Chapter Text
He’s fairly certain it’s an accident. A monumental slip of the tongue on her part. A piece of herself she wasn’t prepared to share, and then, to his delight, there it is, sitting in the air between them during a perfectly normal, if late, meeting in her office.
Beard and Roy are with them, and they’re talking about budgets—new and improved, now that they’re back in the premier league—and the press, and onboarding the new PR manager Rebecca finally hired, after about two months of dragging her feet and rejecting even the best applicants for seemingly innocuous things. He doesn’t blame her (Keeley is going to be near impossible to replace) but he thinks it’s good she’s finally found someone, a young woman named Stephanie who barely speaks unless spoken to but has already managed to secure Sam a partnership with an environmental non-profit and Colin a spot in an advertisement for Welsh independence.
“She wants the players to actually do something with their status,” Rebecca says with a slight smirk, but he can see the approval there, the already blossoming pride.
“Rolos ain’t gonna cut it for her, huh?” he asks, and she smiles, a bit wistful. His stomach does a small flip at the sight.
“Not this time,” she says, and spends a few minutes explaining the agenda, the plan to turn AFC Richmond into one of the more philanthropic teams—to let the players really stand for the things they believe in. Sam was the first, but shouldn’t be the last. There isn’t a flicker of anything on her face when she says his name, and Ted doesn’t know quite how to read that.
He isn’t entirely certain he knows how to read her at all anymore. The last year continues to gape between them—in meetings, in run-ins in the hallway, in the occasional after-work pint, always with someone else around, Roy and Keeley, or Beard, or a player or two. They haven’t had much time to themselves since he got back from Kansas, and he isn’t certain if it’s intentional on her part, if she just hasn’t noticed, or if she feels the space between them as acutely as he does.
He knows part of it is his fault—knows he pulled away, even when she was standing there, offering her support. But he doesn’t know how she feels about that—whether it’s weighed on her the way it’s weighed on him, nights spent sitting on the front porch of his rented house outside Kansas City, watching the sky brighten in the early morning and thinking a whole lot about a whole lot of things, all of them still so jumbled in his head.
He wants to ask—wants desperately to find a way to clear the air between them, but she acts like nothing’s wrong. She’d checked in on him periodically over the summer, but it never felt like the right moment to be honest, to finally admit to someone other than Dr. Sharon, I really don’t know.
Kansas was good for him, he knows that. Seeing Henry, always, good for his heart. He feels steadier than he had last year. Settled some things with Michelle. Continues to talk to Sharon, paying her handsomely out of his own paycheque to do video calls once every two weeks. It doesn’t feel like quite enough, but his smiles feel less like a front these days, and he’s bolstered by the team morale, their continuing closeness and support. And if there’s still a ripped up poster in his bottom desk drawer; if he still winces when he hears Nate’s name; if Rebecca appears to be the only one that’s picked up on it, he can deal with that another time.
Except that ‘another time’ seems to come up far too often, and somehow they’ve circled around to talking about West Ham (Rebecca had warned them all on summer Zooms to expect the unexpected, to be prepared for dirty and underhanded tactics, both on the pitch and in the press) but so far everything’s been quiet.
“Too quiet,” Beard says, and Rebecca shrugs, standing to cross to the bar to refill Roy’s tea. Ted watches the line of her neck, frowns at the easy way she says,
“Yes, well, the silent treatment is one of his tried and true methods. Don’t take the bait. He’ll rear his ugly head soon enough.”
Beard and Roy throw him a look, one that says, somehow, say something meaningful right now, or maybe that’s just the voice in his own head. But Rebecca turns and she looks fine—her eyes aren’t bright and she isn’t frowning, her expression fairly neutral, and he doesn’t quite know what to do in the face of her apparent apathy over going head to head with her ex-husband.
But then her eyes flicker to his, so briefly, and he thinks maybe she expected him to say something—or maybe he’s just second guessing everything—and before he can come up with anything half-comforting, Roy says,
“Fucking knob,” and accepts the tea with a grunt.
Rebecca smiles somewhat indulgently, and raises her own mug to Roy in a distant cheers. But she sobers quickly, takes a sip of her tea before admitting, “To be honest, I’m more worried about Nate than Rupert.”
She doesn’t look right at him as she says it, but he knows she can see him, feels like she’s got one eye on him, and it makes him bristle at the same time it brings him some comfort. She’s watching out for him, he knows that—knows by the voicemail that went unanswered on his phone, the way she gentles her voice but doesn’t avoid bringing up Nate in conversation.
He knows she knows. She’d stopped him on his way out the door a few days before he left for Kansas, said simply, “I know who the source was” and “I’ll keep it to myself” when he started to panic. She’d softened, couldn’t quite look him in the eye when she said, “I’m here if you need anything,” and he’d thought of all the moments over the last year she’d reached out, all the times he’d barely been able to respond, the times he’d been too ashamed to even try.
