The One & Only: A Novel (10 page)

“What’s that?” I said, laughing. “That I’m easy?”

“Well, frankly, yeah. I mean … Not easy in
that
way … Just easy. You never do the psycho girlie thing, do you?”

“Depends on what you mean by
psycho girlie
,” I said, thinking of the napkin covered with Coach Carr’s doodles that I had rescued from the trash after an athletic department meeting sometime last year. That would probably be considered psycho by most, especially given the napkin’s proximity to a half-eaten Bunki’s donut, which also happened to belong to Coach Carr. At least I didn’t finish it.

Ryan clarified, “You didn’t wait three days to write back. You didn’t ask for all the details before you committed. You didn’t make sure you could schedule a blowout and spray tan on such late notice. You didn’t ask exhaustive questions about what you had to wear. You just said yes.”

I smiled, thinking that maybe Lucy was right. Maybe Ryan was looking for a low-maintenance anti-Blakeslee. If so, he had come to the right girl (although I made a mental note to schedule a blowout and spray tan since that was what he was clearly accustomed to).

“Well, now that you mention it. What are the details?” I had given my only proper gown to a thrift shop because I never wore it and because Lucy had informed me that it was too short, that my toes should show only as I took a step forward, not when standing still. “Is it black-tie?”

“No. Just cocktail attire. The invite actually says ‘business casual,’ I think. It’s a benefit for autism. One of my causes,” he said. “But I don’t really have to do anything. Just show up for an hour or two. With a stunning girl on my arm.”

I was pretty sure that he didn’t mean to call me stunning any more than he had meant to call me hot, but I still felt a goofy grin on my face and was grateful that he couldn’t see it. “Stunning, huh? That’s a tall order.” I spun around in my desk chair, turning to face the only window in my office, with the perfect view of a gorgeously symmetrical loblolly magnolia already in full bloom.

“It’s not a tall order for you. I saw you on the sidelines, looking effortlessly fine in that Walker getup,” Ryan said as I heard his turn signal in the background, confirming that he was in his car. “Never seen a chick look that good in khakis.”

I laughed with nervousness and a little bit of excitement. Was this really happening? Was I really about to go on a date with a star quarterback, famous even to non-football fans? I reminded myself that it was only Ryan James, my old friend, who just happened to be a Dallas Cowboy—and that I was sure it would amount to very little.

“Well, then,” I said. “That’s settled. Business casual it is. I’ll wear my game-day khakis.”

“You can wear whatever your little heart desires,” Ryan said, taking the phone off speaker. His voice dropped, low and smooth, as though he were whispering in my ear. “I have always been a big fan of your collarbone, though …”

I stopped in my tracks, a distant memory suddenly unearthed from the spring of our junior year. Ryan and I were at some frat party. I was wearing a white tank top to accentuate my tan (those were the days when I actually went to tanning beds, a.k.a. cancer chambers) and was dancing to “Brown Eyed Girl” when he came up to me and said, “Anyone ever tell you that you have a sexy collarbone?”

I wasn’t entirely sure where my collarbone was until he ran his finger along it and said, “There are ass guys … leg guys … boob guys. But
this
 … is my spot.” His finger lingered there, long enough for three friends, Lucy included, who was visiting from UT, to inquire about the incident later. I told them it was nothing. I
knew
it was nothing. Nothing more than a drunken frat-party exchange with one of the biggest players on campus. And by
player
, I didn’t mean
on
the field.

“Yes. I think you mentioned that once,” I said now. “A long time ago.”

“I’d love a refresher.”

“Well, then,” I said, grinning into the phone. “I’ll see what I can do for you.”

That night, my mother made me dinner, a gourmet French meal in her dining room, complete with candlelight and white-cloth napkins. But the formal presentation didn’t stop her from leaping out of her seat and yelping when I gave her the Ryan update, a contradiction that was
so
my mother. At heart, she was a TV-dinner kind of girl, but she fought hard against her redneck roots, doing everything she could to distance herself from her lower-middle-class upbringing in Odessa. Behind her back, and before Mrs. Carr got sick, I called it the
Connie effect
, joking to Lucy that my mom had spent her entire adult life trying to extinguish her inner tacky light and be more like her high-class friend. I actually don’t know how Mrs. Carr stood all the copycat behavior, but I’m sure it had something to do with her own perfect mother instilling in her the charitable belief that imitation was the most sincere form of flattery.

In other words, my mother had sincerely flattered Connie Carr on a daily basis, especially when it came to matters of taste. When Mrs. Carr traded her silver car in for a white one, my mother followed suit (even though she had once told me that she’d never own a white car). When Mrs. Carr decided to get a crisp bob one summer, my mother chopped off her hair, too. And on and on. Mrs. Carr was my mother’s best friend, but also her field guide and barometer of all her decisions, both minor and major, and losing her, I could tell already, was having a disorienting, devastating effect. It was unfathomable to my mother that Connie had actually drawn the short straw, and a source of great guilt. Striving even harder for perfection, Connie Carr–style, seemed to be a way of repenting for being the survivor, and, as always, my mother couldn’t separate me from her quest. In this way, Ryan James
would be the ultimate salve. If I could land him—heck, even
date
him for a minute—there would be some sort of tangible proof that she had raised me right, been a good mother, overcome her blue-collar roots.

