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Somehow the task of teaching Ted Lasso to drive in England falls to Rebecca. Isaac says something about how players can’t teach their coaches things, it destroys the balance of nature. Coach Beard mumbles something about chess games that sounds like a lie. Higgins doesn’t even offer, just walks quickly out of her office and doesn’t look back.
So when the off-season hits, she finds herself asking Ted if he wants to learn.
“Does this mean I get to drive your car?” Ted asks with a low whistle, rapping on the bonnet in a way that Rebecca is not entirely comfortable with. She wonders if Nate will lend his car to the effort, then thinks that a wrecked car for Nathan is a lot more dire than a wrecked car for her.
“Oh, fine,” she says. “But we’re just driving around the stadium car park. And I’m getting us there.” It’s just around the corner from the players’ parking area but she doesn’t trust Ted not to turn the wrong way or forget to look in the right direction. She trusts him with so many things, but not this.
To his credit, he just holds up his hands and walks backwards around the front of the car, letting himself into the passenger’s side. He fiddles with the glove box and it falls open before she can stop him, manuals and maps spilling out. She can’t remember the last time she opened it herself. And then she sees a pair of red lacy pants, just dangling from the door, and she’s quite certain those aren’t hers.
Ted seems frozen, like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
“They belong to Rupert,” she says, because that’s the only explanation she can think of. A tryst in the back of the car, stuffing underthings in the glove box to hide it and forgetting about it is all very in keeping with the man who used to be her husband.
“I didn’t picture him to be a thong man,” Ted says, reaching for them, deciding it’s safe now perhaps because they aren’t Rebecca’s. “But no judgment. I have it on good authority from Beard that sometimes a little lace down there?” He whistles again in lieu of finishing his sentence.
“I mean that he took them off one of the, apparently, many women he shuttled around London,” she says, taking one hand off the wheel to stuff them back in the glove box, slamming the door shut. It’s harsher than she means it to be, and Ted looks wary, but she manages a tight smile, and he settles back a little in his seat, hands firmly in his lap, like he’s told himself not to fiddle with anything.
She doesn’t know how much Ted knows about Rupert, about Rupert’s women, about the millions of articles that came pouring out, affair after affair, how foolish she looked, how foolish she felt. She doesn’t care about George, hasn’t thought about him since she fired him, but his words do echo sometimes. She was the very last person to know - sometimes it feels like all of England was laughing at her and she wasn’t in on the joke.
What she does know is that Ted is on her side, if nothing else. No matter what he knows, he sees Rupert for what he is, and she is extremely grateful for that. It’s that thought that buoys her a little, widens the smile on her face as she pulls into the large car park and opens her door.
“Ready, Coach Lasso?” she asks, dropping a wink. He looks like he’s readying himself to climb over the gear shift and she holds up a hand. “You can go around the other side, Ted. It’s not a speed test.”
“Good tip, good tip, the kind of expertise I come to you for,” he says, then gets a little glint in his eye. “Coach Welton.” She feels a blush rise on her cheeks and doesn’t quite know why.
He’s not bad, but he does get frustrated. “Why don’t you do the shifting and I’ll just run the pedals,” he suggests when he starts to reach with the wrong hand again and hits the door.
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” she hedges and tries to remember what her mum told her when she was just learning to drive. “Left and loose, right and tight. Hold onto the steering wheel tightly, keep your left hand free to move.”
“Righty tighty, lefty loosey. So driving a car is like turning a screw,” he says, and he sounds thoughtful. “Never thought of it that way.” To be honest, she never thought of it that way either, can’t remember the last time she had to do anything that involved tools. She did take a hammer to Rupert’s framed jersey, fully aware he’d just re-frame it, but the action of it was thrilling.
There are a few more stops and starts as Ted fumbles his feet around the clutch pedal. “Ease off it, Ted,” she says, “Maybe it’s time for you to do some footwork drills with the boys.” It’s not unkind, and he just smiles at her, wide and guileless.
“I will if you will,” he offers and she tries to imagine herself on the pitch, kitted out in boots and shorts. It’s tempting, almost, but she shakes her head ruefully.
“It’ll take more than that to get me out there,” she says.
“Extra biscuits?” She shakes her head again. “Pints on me at the pub?” Again, no. “Dinner?” A smile, but no. “How about I take us around the parking lot -”
“Car park.”