And he knows she hadn’t said a word, but secrets rarely keep themselves and by the time he got back it was AFC Richmond’s worst kept secret that Nate had ratted out their gaffer and then defected to West Ham. If there was any bad blood left over from the early days, it came back with a vengeance—
I never trusted that whiny little twat, and
Ce lèche-cul pédale à côté du vélo!, and
Fuckin’ cock, we’ll burn his fuckin’ house down!
—until Ted had called a meeting and said sharply that no one would be burning anyone’s house down, in French or otherwise (and what a Volvo had to do with anything he still isn’t certain) and while he can admit it’s nice to have the team’s unwavering support, he worries about the animosity, letting their anger fuel their practice or their games.
Roy thinks it isn’t a bad thing, and Beard seems to agree; but Ted’s never been comfortable with anger, and he thinks Rebecca, at least, feels the same, because she taps her teacup with a nail and then adds,
“He might as well be Quisling as far as Richmond is concerned. Did you all see The Sun?”
Roy nods while Ted and Beard shake their heads, and Rebecca opens her desk drawer and tosses Beard the newspaper.
Beard skims it with Ted peering over his arm. It’s predictably brutal, but Ted still winces.
“He deserves it, the little prick,” Roy mutters, and Ted sees Rebecca’s lips quirk up.
“Be that as it may, don’t get too delighted. The press have no loyalty, and Ernie Lounds, who wrote this particular masterpiece, is no friend of mine in particular.”
She hasn’t said much to him about how it feels to face Rupert this way, but then, he supposes he hasn’t asked. He knows there were a few articles printed when Rupert’s ownership was first announced, probably some over the summer, but she hadn’t said anything to him then, and still hasn’t.
Even though their first match of the season—against West Ham, of all teams—is fast approaching.
Even though she’s been coming in earlier and staying later and thinks no one has noticed.
Even though every time he brings her biscuits and sits down across from her he wants to say are you okay and it gets stuck in his mouth.
He wants to support her, wants to know how she’s doing, wants to be there for her but every day he comes in and sits and they talk about nothing for all of five minutes before she has a meeting or a phone call or something else carefully penciled in and every day he goes down to his office and tries to figure out how to beat a guy that used to be his friend.
He’s got a better handle on his anxiety now, knows what breathing exercises to do, what songs to listen to. Knows he’s got people around him who care and who want to help. But he’s struggling to get out of his own head, to get Nate’s words out, and he knows he’s failing her—by the way Beard glances at him, and he looks up to see Roy doing the same, and it’s that look again, the do something look, but he doesn’t know what to say, says the first thing that pops into his head, a rather unhelpful,
“Every Judas once loved a Jesus.”
He doesn’t know quite what he means by that. It just came to his head. Beard blinks and Rebecca arches an eyebrow and Roy says, “The fuck?”
“Jesus Christ Superstar?” Beard asks.
He’s about to answer when he catches a strange twist to Rebecca’s smile—something understanding, like she knows what he was trying to say, even if he didn’t. Like she gets the reference. He doesn’t think Rebecca knows much about musical theater, but his curiosity is peaked just enough to say,
“Book of Mormon.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Rebecca’s lips flatten.
Ted isn’t certain if Beard’s caught on, but he says conveniently, “Is that the one with the soft shoe?”
“No, that’s Miss Saigon,” Ted lies, just to see what happens. “Book of Mormon’s the one with the parables.”
“I thought Miss Saigon was the one with the pirates?”
When he glances back, Rebecca is nearly glowering, but she says nothing, and he thinks, Lion or Panda, and replies,
“Nah, that’s Guys and Dolls.” And then, just to really irritate her, he starts singing, “But in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations—”
Roy says, “What the fuck are you on about?” at the same time Rebecca breaks,
“Are you both idiots?”
She’s glowering over her teacup, and Beard looks confused and Roy a bit frightened when she snaps,
“Miss Saigon is based on Madame Butterfly; Godspell is told in parables; For He Is An Englishman is from Pinafore; and Pirates of Penzance is the one with the pirates. It’s literally in the name.” She pauses, and takes a breath. “And ‘Every Judas once loved a Jesus’ is from The Scarlet Pimpernel.”
“The scarlet what?” Roy asks, as Ted thinks, Victory, and somehow manages to keep a straight face as he asks,
“You like musicals, boss?”
Rebecca glares and Ted raises his hands in surrender, but he suddenly wants to tease her—wants, more than that, to do best musical, worst musical. Wants to pick her brain about Hadestown and ask if she’s ever seen The Lion King live and whether she actually likes Rodgers and Hammerstein or if she just pretends to for the sake of propriety. He wants to know everything she knows, not simply because he thinks they have a secret, shared interest all of a sudden, but because he thinks maybe, maybe he can use it as an excuse. A way to talk to her without having to talk to her until they’re both ready.
