Page 77 of Only and Forever
“Fixing this,” I tell him, stepping closer until I can reach the whistle hanging around his neck. “I suggest you plug your ears.”
TWENTY-TWO
Viggo
Playlist: “House We Share,” Chance Emerson
Watching Tallulah Clarke coach kids’ soccer is a glorious thing. She stands, eyes narrowed against the sun, hands on her hips, sporting a white T-shirt that features a black-outlined tiger, hair piled high on her head, and my whistle in her mouth.
Its shrill tone cuts across the grass as she watches the kids dribble with their balls around the cones, practicing their inside and outside cuts. “Now back the other direction!” she yells.
“Hey.” Dan, our league coordinator, steps up beside me. Tallulah’s on my other side, and I think his decision is strategic, placing as much distance as he can between him and her formidable presence.
“Hey, Dan.” I offer my hand, which he takes. “This is Tallulah Clarke, my new co-coach.”
She nods, eyes still on the field. Her whistle drops from her mouth as she yells, “Faster!”
Dan and I both jump. Dan looks at me. “She have her clearances?”
Tallulah unearths her phone and hands it to me. I swipe it open, hold it up to her face for facial recognition, then hand it to Dan so he can see the photos she showed me five minutes ago.
After I told her she’d need them to be able to help and she showed me she did, I didn’t ask why Tallulah, a solitary twenty-six-year-oldthriller writer, has her child abuse and FBI criminal record clearances. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Dan shrugs. “Good by me, then. Nice to meet you, Coach Clarke.”
“Likewise,” she says to him, eyes still on the kids.
Dan walks off, hands in his pockets, leaving us alone.
“Whydoyou have your clearances?” I ask.
“Brief stint in a Unitarian Universalist church this past year. I volunteered in the preschool and toddler rooms. I got lonely. It was something to do on Sunday mornings.”
The idea of Tallulah with a bunch of kids my niece’s and nephew’s ages, finger painting, reading books, and playing goofy games, makes something warm settle beneath my ribs.
She glances my way. “What? I don’t strike you as the church-attending type? Tighter cuts!” she calls to the kids.
They’re stunningly quick to follow her orders.
“Nah, I wasn’t thinking that.”
“What were you thinking, then?” She only hazards a half-second glance my way before her eyes are back on the team.
“I was thinking there’s a lot I don’t know about you, Lula.” I swallow, nerves getting the better of me, tightening my throat. “But I’d like to know more.”
Tallulah blows the whistle, then yells, “Two-minute water break! Then scrimmage until practice ends!” She turns back to me and smiles. “Funny. I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
—
From my spot, stretched out on the couch, I watch Tallulah walk down the hall, hair brushing her shoulders, wet from her shower. A heather-gray T-shirt dress drapes beautifully down her body, swinging at her knees. Barefoot, bright blue toenails that match her hair. No makeup on her face. She looks relaxed. Content.
At home.
That warmth is back like it was as I watched her on the field, spilling through my chest, reaching farther through my limbs, to my fingertips, my toes.
I watch her come to a stop at the edge of the kitchen and take a deep drink of water from the mason jar she has in hand. When she lowers it, she looks at me, brow furrowed. “How you doing?”
“What do you mean?”