“Car park, and if I get us all the way ‘round without stalling, then you have to come out on the field-”
“Pitch.”
“Pitch for practice-”
“Training.”
“Tomorrow?” He’s unflapped by her interjections, just looks at her with a hint of a challenge and all she can think of is the way he played darts.
“Is this some dastardly scheme you’ve plotted just to get me to participate?” she asks with a raised eyebrow and Ted holds down the brake, looks at her.
“Aw, now I’m not as sneaky as all that,” he says, but they both know there’s a definite goodhearted devious about him. “At least not to my friends,” he amends, and looks at her with a question in his eyes.
“Yes, Ted, we’re friends,” she says, and the relief is visible. It’s like a stab to her chest, the idea that Ted might doubt that they’re friends - the fact that she put that doubt there. She doesn’t know if she can ever make up for it, but she’ll go to training tomorrow in shorts and a t-shirt, because she’s absolutely sure he’ll be able to make his way around the car park with no trouble whatsoever.
“You’re on,” she says, and he presses the gas pedal with a laugh.
-
Her sports bra itches a little and it’s making her nose twitch. She uses the away changing room to don her shorts, a Richmond jersey Ted scrounged up for her (and it smells like his detergent), carefully folds up her clothes. She braces herself for whoops and hollers when she steps out into the sunlight, hand shielding her eyes, but there’s nothing to indicate today is different to any other day.
Sam and Dani are laughing at something on Zoreaux’s phone, Isaac is kicking balls at O’Brien and Rebecca feels something warm inside, familiarity and camaraderie and the fact that ten months ago, she didn’t know any of their names and not one single thing about them. Beard and Nathan and Ted are in a small clump, heads bowed, bending over something, and when she clears her throat, they spring apart like a trio of nervous gazelles.
“You came!” Ted sounds positively gleeful. “I mean this in the most respectful of ways, but you have got the legs of a greyhound. Can’t think of anyone better to own this team.”
“As always, Ted, your singular way with words is appreciated,” she says, wondering if there’s any hiding the blush on her cheeks. She’s not wearing hot pants by any means, but she still feels somewhat exposed, all her armor gone, left with just a football uniform that smells like Ted’s laundry. She doesn’t quite know why she knows that scent, chalks it up to his hugs and late night budget sessions, and the way he’s just around.
He beams at her and claps his hands, tells the team to circle up. “We’ve got a new recruit today,” he says, a hand on Rebecca’s shoulder. “All the way from the owner’s office, she’s on loan for the day. Let’s show her a rip-roaring good time, eh?” His thumb presses against her arm, a light squeeze. The team hoots and agrees and claps and she hates being the center of attention but it’s different right now.
They start off with laps around the pitch and after the second time around, she’s just grateful he’s not making them run the stairs. But Ted keeps pace with her, doesn’t seem to mind when Sam laps them. She supposes there’s a little less pressure when there aren’t games ahead of them. There’s time to be silly, to just enjoy being around each other.
She hasn’t had that in a long time.
“Nothing like a bit of cardio to really make you feel alive,” he says, only sounding the barest bit winded, and she’s envious, because for all her yoga and Pilates, a run is not quite her forte.
“Ted, I’d rather be dead than run for anything except the bus,” she manages and wonders how red her face is. “And having a car saves me from running for the bus.”
“Aw, now, running isn’t so bad. Just a little way to make your heart say hello to the rest of your body!” She wants to grit out that running cannot be made adorable, even with all his charm, but she chooses to save her breath instead.
After running, there are passing drills, and Ted pairs her up with Dani, maybe because he has the best aim of anyone on the team and won’t make her run down his balls, delivering each one neatly to her feet. She’s no stranger to the game, the rules and the culture and the mechanics of it all, but it’s a different thing to make her legs do the things that these men make look so easy.
It’s not the worst experience of her life, and she does get into a rhythm with it, after Ted yells out about being light on her feet. “Put those dancing skills to work, Welton!” he says, and she thinks Sassy must’ve told him about her ballet lessons as a child. It was a mistake to let them cross paths; two people firmly committed to her happiness at any cost.
“Ay, football is life, Ms. Welton!” Dani calls out after she makes quite a nice pass back to him, double thumbs up and the biggest smile she’s ever seen. She laughs, sees Ted watching her with a half-grin on his face, sort of sheepish and impressed and happy all rolled into one, and then he catches sight of her and looks somewhere else, finds something to fiddle with.