Until he’s ready.
But when he looks more closely, she looks abruptly uncomfortable—her shoulders have tensed and her lips are pursed and she’s staring down at her teacup with a flush on her cheeks and he doesn’t know why, but he hates it—feels something deep in his chest start to tighten whenever she gets that look on her face.
He never meant to embarrass her—it’s the last thing he ever wants to do—and it settles painfully in his gut, that they’ve drifted so far he doesn’t even know anymore what will hurt her. What she wants to hide.
So he changes the subject, back to what to do (or not do) about Nate, and he watches her shoulders slowly start to settle, even as she avoids his gaze. She avoids it, until he makes a few jokes and tells a (fairly brief, by his standards) story about waking up in the campus bookstore after a drunk night in college, and finally Rebecca smiles again.
But he realizes as he’s talking that she hasn’t shared much in a while. Nothing about her own life, her past, her interests. That his quest to get to know her that first year stuttered out, and she isn’t very good at volunteering information without a question, without some prompting. He thinks he knows why, and when he thinks about it too much his fingers start to curl into fists, but he doesn’t ask about that, either.
He finds there’s a lot he isn’t asking her about.
He looks down at his hands, flexes his fingers when they start to tingle. It’s not bad enough to cause him a panic attack, but he’s getting better at recognizing the anxiety, the feelings of failure and guilt that course through him from time to time, when he thinks of the people he’s let down. When he thinks of his father, his son. Thinks of Nate. Thinks of Beard, who’s seeing Jane again. Thinks of Rebecca, who doesn’t seem to need him at all.
And then he looks up, and realizes she’s been watching him, her expression unreadable; but it’s only a few minutes later she efficiently wraps up the meeting, makes her excuses, and says, “Ted, could you stay a moment? I wanted to get your opinion on a birthday gift for my mother.”
Beard and Roy exchange a look.
“She likes him better than she likes me,” Rebecca says, though her voice is fond and her eyes aren’t shadowed.
Beard just says “Ah,” and Roy claps him on the back on their way out the door, and he hears it click behind him before he looks back at Rebecca and leans his elbows on her desk.
“So what ideas ya got? Is it a dutch oven? ‘Cause I gotta tell ya, I don’t think that’s a woman that cooks her own meals more than once in a blue moon—”
Rebecca makes a face he doesn’t understand, then shakes her head. “My mother’s birthday is in June,” she says, waving a hand. “Just wanted to see if you were alright.”
Her gaze flickers to his hands, and he feels surprised, and embarrassed, and a strange, warm fluttering that could be heartburn, but probably isn’t.
He wants to answer her. Wants to tell her, honestly, that he hasn’t been sleeping well lately. That he keeps thinking about Nate. That every time she mentions Rupert, he has to fight the urge not to punch something inanimate.
He wants to tell her he misses her. That he’s still confused about her and Sam. That he doesn’t know why he’s confused, except that he does, and he isn’t ready to admit it yet. He wants to tell her about his dad, and his talks with Sharon, and ask her how she’s doing after her father’s death. If she misses Keeley. If she’s holding up okay with all the press and he wants to know and wants to be there for her but he doesn’t know how. Finds he can barely be there for himself some days.
He looks at her, and she’s waiting so patiently, her expression concerned, but there isn’t a trace of pity there, nothing saccharine. He wants to open his mouth and let all of it pour out.
Instead, he blinks, and what comes out instead is a nod and a, “Me? I’m dandy as a daisy” and a story about his fifth cousin’s fifth wedding and he tries not to think about the guilt that slams into his chest when she looks away. Her face freezes for a moment, just a second, where her eyes flutter shut and she swallows and that look, he knows. That’s her guard going back up, and when she looks at him again her smile is pasted on, indulgent.
He’s hurt her, and it feels like a knife in his gut.
He fumbles, tries to redirect the conversation, asks how she’s doing but isn’t surprised when she merely tosses his line back at him. And then she’s rising and collecting their mugs and moving to the bar and saying something about a meeting with Stephanie in ten minutes, which he knows is his cue. She doesn’t look at him while he stands and shoulders his backpack, just tells him she’ll let him know if Stephanie has anything important to report, that she’ll keep him posted on the players’ campaigns.
“Sounds good,” he manages, and his mouth feels heavy. “Rebecca—” he starts, and she turns, eyes wide, waiting, almost hopeful, and he thinks of all the things he wants to say and how heavy they all are. All the things he can’t quite put down. All the burdens that aren’t hers, and shouldn’t be. The silence drags a moment, but all he manages in the end is, “Have a good night.”