All her life my mother had been scrapping and scheming to defy her familial shortcomings, beginning with her own acceptance to Walker on a full (albeit need-based) scholarship, then continuing when she befriended Connie, landed my dad (Yankee money was better than no money), joined all the right clubs, and, most of all, aligned our family so closely with the Carrs. There was really nothing more she could have done to set me up for her brand of success and status. Yet, I still managed to let her down, time and again, beginning at a young age when she signed me up for riding lessons only to discover that I had a severe allergic reaction to horses. It was downhill from there. I sucked at ballet. I refused to go out for cheerleading. I spent too much time on football. I wasn’t into clothes or makeup or all the things that girls in Texas are raised to care about. I didn’t get into the exclusive Camp Waldemar, a sleepaway camp with more stringent admissions than Harvard, or the Hockaday School, the fancy boarding school in Dallas that all the “best” girls attended (the only notable exception was Lucy because Coach Carr didn’t believe in sending children away). I made the Homecoming Court, but skipped the festivities for a regional track meet.

And perhaps the biggest disappointment of my mother’s life, at least since her marriage ended, was when I wasn’t invited to be a debutante. It was a long shot, as these things were passed down through the generations, but, because of my mother’s diligence, and our close affiliation with the Carrs, I still had a shot—until I dated Gregory Hobbs my junior year of high school and eviscerated her efforts in one fell swoop. It didn’t matter that Gregory was in the National Honor Society or that his father was an economics professor at Walker or that our romance was short-lived and mostly innocent. What mattered was that Gregory was African-American, and, whether or not anyone admitted it, interracial dating wasn’t exactly a fast track into the upper crust of Texas society. My mother had zero tolerance for racism and certainly
never discouraged my friendship with Gregory, but I could tell she let the debutante dream die after that, slightly lowering her social ambitions for me.

When Mrs. Carr and Lucy began the whole tedious debbing process, my mother’s wounds were briefly reopened, and I actually felt a little sorry for her. But I reassured her that it was for the best. I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in getting all dolled up to walk down a runway in silly white gloves and bridal wear, especially for a bunch of elitists. Nor was I about to get on my knees and do that ridiculous “swan” curtsy to the boys I had seen belching and swearing in the cafeteria. The whole thing was a big misogynistic joke, and I told my mother I’d be forfeiting my rights as a strong, independent woman if I got up on that auction block. Hadn’t she raised me better than that?

With a dash of feminism somewhere in her blood, she didn’t disagree entirely, but she was also a realist and warned me that I would never marry into a “good” family if I didn’t learn to play the game—or at least
pretend
to be a proper Southern lady. She was right, of course. Because I never played the game, never became a proper Southern lady, and never made headway with Texas blue bloods, the kind of boys who stand when a girl comes to the table, tip their hats at the right moments, make you look good when they spin you around the dance floor, and have loads of money, the older the better. Instead, I ended up with guys like Miller who broke all the rules and, in my mother’s words, wore boots on all the wrong occasions, namely weddings (you didn’t have to be Mrs. Carr or Garth Brooks to know that boots have no place at black-tie affairs).

But now, seemingly out of nowhere, my mother sensed a comeback. I told her not to get her hopes up. “Nobody is courting anybody. And I’m not being wooed either. He is not my beau, nor am I his betrothed,” I said, throwing every old-fashioned term I could think of into the mix.

She laughed in spite of herself, then went in the opposite direction. “What do you suppose he sees in you, anyway?”

“The good Lord only knows,” I said, pressing my palms together, prayer-style, and staring up at the ceiling.

She ignored my sarcasm and asked, “You think it’s all that football knowledge? Finally paying off?”

Unlike my true devotion to the game, my mother’s love of Walker football was superficial, all about the fanfare. She went to every home game, tailgating with her famous deviled eggs and baby back ribs, but once she got inside the gates, the socializing never stopped. She was way too busy gabbing about how much she would
just die
if Walker lost to actually watch the game.

“Yes. Finally, it has all paid off!” I said, deciding it wasn’t worth it to call her out on yet another charge of sexism. It was the same way I bit my tongue whenever I heard people (and remarkably women were the worst offenders) imply that Erin Andrews and Samantha Ponder couldn’t possibly add real value to a football telecast, insinuating that they were merely eye candy on the sidelines.

“That has to be it,” my mom said, looking pleased with her theory.

“Yes! All that useless football information! At last! Bearing fruit!” I said, reaching for the bread basket.

“No more carbs,” she said, smacking the roll out of my hand, a sore spot in my childhood. When I was growing up, if I ate too much bread, sugar, or, God forbid, French fries, my mother would make me go out in the backyard and do calisthenics until I’d “worked it off.” It was a wonder I’d never developed an eating disorder.

I scowled at her, thinking that if Ryan was going to like me, he was going to like
me.
Then I picked up the roll, smeared on the butter, and took a big, defiant bite.

A
couple days later, after I’d forced myself to make a follow-up call to Frank Smiley, as per Coach’s advice, I finally heard back from his assistant, receiving a curt invitation to meet him for lunch at Bob’s Chop and Steak House on the same day as Ryan’s event. The woman on the phone did not offer me alternate times or days, and seemed put out by even delivering the message, so I quickly agreed, then hung up and called Coach Carr with the news.

“I’m meeting Smiley at Bob’s Steak House,” I told him. “I assume it’s an interview?”

“It’s a damn coup is what it is,” Coach said. “You’re meeting the best sports editor in Texas for lunch. At his favorite restaurant. Guy might as well have a typewriter set up in one of those booths … Yeah, I’d say it’s an interview.”

“He still uses a typewriter?” I said, intrigued. I knew he still brought yellow tablets and mechanical pencils to the pressroom, unlike just
about everyone else, who used laptops, but a typewriter was even cooler.

“I wouldn’t be surprised … People call me ‘old school.’ I’m new age compared to Smiley.”

“Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who wants some girl on his staff,” I said, having already done my due diligence and confirmed that there were currently no women on the sports staff at the
Post.

Coach didn’t deny this; he just said, “You’re not
some
girl.”

I smiled into the phone.

“So anyway … order the rib eye. Or the porterhouse. No salad—unless it’s the chopped to start.”