When practice is done, after ten minutes too many of knee lifts, Rebecca goes back to the showers, the away changing rooms so quiet after the raucous pitch and the rambunctious team, just happy to be with each other, happy to do whatever their coach asks of them. She feels sore but in a good way, like she’ll have earned her rest tonight.
The water pressure is very good, warm and steaming up around her. She loses herself in the spray, in the drops beating against her shoulders, rolling her neck. And then remembers that she didn’t pack a hair dryer, doesn’t think that’s the sort of thing laying about a men’s locker room.
She wraps one towel around her head, the other around her chest, and just as she’s tucked in the corner of the towel between her breasts, the door to the changing rooms opens.
“Rebec-” Ted starts to call out her name, because of course it’s Ted, standing there, still grimy from training, but he has a blow dryer in his hand. He freezes when he sees her, mouth open just a little, his eyes firmly planted on her face, resolutely not moving. “Dani lent me this, thought you might need it,” he says after a long moment. She feels exposed, aware that she’s in bare feet and she’s still dripping wet, and she doesn’t want to move to get the hair dryer because there’s always a chance the towel could drop.
“Could you just -” she says, gesturing at the bench in front of him.
“Oh, yep, yeah of course, yes ma’am,” he says, ducking his head, putting the blow dryer down, and practically fleeing from the room. And then moments after the door is closed, before she’s even had a chance to move, his head pops back in, “By the way, thanks for coming to training, boss. The boys liked seeing you out there. I did too, s’matter of fact.” He knocks once on the door for emphasis, and then disappears again.
She flips the lock before dropping her towel and dressing once more in her skirt suit, smoothing out any wrinkles from being squashed in a locker. She thinks about leaving behind the kit Ted found for her, but takes the practice jersey, tucks it in her purse. Only remembers it later, when her phone smells slightly of sweat.
-
Ted starts acting strangely around her, and if she’s honest with herself, she’s acting strangely right back. She can replay the way he stared at her when she was dressed in nothing but a towel, and she thinks maybe he’s doing the same. And that’s something they’ve never touched on before.
She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t had the idle thought about him late at night, in a suit at whatever event AFC Richmond is sponsoring, or that time he made the team play shirts and skins, and stripped off his sweater while running around the pitch, and she watched for too long from her office. But she also thinks about that smile of his whenever she does something that surprises him, or impresses him, something he likes. The smile that makes her belly flip just a little, because she hasn’t been especially impressive lately.
If Ted has ever thought about her in an unprofessional context, she has no idea. He’s never intimated or made an overture, not that she thinks he would. Of all the men she’s ever met, he’s one of the best, just kind and good, in a way most people aren’t. She texts Keeley about it, sends it and immediately regrets it.
What do you think about Ted? could be innocuous, but Keeley’s smart enough to know that it’s not. Maybe she can play it off as asking for Sassy’s benefit. Or because she’s been asked for a quote about him.
Why, what are U thinking about ted? comes back almost immediately, and Rebecca just wishes Keeley wasn’t off with Roy at Canvey Island right now, doing god knows what. Well, she does know what - he’s nosing around coaching jobs, though he said he’d be fucked if he had to coach for a team calling themselves the Beachboys.
Nothing is the best response she can come up with because she doesn’t have words for what she’s thinking, and mostly just wants to know how she can get things back to normal with him. The last two mornings, he’s left biscuits on her desk before she’s even come in, just a note saying “Catch you later” with a fishing pole drawn on it.
It’s a whole week of missed conversations and lack of eye contact, and even Higgins makes a comment about Ted not being in her office as much as usual, and she sees the way he watches her when he says that. “I didn’t do anything!” she says, hands up. “If he’s avoiding this office, it’s entirely down to him.”
“Yes, well, perhaps a prodding wouldn’t be entirely remiss,” he offers, and for a brief moment she misses the more cowed Higgins who wouldn’t say boo. It looks as if he’s steeling himself to be yelled at and she reminds herself that she’s trying to be better. And goes down to the dressing rooms, walks straight into Ted’s office, and waits for him there, spinning idly back and forth in the chair.
It’s fifteen minutes before he appears, just as she’s wishing she’d brought her computer with her, or thinking perhaps he didn’t come into work today, or any number of things. He stops short in the door when he sees her, though, mouth open like he’s about to make up an excuse to leave.