Her expression falters again and she smiles too broadly. “You too, Ted,” she says, and he feels like they’re miles apart.
--
They lose the match against West Ham.
It’s a home game, which he isn’t quite sure makes it better or worse, and they just… can’t get it together. Nate’s presence, in his dark suit, shouting insults at his own team, distracts the boys, he can tell; isn’t sure it isn’t on purpose, even. They keep fumbling, messing up plays they’ve been practicing for weeks, and the longer it goes on the more defeated they become.
He tries, and Beard tries, and even Roy attempts to be encouraging, but it’s raining on and off and the boys are scrambling and even his mid-game pep talk doesn’t rally them the way it has in the past. They know the stakes, know what it’s costing them to lose, but it’s like a dark cloud has settled over the stadium and they just can’t get out from under it.
And that’s to say nothing of Rupert.
Rupert, sitting in the owners box just behind Rebecca, at the perfect position to lean in and whisper in her ear. Ted tries to keep his eyes on the game, but they drift, and every time Rebecca looks smaller and smaller; looks pale, her hands tangled together in her lap, her usual enthusiasm and cheering a silent echo in his head.
She stares stonily straight ahead, occasionally turns to snap something back, but Rupert is always unfazed. He just keeps smiling, that sick smile that makes Ted’s hands clench for other reasons.
He’s glad Keeley’s with her, at least. Keeley and Higgins, sat on either side of her, but he was in the meeting when she made them swear not to cause a ruckus. Not to engage or snipe back or defend her.
“Just let him run his mouth,” she’d said, waving a hand dismissively, “It’s easier.”
Ted hadn’t quite known what to do with that. What to say that would make it better.
He thinks he’d made some stupid joke, remembers Rebecca’s lips quirking slightly, but she hadn’t been able to hide her stress or agitation in the weeks leading up to the match.
She’s been too busy, always working on something, often with her door closed. Always in meetings or on the phone and he’d tried to reinstate the old Biscuits with the Boss—to come in cheerful with a question on his tongue—but Rebecca hasn’t been engaging, and he hasn’t known how to fix it.
Hasn’t really had time to think about it at all, with gearing up for the match, their first of the season.
Hell of a way to start, he thinks.
Jamie manages one goal, and West Ham score three, and the disappointment in the stadium is palpable.
It’s not as bad as it might have been even last year—the fans support them, support him, more than they ever have. But it’s still humiliating and gut-wrenching and when he goes to shake Nate’s hand at the end, Nate slaps it away. He hears Roy growl beside him, sees Nate’s eyes flicker to him, but Ted’s “good game, Coach,” is met with aggression and sarcasm, and by the time he makes it back to the locker room for a post-game pep talk, his hands are shaking so badly he has to keep them in his pockets.
His voice comes out steady, at least, but Rebecca isn’t around and neither is Keeley and it isn’t until everyone’s dispersed to shower or change or go home that he manages to make his way up to her office.
He doesn’t know what to say.
Wants to apologize, more than anything else, but she’d stopped him on his way out the night before the match. Told him to try to forget about Rupert and Nate.
“This game isn’t more important than any other,” she’d said, her hand hovering over his arm, but she didn’t touch him. Let it fall away.
He’d told her he appreciated that; offered a smile. He’d wanted to ask what she was doing—if she wanted to grab dinner. A drink. A walk.
Anything.
But the silence stretched and he couldn’t find the words and Rebecca had just nodded and wished him goodnight and then she was gone and he hadn’t slept much, feels utterly exhausted now, climbing the stairs.
The door to Rebecca’s office is slightly ajar, warm light spilling out into the darkened hallway. When he peeks inside, he can see Rebecca, pacing; Keeley, sitting cross-legged on her sofa, her eyes soft and voice softer when she says,
“It wasn’t your fault, babe.”
Rebecca sighs and rubs a hand over her face.
She looks beyond tired.
“I shouldn’t have let him get to me,” she says. “Should have at least made an appearance—”
“Rebecca, I heard some of what he said to you. No one in their right mind, no one on this team, and least of all Ted are going to begrudge you for not jumping up and down the whole match.”
“I’m the fucking owner. I could have at least shown some support rather than burying my head in the fucking sand and—”
“Babes.” Rising, Keeley crosses the room and stops Rebecca’s motion, holding her hands between her own. “Look at me.”
Rebecca keeps staring straight ahead, eyes over the top of Keeley’s head, and he can’t see her face, can only see part of Keeley’s when she looks up, says even softer,
“Rebecca, look at me.”
There’s a long pause, and then Rebecca’s head drops, and he doesn’t know what expression she’s wearing, what’s in her eyes that makes Keeley immediately let go of her hands and wrap her arms around Rebecca’s shoulders tightly.
“Oh, babe,” she murmurs, and Ted hears Rebecca take a shuddering breath.
