in the simplicity and spontaneity of an impatient moment. One, Scott was human—which was a great relief to me, because I’d started to think I was the only one with monumental flaws like bouts of verbal diarrhea, a tendency to cry at Hallmark commercials, and an occasionally runny nose. Two, anger didn’t always harm, at least not long-term. He’d lost it, he’d realized it, he’d fixed it. Period—pass the donuts. And three, I could think of no more beautiful, heart-stirring sight than my daughter wrapped in the arms of a man who loved her and whose tenderness toward her was stronger than his anger.
As opening night drew closer, the days grew longer. I woke up with a to-do list screaming in my brain, and I went to bed dejected at how little I’d actually accomplished. And in between? In between, I tried to wrangle ten actors hyped up on adrenaline into some semblance of performance, I taught English classes that were sadly ill-prepared, I spent hours with Shayla learning the German words for shapes, colors, and animals, as her teacher had encouraged me to do, and I reveled in the luxury and mystery of being pursued.
My educated and researched view on being pursued was this: good stuff—even though my brain still told me to be careful, to expect disappointment, and to enjoy Scott while I could, because all good things invariably came to a bitter, painful end. So each moment with Scott hummed with the delicate tension of absorbing the wonderfulness and bracing for the horribleness. I found that our times together galvanized me and elevated my emotions to a level of optimism they’d seldom reached before. But I knew that the second I was alone at home again, I’d relentlessly relive the moments in my mind and sift through the happiness in search of something wrong. He hadn’t decided to dislike me yet. But a ghostly voice told me that if I gave him more time, he eventually would.
To be honest, my expectations for being pursued were slightly skewed, for which I blamed Keith Jacobs, my almost-date to my college formal. He’d made pursuit into a competition sport in which I’d said no in every way I could and he’d ignored me. I’d rather have played croquet. Keith had been the Arnold Schwarzenegger of pursuit, blending the subtlety of Conan the Barbarian with the romance of the Terminator. He’d attempted to woo me with a kind of rabid sense of purpose that had bordered on maniacal, and I’d spent my last semester of college developing running skills I neither wanted nor enjoyed.
But Scott was different—in every important way. He wasn’t out to convince me of anything. Nor was he attempting to seduce my hormones into overtaking my brain. He was simply there, coming in and out of my life during the day with casual touches and healing smiles, helping when he could, and always willing. We laughed together, we took walks together, and we even prayed together, which was teaching me more about his nature and about my own faith than any amount of conversation might have done.
On Monday nights Shayla and I headed to the gym, where I watched BFA’s male staff members trying to prove they were still fit by engaging in merciless games of geezer-ball. It had all the trappings of basketball, but apparently none of the rules. We usually played in the bleachers until an injury on the court forced me into my unofficial paramedic role. I found the geezer-ball tradition dangerous and pointless, but who was I to interfere with Scott’s need to be macho once a week?
Shayla had caught some of his excitement for the sport. He had taught her how to dribble a basketball, and she now walked around the apartment yelling “swoosh” at random moments, which, I decided, was one of the greater downsides of being pursued by a sports enthusiast. The other was that he was determined to coax me toward at least an appreciation of football, which meant spending hours on his couch with his laptop on a tray table in front of us, watching the Chicago Bears getting beaten by other teams.
It would have been excruciating except for the sitting-on-the-couch part. That much I liked. So I pretended to be horrified when the quarterback dropped the ball and used my horrification to snuggle a little closer to the man whose strength and character made me proud and who seemed adept at only this one form of multitasking. He