“Ted,” she says, a bit more sharply than she means, but it has the desired effect. His back straightens, and he comes fully in the room, shutting the door behind him. The first time they’ve been alone since he brought her Dani’s blow dryer. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Ted will never be known for his subtlety or guile, and he knows it too, immediately dropping the pretense. “I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, boss,” he says softly, walking around her in a wide arc and settling in his chair. It’s comforting to see him there, like a missing thing put back in its place.
“What would make you think I’d be uncomfortable?” she asks. “Are we not two grown adults? Have you not seen a woman in a towel before? I assume, what with being married and having a child, it wouldn’t be entirely new to you, but if I’m mistaken -”
“I haven’t seen you in a towel,” he says softly, and it’s out there. That it’s different because it’s her and it’s them, and maybe they have to admit that there’s something here. Homemade biscuits and freshly washed jerseys and a million things in between that don’t add up to a friendship that’s entirely platonic.
“It was just a towel in a locker room, Ted,” she says. “It was an accident and it was nothing, and I think we’d better both just forget it. My days are quite boring without your morning questions and accompanying monologue, and I’d like to get that back, if you don’t mind.” Ted’s eyes flash slightly, and then he grins.
“Can do, boss. Speaking of, what was your absolute favorite thing to eat as a kid? Mine was baked beans and brown bread, but the bread came in a can and I’m not actually sure if it was bread, or something else altogether that may have altered my chemical disposition.”
“Bread in a can?” she asks, stalling while she tries to remember what her mum would make her when she got teased for being the new girl over and over, before she had Flo on her side, before she learned how to build up a wall.
“Oh yeah, absolutely. Just the niftiest thing, and it would have these ridges from the inside of the can, and sometimes there were raisins in it, which, if you don’t mind me saying so, are the devil’s poops and I’ve never understood why anyone likes them.” She has to hold in a snort that threatens to explode in a wildly undignified manner.
“You may have to get used to raisins and dried fruit over here, I’m afraid,” she says, “It does pop up quite a bit in dessert recipes.” Ted just shakes his head sadly, as if England has once again disappointed him for something. “My favorite meal as a child was fish fingers and macaroni.” There’s no story to it, nothing like bread made in a can, but it’s what’s true.
Ted practically claps his hands together. “Ooh, did you get the ones that were shaped like fish too? I always loved when I got a shark, I’d make it swim across the plate and sing the Jaws theme until my mom told me not to play with my food.”
She can picture it, so easily, just leans back in her chair and lets Ted chatter on about the first time he saw Jaws in theaters, and how terrified he was of the beach and his mom had to tell him they didn’t have sharks in Kansas, but he didn’t always believe her. He makes her comfortable, he makes her feel at ease. She can listen and interject, but he can carry it. And just like that, they’ve snapped back into place.
It’s an hour later when she’s back in her office and sees a missed call from Keeley and three text messages, with successively more and more punctuation, asking if she wants to date Ted Lasso.
The honest answer is maybe, but the answer she texts back is No.
-
Ted decides he’d like to try driving around the mean streets of Richmond - his words, not hers - and so Rebecca pulls up in her car outside the pub on a quiet Sunday morning and waits for him to emerge.
She leans against the car door, enjoys the calm of the neighborhood that only comes after a hedonistic night of revelry, beer cans rattling down the road and the occasional car the only sound on the street. She can see his window is open, the breeze fluttering the curtains that she’s sure came with the flat, sees shadows moving around, stops herself from picturing what he’s doing. Then his head pops out the window and he waves down at her.
“Be right down, Coach!” he calls, and then immediately turns his face upward. “Sorry, Mrs. Shipley!” He makes a grimace at Rebecca and she huffs out a chuckle, shakes her head. Impossibly ridiculous, and yet never embarrassed. She’s never met one like him.
He’s wearing jeans and a grey t-shirt, and looks so much like any other man, and not the coach of a professional football team, that it’s almost startling. Like suddenly his coach persona is gone and he’s just Ted, and he smells like that damned detergent and his aftershave, and he’s just grinning as she hands him her keys. “Don’t crash,” she says, and walks around to the passenger side.
“You’re coming in clutch with the advice,” he says jovially, eyebrows up at the pun and she rolls her eyes but doesn’t stop her smile.
“Give me a brake,” she says, and Ted practically lights up like a Christmas tree, pointing at her, mouth open wide.
