t you going to call?” she asked as soon as I said hello. She sounded wounded, which ticked me off a little. She had plenty of reason to be sad today, but no standing to be miffed at me.

  “Sorry. The day just got away from me,” I said, a ridiculous statement given how slowly the minutes had dragged.

  “I know. Ours, too,” she said. “So how was your Christmas?”

  “Lovely,” I said, a word I never use.

  She called me on it. “Lovely? You’ve been hanging out with Astrid too much.”

  “She actually hasn’t been too bad this time,” I said. “It’s like she got a personality lift with her last cosmetic surgery.”

  Lucy laughed.

  I hesitated, at a loss for a few seconds, before I came up with “Was Santa good to Caroline?”

  “Yes. Very,” she said.

  “Good. Good,” I said, another awkward pause following. “Tell her I love her.”

  “I will,” she said. “You want to talk to your mom? She came over a little bit ago …”

  I started to say no, then made myself say yes, bristling when I heard her voice on the other end of the line.

  “Hi, honey. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, Mom.”

  “This is the first one in your life that I haven’t seen you. It doesn’t even feel like Christmas.”

  “Yeah. It’s a little weird,” I said. “But it’s nice … being in New York and stuff …” I considered calling her out for talking to my dad but secretly liked the idea of the two of them becoming a united front on my behalf, completely unlike the tenor of my entire childhood. So I let it slide.

  I heard Caroline’s high-pitched voice in the background, then Coach’s low laughter. My heart ached as my mother and I said goodbye, and she gave the phone back to Lucy.

  “Hi,” Lucy said.

  “Hi,” I said, straining to hear Coach again, both relieved and distraught that he had sounded so chipper.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, trying not to sound as flippant as I felt.

  Lucy mumbled something I couldn’t make out, then said, “Hey. My dad’s here, too. Did you want to say hello?”

  “Um, that’s okay,” I said, my throat tightening. “Just tell him I said Merry Christmas.”

  “I definitely will,” she said.

  “Okay. Well, I better get back to the movie …”

  “Oh … okay. What are you watching?” she said, clearly not ready to hang up. “It’s a Wonderful Life?”

  I resisted the urge to tell her that was her father’s favorite movie, not mine, and instead said, “No. A Christmas Story. You know. ‘You’ll shoot your eye out.’ ”

  “Ha. Yeah. Right … Well … enjoy the movie. And your night,” she said.

  “You, too.”

  “And what about the game? Have you decided about the game?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay. We
miss and love you. Merry Christmas, Shea.”

  “Love you, too, Luce. Merry Christmas,” I said, hanging up and thinking, Ain’t nothin’ merry about this Christmas. Nothing wonderful about this life.

  I was being dramatic, for sure. But then again, getting your heart broken at Christmastime is pretty fucking dramatic.

  Forty-five

  I ended up extending my trip and staying at my dad’s through New Year’s, filling my days and nights with classic New York distractions. I dined at fabulous restaurants, strolled through museums and art galleries, even went ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Meanwhile, I didn’t watch SportsCenter or read the sports page or check a single bowl score for a whole week. A personal record.

  It didn’t begin to mend my broken heart—I still thought of Coach virtually nonstop—but at least it allowed me to more clearly analyze my life. Since Mrs. Carr’s funeral nearly a year ago, I had vowed to get out of my rut, shake things up. I had certainly done that. I had changed everything. Yet here I was, no better off, and quite possibly in the worst spot I’d ever been in. I told myself that there was nothing to regret. That sometimes you won—and sometimes you came up short. Or, in Coach Carr’s words: Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you.

  On the third day of the new year, and the afternoon of my departure, my father and I went for a long walk in Central Park, just the two of us.

  As we arrived at the boat pond, he cleared his throat and said, “So. Shea. Can we please talk employment for a moment?”

  “Mine or yours?” I joked, bracing myself.

  He smiled. “Yours.”

  “Okay,” I said, telling myself to keep an open mind. I really couldn’t afford another strategy.

  “Do you think you’ll go back to work at Walker? In the athletic department?”

  I shook my head, adamant. “No. That’s the only thing I’m sure about. I can’t make that my whole world anymore. As easy and tempting as it is … it would feel like going backwards.”

  My dad nodded his agreement. “Do you think you want to stay in journalism?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m very good at it.”

  “You’re great at it,” my dad said. “I’m so impressed with your stories, Shea.”

  “Thank you … I think I’m pretty decent at it, too … I didn’t get fired for my writing. I got fired because I couldn’t be objective.”

  “Okay. Right. But you could be objective in another town … covering another team. Right?”

  I shrugged. “Probably.”

  “So let me throw this out there. I know you could find your own job, and I don’t mean to imply that you can’t, but I do have two pretty high-up connections. One at ESPN, the other with the New York Post. I’m not sure what the position or pay would be, but I’m pretty sure I could get you some interviews.”

  “And so … I’d live here?” I said. “In the city?”

  “Well, for the Post,” he said. “And in Connecticut for ESPN. If you want a little distance from Astrid. A.k.a. Ass Face.”

  I looked at him, startled, and said, “How …?”

  “You let it slip once. A long time ago. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her.”

  I felt my neck grow itchy and hot. “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “Honestly, it’s okay. It was funny—you must say it a lot not to have caught yourself … She can be an ass, but her heart’s in the right place. Most of the time. She really likes you. Admires you, too.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed that she admired me, but I did have the sense that there was at least a modicum of respect there. “I like her, too,” I made myself say, thinking that at least I didn’t hate her anymore. It felt like a small miracle.

  “So what do you think about the jobs? Do you want me to put in some calls?”

