me.”
Coach cleared his throat. “It was only her hand.”
“Okay … well, have you actually kissed her, then?” Lucy asked with laser focus.
I looked at Coach, grateful that she was posing the questions to him, and I said a dreadful little prayer that he would lie, just a bit. But, once again, his silence spoke volumes about the truth.
“Oh, God, Neil,” she said, looking at her husband. “They’ve kissed.”
“Just once,” I said. “I swear.”
“When?”
“A few days ago,” Coach said.
“Where?”
“In my office,” he replied.
Lucy stared at the ceiling, then dropped her head in her hands, her voice coming back muffled. “I can’t … I can’t handle this. I can’t …”
When she uncovered her face, she looked pleadingly at Neil and mumbled something I couldn’t make out. Something like Find out what’s going on.
Neil gave us a helpless, devastated look, then said, “So you two … you have feelings for each other?”
Silence.
“Look. I think it’s best if you tell us the truth … And then we’ll handle it from there. Just tell Lucy the truth,” Neil said.
I heard Coach inhale just as I did, but while I held my breath, he exhaled and said, “Yes. I have feelings for her.”
“As more than a friend?” Neil said, as I thought that he had never seemed quite this strong, in control. Not even through his mother-in-law’s death—and he’d been great then.
“Yes,” Coach said. “I really care about her.”
“And you, Shea?” Neil asked, turning to me.
I said yes, but my voice came out in a whisper.
“What?” Lucy said.
“Yes,” I repeated, more audibly.
Neil nodded, accepting the facts, then turned to Lucy, as if to ask her what else she wanted to know.
“When?” she fired off, her cheeks now as red as mine felt. “When did you start feeling this way?”
“Not before …” I said, my voice trailing off.
“Not before what?” Lucy said. “Not before Mom died? Good God, I should hope not. Or else … or else …”
She didn’t finish her sentence, thank goodness, but I imagined that she was thinking Or else you’re both going to Hell.
“Luce,” I said. “This is all really new.”
“Like all of a sudden?” she snapped back at me.
“Well, yes … and no … It happened gradually … The feelings … But the kiss thing … just happened. All of a sudden, yes.”
I was babbling, my insides twisting, as I waited for the inquisition to continue. But instead of another question, Lucy said, “You know what? I’m going to bed. I can’t do this. I don’t want to know. Just … do what you’re going to do … and please leave me out of it.”
She rose as Coach tried to stop her, standing and reaching for her arm. He caught it, but she shook it off and said, “I’m tired, Daddy. Good night.”
“Good night, Lucy … I’m … really sorry if this hurts you …”
“If?” she said, her eyes finally filling with tears.
“I’m sorry that it upsets you,” he said.
Lucy stared at her father, her eyes cold, remote. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t say anything else. I just hope it’s worth it to you both …”
“Lucy,” he said, his voice stronger, more urgent, with just a hint of authority. “Wait.”
She shook her head, then walked out of the room, without so much as a glance my way.
Thirty-nine
“That was brutal,” Coach said when he called me from his cell just a few minutes after we had seen ourselves out of Lucy’s house. In a mild state of shock, I gripped my steering wheel, trailing Coach in my car.
“She hates me,” I said, more to myself than to him. Without thinking, I passed the turnoff for my apartment, still following Coach in the direction of his house.
“She hates both of us,” he said, as if this were some kind of solace.
“You’re her father. She can’t hate you,” I said, realizing that that hadn’t stopped me from hating my own dad for the longest time. In some ways, it was easier to hate someone in your family, the smallest betrayals magnified. But it was also far easier to write off a friend, without a bloodline holding you together.
“She has to forgive us,” he said. “Eventually.”
I wondered what he meant by eventually—a couple of days, weeks, or years—and the thought that it could be the last, that it could be never, made me pull over to the side of the road.
Coach must have glanced in his rearview mirror, because he said, “Where’d you go?”
“I stopped for a second,” I said, my hands shaking. I watched his taillights