“Nice one, Coach. Didn’t know you had the gift of the pun in you. Thought maybe all y’all British folk looked down on a good wordplay.” He settles into the driver’s seat and pulls the belt across his waist, clipping it in firmly. There’s something comforting about even the way he does that, safe and secure and purposeful.
“The land of Shakespeare invented the pun,” she says. “Now let’s get a move on before you get any bees in your bonnet.” It’s her turn to raise her eyebrows, to wait for his response. She’s gratified by his slow motion turn to face her, the joy that spills out of him like an overflowing cup of orange juice.
“Okay, okay, okay. Just don’t give me the boot.” He pushes the button to start the car, the engine whirring into life. “All right, serious business now. Which way do the pedestrians come at you?”
He doesn’t crash her car, and he doesn’t run anyone over, and his hands are strong on the wheel, and she’s never thought about his forearms before, but she can see that they’re quite nice. It’s only the firm push of the brakes that stirs her from that particular reverie, a cyclist appearing from nowhere and spooking Ted.
“Wanker!” the man calls out behind him as he pedals away, but there’s no harshness in it. Ted looks pleasantly bemused, the insult now becoming a fond nickname that he won’t be able to explain to his son for several more years.
“I’d say you’re ready for the big leagues, Ted,” she says, when he pulls up in front of his building once more. “The A1,” she elaborates at his questioning glance. “We’ll save you from the North Circular just yet, though.” She doesn’t know why she keeps promising to drive with him, this was supposed to be a chore that fell to her.
And yet she finds she enjoys it, has always liked being the passenger in a car, resting her head against the seat and fiddling with the radio. She used to fall asleep any time she was in the backseat, her parents ferrying her from school to dance lessons or tutoring, friends taking her on a roadtrip along the coast. It’s soothing, being in a car, when she trusts the driver. And she trusts Ted, maybe more than anyone.
They sit in the car for a few minutes more, Rebecca testing him on the wipers and blinkers, asking him just the way she remembers her examiner asking. “When it’s safe to do so,” she says in a broad flat accent, “can you show me how you’d open and close the window?” Obligingly, her window rolls down, and she can see shops are beginning to open up, the smell of the bakery wafting down the street.
She doesn’t want to get out of the car, doesn’t want to leave the little bubble they’ve made. But she doesn’t have any excuses to stay, doesn’t want to invite herself up, doesn’t want to take up any more of his time. He might have plans for the day, for all she knows. Just then her phone buzzes, Keeley calling, and she tries to remember if they made arrangements for brunch that she’s forgotten.
Sliding her thumb across the screen she answers it with an apologetic glance to Ted, who shuts off the car, unbuckles his safety belt. “Can you hold on a moment, Keeley?” she asks, holding up a finger, “I’ve just got to finish something up.”
“What are you finishing up on a Sunday morn-” Rebecca presses the hold button before turning back to Ted. “Well,” she says with a bit of a sigh. “Let me know when you’ve arranged for your practical, and I’ll drive you to the examiners.” He could’ve passed this test a week ago, and she thinks he knows that. It’ll be smooth sailing. But his fingers twitch slightly, and it strikes her that he might be nervous all the same. “You’ve got this, Ted,” she says seriously, firmly, looking him in the eye, hand on his shoulder. “I mean it. Now get out of the car before Keeley hangs up and calls back in a snit.” Her hand lingers, falls away and she just grazes his bare arm as he opens the door and steps out into the sunlight. He waves through the window, and she flops back against her seat, and takes a waiting Keeley off hold.
“Right, that was rude,” Keeley says, “but what’re you doing?”
“Taking Ted driving,” she answers, bracing for a loud reaction but Keeley just sniffs, hums. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing, it doesn’t mean anything. Do you think I’ll get bored if I’m not in the city?” Keeley asks, changing topics with alacrity that disarms Rebecca. “Like if Roy takes a job out of London, will I just be sitting ‘round with my thumb up my arse waiting for him to get home so I can get a good shagging? Or will I have things to do?”
“You can run PR from anywhere, Keeley,” Rebecca says, gentling her voice, “and for any team. Anyone would be lucky to have you. You could still work for us, if you wanted. Train in once a week, or have Zoom meetings. Doesn’t matter where you are, really.” Keeley hums again.
“I’m glad you and Ted went driving,” she says after a bit. “I bet you’re the best driver I know, never once gotten a citation.” Keeley’s stout confidence in her is always bolstering.