  “Maybe so,” I said, shocked that I was even entertaining a thought of leaving not only Walker but the entire state of Texas, something I could never have imagined only a few weeks ago. “I do need a job.”

  “Well, I’m not worried about you finding one. And I’m sure you have plenty of contacts in Texas …”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said. “Very few that don’t involve Coach Carr.”

  “And that’s another thing …” he said.

  My stomach instantly knotted.

  “Can we talk about him for a second?”

  I shrugged, steeling myself. “Sure.”

  “Maybe I followed my heart a little too much along the way,” he said. “And your heart can definitely get you into trouble … But, if I hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have you.”

  This wasn’t the angle I’d expected, and I felt confused as I said, “Are you talking about Mom? That was following your heart?”

  “Well, sure. Of course. What else would that have been?”

  “What else? Well, it could have been a cheap affair with a woman you met on the road, then got knocked up before your wife divorced you … So you married her to do the right thing. And because Mom has a way of talking people into stuff.”

  “Wow. That’s quite a sordid spin on my life. And yours.”

  “Well? Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “You are wrong, actually. Believe it or not, I really loved your mom. Fell madly in love with her. But we just couldn’t make it work. Oil and water. Square peg, round hole. So I gave up. And instead of starting over and potentially screwing up a third situation, I went back to take care of Bronwyn and Astrid. Tried to fix some of my scorched earth.”

  It was the first time I’d seen the situation from his point of view, and also the first time I hadn’t seen it as a head-to-head competition between the respective mother-daughter teams.

  “So are you comparing Coach to Mom? Or Astrid?”

  “Neither,” he said. “I’m just saying … follow your heart. Even if it sometimes makes an absolute mess of your life … And, for God’s sake, you have to go to this bowl game. This is the girl who started making road trips with the team in the third grade.”

  “Second,” I said.

  “Exactly. It’d be nuts for you to miss this game.”

  I nodded, knowing he was right. “Are you going?”

  “If you want me to. If you need me to. But if not, I’ll just watch it at home.”

  “Not really the same as being there,” I said. “The crowds … the noise … the energy. It’s electric.”

  “Aha. You see? Listen to yourself. You’ll regret it if you don’t go. Separate your feelings about Clive and Lucy and go support your team,” he said as we approached Wollman Rink.

  I nodded but couldn’t help thinking that Coach and Lucy were my team, at least they always had been, and, furthermore, it was absolutely impossible to separate my feelings for Coach from Walker and the biggest game of our lives. From anything in my life, really—which was the whole problem.

  “Okay. I’ll go,” I said, glancing around the ice rink, comforted by the thought that very few people in the crowd probably cared two licks about the Walker–Alabama game.

  “Good. Great,” he said.

  “But then I think I’ll come back to the city and talk to your people,” I said. “About those jobs.”

  “Really?” my dad said, surprised.

  “Yes. Really,” I said, thinking that this following-your-heart stuff was turning out to be pretty overrated—and that maybe it was time to try another approach.

  Forty-six

  It is 5:20 P.M. Pacific Time, ten minutes until kickoff inside the Rose Bowl. I am in the stands with Lucy, Lawton, my mother, and Miller, who came to Pasadena without a ticket. Up until two hours ago, he had been searching for one from scalpers, but at the last minute he inherited Neil’s ticket when Caroline got a stomach bug and Lucy decided she couldn’t be left in a hotel room with a random sitter. Lucy still made him beg for it.

  “This ticket’s worth all the groveling. So freakin’ sweet!” Miller shouts over the din of two manic marching bands and ninety-two thous
and frenzied fans, all wearing either red or teal.

  I nod in agreement. Our seats are insane, what you’d expect for the head coach’s family—right on the fifty-yard line, twenty-some rows back, with a sweeping view of the western hills rising above the stadium. Even the weather is scripted—warm with gentle breezes and clear skies. A perfect night for a national championship game.

  Miller offers me a bite of his foot-long hot dog smothered with mustard and relish, and I shake my head, wondering how he could possibly eat at a time like this. Glancing around the stadium, I try to soak up the atmosphere, but am too gripped by fear to really appreciate the pageantry. My palms are sweaty, my stomach is queasy, and my heart is racing. Bottom line, I know that nothing about this game will be fun—and the best I can hope for is the absence of misery.

  I feel Lucy tap me on the shoulder and turn to look at her in the row behind us, sandwiched between my mom and Lawton. “Will you please talk to me? I’m bored.”

  “I can’t, Lucy,” I say, mystified by the mere notion of boredom with the countdown now at six minutes and twenty seconds.

  “Are you getting sick, too?” she asks, adjusting the big loopy bow on her teal silk blouse. “Maybe you picked it up from Caroline?”

  “No. I’m not sick. It’s just the game, Luce,” I say, trying to suppress a fresh wave of resentment, not the first since I arrived in Pasadena last night. It isn’t only that she quashed a relationship before it ever really began but that she acts as if nothing ever happened.

  “Oh, c’mon!” she says, slapping my arm. “Have a little faith. We’re going to win! I just know we are!”

  “Yeah, I have a good feeling about this, too,” Lawton says. “And would you believe it? Dad actually found a cricket out at some random park yesterday afternoon.”

  I smile, picturing him with his Mason jar. “Really?”

  “True story,” Lawton says, holding his fingers up in a scout’s pledge. “I was with him.”

  I nod, as if reassured, even though my usual pessimism has taken root. Fortunately, I’m not the coach, because I’d likely advise my team not to lose, rather than to win, always a recipe for defeat. I try to imagine what Coach is saying now in the locker room, and although I can conjure his words and the fire in them, I’m having trouble remembering the sound of his voice. I have not heard it since the night we ended things, which feels like a lifetime ago.