“I shouldn’t have let him get to me,” she repeats, more to herself, he thinks, than Keeley, and he shouldn’t be standing here, listening. He should go in, offer his own support. He should go home, shower, and fall into bed and try again tomorrow.
But he feels rooted to the spot, eyes burning, as Keeley gently pulls back and cups Rebecca’s cheek with her palm.
“You sat there like a stone-cold bitch while Rupert said some of the the worst shit I’ve heard in my life—you deserve a fucking BAFTA. And a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Rebecca huffs. “A peace prize?”
“Yeah, for not punching him in the cock.”
Rebecca lets out a startled laugh. “I don’t think that’s what those are for.”
“Well they should be,” Keeley says, and then, after a moment, “You stayed, Rebecca. You may not have been able to cheer them on or lift them up but you stayed, and no matter how strong or badass or ridiculously hot you are, that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel hurt—by the team, by Rupert, by Ted, by any of it.”
Ted’s heart slams to a halt in his chest.
He feels himself sway. Feels his hands go numb.
Hurt. By Ted.
He doesn’t know what that means, why Keeley would say that, whether it’s just the loss or something else but Rebecca nods, like she understands.
She sighs, her shoulders slumping. “I know,” she murmurs. “I just—”
Keeley hugs her again, rubbing her hand soothingly over her back. “I know.”
He can’t breathe.
He’s vaguely aware of Keeley pulling back, her reiterating Rebecca’s “hotness,” Rebecca’s slightly wet laughter, but there are little bells going off in his head and he can’t feel his hands and he staggers back down the stairs, out the door, into the misty evening.
He hurt her.
He hurt her, and he doesn’t know how he makes it home. Doesn’t remember opening his door or tossing all his things on the ground.
Doesn’t remember drinking two glasses of whisky or falling asleep on the couch until he wakes up the next morning with a headache and aching joints and notifications on his phone:
A text from Roy, telling him they’re all going out to get hammered and he should come.
One from Beard, asking if he made it home okay.
And an email from Rebecca to the whole team, a professionally worded reminder to send Stephanie their “player fun facts” by the end of the week for website updates and editing. He’s fairly certain it’s a cover—the reminder itself would be Stephanie’s job as well—and at the bottom, after her official signature, she’d added,
PS: Keep your chins up—no one likes a whinger. Onward, forward.
Proud of you lot.
There are a few “reply all”s, mostly emojis and exclamation points and one drunken voice-to-text note from O’Brien that takes him a few goes to decipher, your the bitch boss you canned call the boss a switchboard duck hang up the phone a brain.
He almost laughs, wonders if Rebecca has seen it and he wants to text her but it’s almost midnight and maybe she’s asleep. Maybe she’s out.
Maybe she doesn’t want to hear from him at all.
He isn’t quite certain what he’s done; or rather, isn’t certain that what he thinks he’s done is correct. It feels rather narcissistic, to believe that Rebecca’s hurt because he isn’t confiding in her. That her hurt is caused by a lack of him, rather than the usual, where he’s simply too much. He can’t quite wrap his head around it, and yet—
He remembers her face, the morning after the Tottenham match. He’d opened his mouth, hoped he’d have a chance to answer, explain, but she’d looked right past him. Hadn’t even acknowledged him, her expression tight whenever she had.
He thinks about how many times she’s reached out over the last few months—never pushing, never invasive. Just open invitations that he’s only just starting to realize he’s declined again and again and again.
When he thinks further, he realizes that they haven’t spent much time together outside the office, either. The only time he can think of in the last several months was lunch with her mother, and she’d practically had to drag him.
She hasn’t extended an invitation since.
And neither has he—too caught up, too morose, too afraid of inflicting his bad moods and anxieties and grief on anyone else, especially her. And then there was Kansas and then the stress of gearing up for West Ham and now…
He stares at his text thread with Rebecca, the little blinking cursor taunting him to say something.
Anything.
He stares at it until his eyes burn and he falls into a fitful sleep.
--
Amidst the West Ham loss, the press fallout and rallying the team; Rupert’s sneers and Nate’s steadily increasing displays of egomania, he forgets all about Rebecca’s musicals slip-up until a session with Sharon two weeks after the match.
He’d asked if they could continue to video call, which worked just fine for her—it’s less pressure, somehow, seeing her over a screen, being able to look away, to talk to his own face or just clear the whole screen and stare at Arthur Bryant’s in his background.
He’s grateful Sharon had heard about the match, and he really hadn’t had to explain to her just how much it’s knocked all of them off kilter.
But when she asks how he’s doing, what’s on his mind, and he takes a deep breath (he’d told himself he was going to talk about this. He needs to, it’s time, and Sharon is the safest person, regardless—mostly for legal reasons, but still) and finally says out loud,
“I keep thinkin’ about Rebecca.”
