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“I’m falling in love with him, Dad.” Although, maybe she was done falling. Oh, hell no. It was way too soon for that.
He reached across the table and covered her hand. “You got it bad, huh?”
Nicole laughed. “Apparently.”
Her father gave her hand a squeeze. “Well, I’d like to meet him.”
“I’d like that too. But I don’t know when that would happen.”
“He’s got a lot going on right now.”
“Yeah. And then he’ll be leaving.” She picked up her fork, pressing its edge into a piece of French toast. “We already talked about it. When he goes, we’re going to end things.”
“You both agreed to that?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re all right with it?”
“It makes sense.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Nicole looked up at him. She’d just gotten through telling him how happy Drew made her. Now she was supposed to explain how she’d be fine when it was over.
“I just don’t want to spend my life waiting for him to have time for me. I know he’d try. But there’s always going to be another game, another trip, somebody else who needs him. I don’t want to start resenting him for doing what he loves.” She hated saying that to her father. Every word of it was about him too. “And then there’s the women.”
“I thought you said you trusted him.”
“I do.” She didn’t even have to think about it. “But that doesn’t mean they’ll leave him alone. Somebody can say something happened when it didn’t, and now everybody’s talking about it. I could believe him and still have to deal with people looking at me like I’m stupid for believing him.” Her father put his fork down. Nicole wished she’d found another way to say it, but she hadn’t said anything she didn’t believe. “I don’t want to be worried about what I’m going to hear next. Even if he hasn’t done anything.”
He shook his head. “I hate that you’ve had to think about all this.”
“I’d rather think about it now,” she said.
“Yeah. I understand that. Your mother and I stayed together through my career, but she gave up a lot to do it. More than I understood at the time.”
She looked up. He’d said things like that before, usually when he was thanking her mother in front of a room full of people. Hearing it here, with nobody else listening, she wanted him to keep going.
“You get home from a trip, you’re tired, you’ve got practice the next morning. You want to eat and go to bed. Meanwhile, she’s been handling everything while you were gone, and she’d like to have a conversation with her husband.”
That part she remembered. Her mother used to tell them to let him rest, and sometimes they’d barely gotten to say hello.
“And it’s easy to say you’ll make it up to everybody when the season’s over,” he continued. “Then there’s something else you’ve agreed to do. An appearance. A trip. Something you could’ve said no to.”
“Did Mom ever ask you not to go?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you went anyway?”
He glanced down at his plate. “Sometimes.”
Nicole let that sit. Her mother had always found something for them to do when he was gone and made sure they had a good time. Nicole had enjoyed every minute and still wished he’d been there.
“I’m not telling you Drew would do everything the way I did,” her father said. “But you’re right about what comes with it. If you already know you don’t want that, I think you’re making the right decision.”
She’d wanted him to agree with her. Now that he had, she didn’t feel any better. “He’s worked for this his whole life,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask him to give it up.”
