Page 56 of Love Lessons
“Oh. Yeah.” I exit the terrace to put some distance between me and the boys. “What are your thoughts? Isn’t it kind of obvious who it’s gonna be?”
“Is it?” he asks. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Well, there’s really only a couple of obvious choices.” I glance back at the terrace, but nobody can hear me now. “Castro’s been on the team for more than five years. He’s a veteran, but he’s got a few good years left. He’s a high scorer. He’s well-liked, even if he’s kind of a grump.”
“That’s all true,” O’Doul agrees. “Great guy, but he doesn’t seem interested in the job. And he has a temper, which the refs hate. Besides—he’s married to the league commissioner’s daughter. Guys might not feel comfortable bringing stuff to him, you know?”
“He and the commissioner aren’t close atall,” I point out.
“You know it. I know it. But a new guy wouldn’t. I don’t like the optics.”
“Fucking optics,” I grumble. “But I suppose you’ve got a point.”
“Who’s your next pick?”
“Eh…” I look out at the lake, and my mind draws a blank. “The sunshine is making me sleepy, captain. I don’t really know.”
“Way to pass the buck.” He laughs. “But fine. I’ll leave you in vacation mode. You need anything? Want me to water your plants while you’re gone?”
“If I had plants, you’d be my first call. I’m good, big man. Go out of town. Play golf. Get your wife pregnant. Do whatever it is that retired guys do.”
“Sure thing. Just as soon as I figure out what that is. Later, punk.”
“Later.”
I hang up with him, only to find a haranguing voicemail on my phone. It’s from my mother. When I press Play, she gets right to the point. “Ian, did you return that RSVP? It’s rude not to answer. People have to plan these things. Let me know when you’ve done it.”Click.
Fun times with Mom.
Reluctantly, I leave the sunshine and head upstairs to my quiet room. I fish that damn wedding invitation out of my suitcase and pull it out of the envelope. The paper is so thick you could use it for a drywall job. I put on my glasses and try to read the elaborate script:
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Acton Everston
Cordially invite you to the wedding of their daughter
Miss Jaqueline Everston to Her Slick Butthead of a Fiancé
Okay, maybe it doesn’t say that exactly. But I’m severely dyslexic, and sometimes I get things a little wrong.
This damn wedding. My parents need me to go, because my extended family will be there. The groom is my father’s cousin’s son. And it’s not like I want to cause a rift in my family. But do I have to watch the woman who dumped me marry someone else? Seriously?
Once upon a time, we were high school sweethearts who broke up when she went to college. But then we reconnected when I was playing for a minor league team in Hartford. As a young and foolish man at twenty-one, I asked her to move to Connecticut with me.
Seemed like a good idea at the time. And like the nice guy I am, I’d written an email to my second cousin, Carson, asking if there were job opportunities in the statehouse where he worked. After all, Jackie had a degree in history and government. It wasn’t a stretch.
Carson put her in touch with some people, and she got a job working as a staffer to a state senator. She loved it right away and began moving up in the ranks. When Carson decided to run for state senate, he asked Jackie to join his campaign.
It’s weird, but I knew right away that things were changing. I could hear it in her voice when she spoke about “the candidate.” The breathless admiration.Carson thinks this, andCarson says that. I think I could tell that her interest in him wasn’t just professional, maybe even before she realized it herself.
It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. She fell for him over late-night meetings and harried press conferences. He was everything I’m not—a scholar, a prep-school boy, a slick-looking guy who’s comfortable behind a podium.
One day I got off the bus from a road trip to find that I’d been called up to the big leagues. It was my dream come true. Should have been one of the happiest days of my life.
But when I went home to tell Jackie, I felt dread in the pit of my stomach. I already knew I’d be moving to New York alone. And when she greeted the news with devastation, I laid my heart on the table. “Do you love me enough to move across Long Island Sound?”
The distance was a hundred and twenty miles. Not exactly across the continental divide. And I’d been training for this for years.
When she cried and said,Ian, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t even surprised. A couple weeks later, the first cozy photo of the two of them kissing showed up on social media.