Sharon blinks, the only sign of her surprise, and as much as he knows he needs this, Ted wants to shove the words back into his mouth.
He hasn’t really been able to stop thinking about the chasm between them—how stilted Biscuits with the Boss feels, the little strange dance they wind up doing when they run into each other in the corridors, the lack of phone calls, the infrequent texts, Keeley’s words,
By Ted.
“What about Rebecca?” Sharon asks, and he bites his tongue for a moment.
He really, really doesn’t want to talk about this, he realizes, but he knows it’s useless to sit here for 45 minutes and gab about the weather; so he opens his mouth and says the first thing that comes to mind:
“I think I screwed up.”
He tells her a little, just enough to get a sense of things—the way the distance has grown between them. He doesn’t tell her about Sam, or her confession, doesn’t tell her about the voicemail she left him, or Liverpool.
He doesn’t tell her how much he misses her, some days so much it aches.
He doesn’t tell her about Keeley’s words, either, because he knows she’d want to talk more about the way they made him feel and why and right now, what he needs is someone to help him figure out what to do.
So he can stop feeling like this at all.
“I just wanna get back to the way things were, before—” He waves a hand at his head. “—all this.”
Sharon doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t scold him for deflecting. Instead, she says, “Sometimes going back isn’t the answer—have you thought about how you want to move forward?”
It’s existential enough that he can apply it to other situations, too, which he finds Sharon is particularly good at; but it also leaves him to do most of the work, which he also supposes is part of the point. Still, he scrubs a hand over his face and admits, with only a few minutes left in the session,
“I don’t know how. I don’t know how to—”
He stops, and Sharon waits him out, patient as always, and while he can’t quite vocalize all of it, he thinks it’s enough, when he manages,
“It don’t seem fair is all. To hand her my baggage, especially right now. She’s got enough goin’ on without havin’ to deal with—”
He cuts himself off, the words bitter in his mouth.
“With what?” Sharon prods.
Ted swallows. “Me.”
Sharon gives him a disapproving look. “I want you to think about what you just said,” she tells him, “And I want you to imagine how you’d feel if Rebecca—or anyone you’re close to—said something like that to you about themselves.”
Ted immediately opens his mouth to protest, and Sharon holds up a hand.
“Just think about it,” she says. “We can talk about it next time.” And then she’s scheduling their next appointment and wishing him a good day and signing off at exactly five o’clock and Ted sighs and leans back into his sofa, staring at the ceiling.
He knows Sharon is right. Knows if Rebecca, or Beard, or anyone ever told him they felt they were bringing too much weight to their friendship he’d tell them flat otherwise; but it feels different, feels more sinister when it’s him—feels, sometimes, like he’s tricking people, befriends them with kindness and good cheer and then turns the page and it’s all downhill, all mixed metaphors and other ways he hasn’t found yet to say too much and not enough at the same time.
Rebecca didn’t sign up for his mid-life crisis.
A voice that sounds suspiciously like Sharon says, You didn’t sign up for hers either, but he pushes it aside. Despite how hard the last year has been, he knows he’s needed this—needed the change, the team, therapy, all of it. Needed to dig out his ghosts, so to speak. Her motives may have been far from pure, but she’s ultimately helped him far more than she’s hurt him (and if, on only really quiet nights, he tongues that hurt just a bit too much, well—that’s his fault, isn’t it? For not being able to let go).
Maybe that’s his problem. Maybe he just can’t let go of anything—his dad, Michelle, all of it still lingering in his head, taking up space, making so much noise.
He doesn’t remember standing up, doesn’t remember moving, but when he looks down, he’s standing at the kitchen counter, a glass of whisky in his hand. He contemplates taking a drink—imagines the kind of night he’ll have if he does—and though he doesn’t want that, it’s tempting, anyway.
His phone buzzes from the other room, and it’s enough to get him to slide the glass away, to return, at least for the moment, empty handed.
There’s a text from Sharon, and he frowns.
Find some common ground.
And then, a moment later,
Like books or movies, NOT trauma.
And then,
Go easy on yourself.
He smiles, a huff of breath escaping, almost a laugh, and likes all the messages, sends back, Thanks, Doc and doesn’t receive a reply. He doesn’t expect one.
But it does, at the least, give him an idea.
It isn’t much, but it’s something—hope.
--
When he shows up for Biscuits on Monday morning, he takes a few seconds outside her door to hype himself up.
He takes a few deep breaths, keeps Sharon’s words in mind and pastes a smile on his face before he opens the door. Before she can say anything at all, even good morning, he blurts out,
“Thoughts on Frozen? Stage, not screen.”
Rebecca turns from where she’s been making tea and frowns. “What?”
