Offside (65 page)

Authors: Shay Savage

“Well, you still look like a Greek god,” Nicole told me, “while I look like a beached whale.”

“You’re beautiful,” I said as I kissed her forehead. I pulled my right leg back a bit so I could bend over and place my lips on the soccer-ball-shaped protrusion that was Nicole’s stomach. “Especially this part.”

I glanced back up to Nicole’s face.

“You sure you didn’t just swallow a ball? Looks like a size five to me.”

I swear you couldn’t even tell she was eight months pregnant from the back. She only grew in her stomach and her tits, which I fucking loved.

“Shut up!” Nicole laughed and swatted my arm. “You did this to me, and you know it!”

“How’s your back?”

“Sick of carrying your son around,” she complained. “Just remember, I carry him for the first nine months. You get the next nine.”

“Like Gardner and Kathrine are going to let either one of us hold him,” I snorted. My father and stepmom had gone totally grandbaby crazy. Kathrine never had any of her own children, and…well…Gardner didn’t know me as a baby, so it was like they were both planning on making up for it with their first grandchild. From the way they went on about it, you would think
they
were having their first child instead of us. “I think Kathrine’s planning on kidnapping him from the hospital and raising him herself. She’s got more baby shit over at their house than we do in the nursery.”

I opened the passenger door and helped Nicole in before I circled around and got in myself. I pulled out of the parking lot just as the rain started up again. At least the fields were dry long enough for the game.

“Did you see Gardner going through a catalog of swing sets? He wants to put one of those great big climbing ones in their back yard.”

“The baby won’t be able to use it for years!” I exclaimed.

“I know.”

“And their back yard is almost non-existent! One of those things would take up all of it!”

“I know,” she repeated.

“They’re crazy!”

“Yep.”

“What do you have going on tonight?” I asked.

“I’m heading out with Sophie to pick up the crib and changing table,” Nicole said. “You’re at the gallery all evening, right?”

“Yeah, Kathrine’s putting up the pieces I finished last week,” I said as I ran my hand through my hair. “I really need to get those other paintings done this week before the buyers all bail on me.”

“That only happened once,” she reminded me.

“I know, but I ended up losing about five grand on the sale.” I shook my head as I backed up and turned around. The gravel drive crunched under the van’s tires.

“You still made a decent sale.”

“Yeah, just not as much,” I said. “I don’t want to live off of the insurance money forever. I’d rather save it all for the kid’s college and what-not. I want to provide for you and the little guy myself, so you don’t have to go back to work until you’re ready.”

Frankly, we had a shitload of money; I just didn’t want to use it. It was his money—Lou Malone’s money. I really didn’t want it and gave a good portion of it away the first year we were married. I set Sophie’s son up with a college fund because the kid’s dad never did shit for him and made sure I paid Greg back for renovating the house for me.

I might have built a soccer stadium at the high school, too. It always pissed me off that we had to run around in the football stadium.

When Nicole had to have knee surgery and couldn’t play soccer any more, either, I paid for the renovations needed at the rehab center, and they hired the best PT for knee injuries on all of the West Coast.

“You do just fine,” Nicole said.

I shrugged, not really feeling it. Nicole’s making more money than I did wasn’t a problem for me; it was just that what I made was so random. One month I brought in twenty grand, then the next—nothing. I had made a bit of a name for myself as an artist, but even so, it was hard to really make a living just drawing and painting.

No wonder Gardner became a professor.

I shook my head and merged onto the highway. As much as I liked living in the hometown on the weekends, I was anxious to get back to Portland. I had four commissioned paintings to finish up and an interview with a journalism student at the university on Monday. Apparently, I was going to be featured in their newsletter next month. With any luck, it would bring me more business.

When I thought back to how I got to where I was, I always ended up feeling a little strange. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. People always asked me if I resented my accident since I still had a limp sometimes when I was tired, and I had to take stairs pretty slowly. My answer was always no because shit happens for a reason, and everything that had happened to me—my mom’s death, my dad’s abuse, the accident that damaged my body, but saved my soul—all of that brought me Nicole.

My Rumple.

I reached over and let my fingers draw little circles over her rounded belly as I drove down the highway, and she gabbed on the phone to Kathrine about crib bumpers. I smiled as I felt a little push back from my son. Just a little fist bump, I imagined, just to say “Hi,” and “I’ll be out soon.”

Sometimes, I felt like the first part of my life had been played offside—like every move I made was pointless because I could never score from where I had been. Now things were in perspective, and though it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, I knew I had the chance to make something of myself.

For
myself and for my family.

Shakespeare said: “The course of true love never did run smooth.” Somehow, despite everything we had been through and how hard we had to run, we had come out onside—maybe not unscathed, but still better for what we had endured.

Now the true goal of my life was evident. It was my game, my life, my dream.

Not my father’s—mine.