He closes the door behind him and makes his way to his chair, sets the biscuits on her desk. He drops his backpack to the floor and tries to ignore the way his palms feels a bit clammy.
“The musical, Frozen. I know you and Nora are connoisseurs of the film; was wonderin’ what y’all thought of the stage production.”
The frown is still on her face, but she says slowly, “I took her a few months ago,” she says, turning and handing him a cup of—coffee? It certainly doesn’t look like tea, a bit of froth on top and it smells sweet. “We found the set design and special effects to be, and I quote, ‘weak-ass bullshit.’”
Ted chuckles, still a bit distracted by his drink as Rebecca sits down with her tea.
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh, ‘cause you mentioned somethin’ about musicals a few weeks ago and I—sorry, is this coffee?”
He swears Rebecca’s cheeks pink, but she merely shrugs. “You mentioned something about coffee so long as you couldn’t taste the coffee. Is that correct?”
“100 percent,” he says, still frowning at the cup, the lack of a Starbucks logo anywhere in sight. “But how’d you swing this?”
Rebecca looks at him blandly. “I know how to make coffee, Ted.”
“I—” he starts, then looks again at the bar. There’s a small espresso machine tucked in the corner that wasn’t there on Friday, of that he’s certain. “You made this?”
Rebecca shifts, looking away, and there’s a slight bite in the words when she says, “It’s not exactly rocket science,” and he tries to rehear his own tone, realizes she mistook the surprised gratitude for judgment.
He wants to backtrack, to comfort her, but he isn’t sure what to say or how to go about it; so instead he brings the cup up to his face and sniffs.
“You sure? Smells funky.”
He winks, badly, to let her know he’s kidding, and Rebecca’s shoulders relax fractionally as she takes a sip of her tea.
“Arsenic has no smell,” she retorts, and he almost chokes on a sip, gets distracted from a reply by just how good it is. This isn’t his usual instant cup of joe in the morning, laden with sugar packets. This is clearly high end, and whatever she’s done to it—some kind of chocolate syrup, maybe? It tastes like the best hot cocoa with just a hint of coffee and he’s in love.
“Holy shit,” he says, then feels a bit embarrassed for cursing; but Rebecca’s eyes brighten, the first hint of joy in them he’s seen in weeks.
“Acceptable?”
Ted nods, finally remembers to check his mustache for foam.
“This might be the best damn cup of anything I’ve ever had.”
Rebecca leans back in her chair, tea cradled to her chest, eyeing him a bit smugly. “Two curses in one morning? I think we’ve found your weakness.”
Ted smiles, feels his cheeks warm at her expression, full of teasing, a hint of nerves, and a fondness he doesn’t entirely understand, or feel he deserves.
You’re my weakness, he thinks, unbidden, and then flushes more for the thought and has to bury his face in his drink again to get his cheeks to stop flaming.
When he glances up to see if she’s noticed, Rebecca is staring right at him. Like she’s…searching for something.
He’s saved from having to think of something to say when she sets down her tea and shrugs out of her blazer, turning slightly to hang it over the back of her chair.
“Why the sudden interest in Frozen? You’re not planning on buying tickets, are you? Because there are better shows.”
“Nah,” he says, licking a bit of foam off his upper lip, grateful for the reminder of his plan. “I know that. I’m just curious how you know that, Miss Is-Shall-We-Dance-From-Oklahoma.” Rebecca opens her mouth to protest, but Ted just tsks at her. “You rattled off those musicals faster than Katie Ledecky does the 500 freestyle, and The Riddle ain’t exactly common knowledge among us non-theater folk, so come clean: you knew Shall We Dance was from The King and I.”
Rebecca huffs. “Everyone knows that.”
“Beard didn’t. Isaac didn’t. Roy didn’t.”
“You just named three people who probably think Disney invented musical theater.”
“Okay,” he allows, “You got me there. But you’re still lyin’ to me about being a big ol’ nerd.”
“Ted,” she warns, but he ignores her, forcing his grin just a bit, almost desperately.
“First musical, best musical?”
Rebecca stiffens, glaring at him lightly, but the silence is tenser than he thought it would be. He feels his smile stick as he scrambles back over what he’s said, tries to figure out what would make her look so irritated. There’s a slight frown on her face that he doesn’t understand—he doesn’t think it’s a personal question, really, but for her it clearly is and he feels unmoored—he thinks of Sharon’s words, trying to find something to talk about that isn’t laced with trauma and doubt and negativity, and wonders if he’s inadvertently touched on something he wasn’t supposed to, or shouldn’t have. Something he might have known, if he’d been paying attention this last year.
The guilt rolls through him again, and he’s about to wave her off, to take it back, when she looks up at him from her tea and finally says,
“Nightingale, Les Mis.”
He grins, relieved, still a bit apprehensive when he asks, “Which Jean Valjean?”
“Alfie Boe,” she says, and he whistles.
“He’s got pipes.”
Rebecca nods, seems to hesitate a moment, then asks, “And you?”
“The Music Man is my favorite,” he answers immediately, covering his nerves with a slightly too breathless, “When I was 18, my girlfriend at the time, we hopped a bus from Wichita to NYC—took two days near about—caught the show on Broadway and turned around and came home. Totally worth it, even though I broke a toe.”
Rebecca opens her mouth and stares at him a moment. “How?”
So he tells her about sleeping on the floor of the bus because there were no seats left, his father’s dress shoes that were too small, the fire hydrant that he insists wasn’t there before, and the dog. He isn’t certain Rebecca’s following, but she listens and almost laughs and her shoulders have dropped further, hands cradled around her mug as she leans forward on the desk.
She looks a little… surprised, but not at all disappointed or uninterested in the conversation, and the more they talk, the easier it is. His heart rate slows, his anxiety gives way to genuine exuberance, and when Rebecca inquires about his first musical,
“The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
Rebecca startles. “How old were you?”
“Seven,” he answers with a grin. “My grandma couldn’t get Pops to go with her, so she dressed me up in my Sunday best and drove us into St Louis to see it. Mind, most of it went over my head at the time.”
“Probably for the best,” Rebecca says, “Though it’s a bit hard to miss the, um…”
“Whorehouse?” Ted asks, and she nods. “Meemaw said it was a convent where nice Christian girls go to find Jesus.” At Rebecca’s wide eyes, he shrugs. “She had a way about her.”
“Clearly,” Rebecca says, then, a bit hesitantly, “Are you close?”
“Always were,” he says, and though he still feels a pang in his chest when he remembers her funeral, remembers how hard those last few years were, he’s always loved talking about her. Loves that he has memories of her that are safe from other memories. Memories that are just his. “She’s the one who showed me how to skin a rabbit.”
Rebecca makes a startled noise that almost makes him laugh, and he can tell she’s trying very hard not to look disgusted.
“Rabbits and whores,” she says after a moment, “Sounds like you had an interesting upbringing.”
“It was a hoot,” he says, not sure himself if it’s an admission or an agreement, but he shrugs, and before she can do what she always does—derail the conversation so it’s mostly him talking about himself, he asks, “Who’d you go with? To your first musical?”
“Oh,” Rebecca says, “I went with my parents. It was a consolation present from my father, for not being around at Christmas.”
Ted feels something in his chest twinge at that—melancholy, and guilt, that he hasn’t asked about her father’s death, that he can’t quite bring himself to talk about it—and tries to keep his smile bright. “Musta been nice though, yeah? Getting to spend that time with them?”
“My father spent most of it in the lobby, I think, but I honestly didn’t notice.” She gives him a somewhat shy smile. “I was too busy wanting to be Sarah Brightman.”
Ted tries not to think about how much he loves that smile, the way her whole face relaxes, the way her eyes brighten. “Don’t we all?” he asks, and she laughs, and he doesn’t think about how much he loves that sound, either.
They talk a bit more—Rebecca asks what other shows he likes, and he gives her a list longer than his arm; he asks her what she thinks of Hamilton (she says it’s a bit overhyped, he loved every minute of it) and admits he’s always wanted to see The Lion King after Michelle accidentally booked them the wrong tickets one year, and they saw Beauty and the Beast instead.
Rebecca nods and says a similar thing happened when she wanted to see Phantom, and though she doesn’t elaborate, the entire conversation feels real—feels, for the first time in ages, like they’re actually talking to one another, even if they’re still talking around things. Feels like she’s enjoying the conversation as much as he is, feels like they’re on the same page.
He thinks he might have sat there for another hour, just talking about theater experiences and musical preferences, if there wasn’t a quiet knock on the door. Rebecca looks up, waits, but no one enters until she calls, “Come in!” and he realizes why when he sees Stephanie poke her head around the door.
“Oh, Ms. Welton,” she says. “I’m sorry, I can come back, I—”
Rebecca cuts her off with a wave of her hand, ushering her inside. “Not at all. Is it ten already?”
He glances at his watch—it’s exactly ten o’clock—and it’s the first time in months they’ve spent the entire hour just… talking.
No work, no rumors, no bad press, nothing.
Just…them.
His heart rate picks up as Rebecca flashes him an apologetic smile, as if she’s genuinely disappointed to stop talking. “Branding meeting,” she says, and then, somewhat awkwardly, “No cows harmed in the making of this one.”
He laughs, remembers his comment from so long ago, and he’s tickled that she remembered it, too. For the first time in months, he feels like maybe, just maybe, they’re going to be okay.
If the smile she gives him as he leaves the room is anything to go by, he thinks maybe she feels it, too.