“Just once, when I was young.” It comes out more wistfully than she wants, but the memory of speeding down the highway with Flo in the front seat and two beautiful men in the backseat feels like an entirely different person. She feels old, suddenly. Mature. Like the Rebecca she once was is too far away to reclaim.
“You’re not that old, Rebecca,” Keeley says in a way that isn’t as comforting as she might hope. “Still time for fun. Maybe with Ted.” Her voice is light and innocent, and Rebecca knows exactly what she’s implying, and doesn’t even really have the energy to deny it, feeling deflated a bit, like Ted took all the good energy out of the car with him.
“Maybe,” she concedes, and has to pull the phone away because that’s what makes Keeley shriek “I knew it” in her ear, and Rebecca has the feeling that she’s just walked into one of Keeley Jones’ carefully laid traps. And she didn’t even need to get Rebecca drunk this time to find out what she wanted.
-
True to her word, she drives Ted to the DVSA. They idle in the car park because he’s a little on edge, a little jumpy, and she has to hold his hand to stop the fidgeting. “It’s just driving, Ted,” she says carefully, “and you’ve done it over half your life.” He nods, but he’s still tight, and he’s not looking at her. “Did I tell you I failed my first time out?” she asks, and that’s what gets him her eyes. He shakes his head.
“Yes, I drove up on the curb trying to park, and didn’t know how to check my hydraulic brake fuel. I was just a bundle of nerves, and all my friends had gotten their licenses and I was the last one, and it felt like it mattered so much.”
“Well, when you’re sixteen, everything matters.” He looks thoughtful, drumming against the glove box. The pants he found the first time they drove aren’t there anymore, dumped in the trash outside the pitch. She thought about burning them, but it felt like more effort than the poorly hidden evidence of a liaison deserved.
“It’s seventeen over here, I’m afraid,” she says, and Ted nods seriously.
“Dancing queen,” he says, and it takes her a moment to track with his thought.
“If you pass, we’ll go out dancing,” she says, and his eyes light up. “And if you fail, we’ll go out dancing.” His smile shifts to that sheepish grin that she’s starting to think might just be for her. It makes her heart beat a little quicker. “It’s just driving, Ted. And when I failed, no one said anything, just let me pile in the backs of their cars until I took it again and passed.”
“Just driving,” he echoes. “All right, let’s get this show on the road then.” She bumps his shoulder as they walk into the testing center, settles into an uncomfortable chair and watches him head out with the examiner. She can see him standing as they test his eyesight, hands in his pockets, the examiner making notes. And then Ted says something and the examiner laughs, claps Ted on the back. Rebecca is absolutely sure that he will come back with a passing score.
Keeley texts a fingers crossed emoji and a thumbs up emoji, and then asks if Rebecca knows anything yet.
You know Ted, she types out, always subverting expectations.
Keeley sends back the eyes emoji that Rebecca absolutely hates because it’s like being called out without anyone actually saying the words.
He’ll pass and then u can bump uglies in the backseat of ur car, Keeley adds and Rebecca looks around, as if some pensioner might be looking over her shoulder at this moment. And don’t say ur too old to do that, rebecca, i know you’ve got the flexibility.
It was a mistake to bring her to that yoga class.
She sends back the facepalm emoji because there’s nothing else really to say to the intimation that she and Ted will be bumping uglies today, or any other day. Keeley reacts with a laugh, and Rebecca thinks she might not be too old for sex in the back of a car, but she might be too old to parse the text message stylings of a millennial.
She’s halfway through a book she downloaded onto her phone when Ted bursts through the doors, a triumphant look on his face. “We did it, boss!” he crows, and wraps her up in a hug. The examiner trails behind Ted, a smile on his face as well, the green paper with barely any marks on it.
There’s a moment when he pulls away, a moment where their faces are close, so close, and she thinks he’s going to kiss her, and her breath catches in her throat, but then he keeps moving, turns away from her, though his hands are still on her upper arms. “So what’s next? Sign some paperwork, get my picture taken?” When his hands drop, she feels the loss of warmth, the absence of him holding her.
It takes a few more minutes to finalize everything, and Ted is given a temporary card until the permanent one will be mailed to him. “We’re looking forward to the fall season, Coach,” the examiner says, “we know you’ll give us one hell of a season.”
“Too right, too right,” Ted says, pointing fingers at the assembled driving examination professionals. “And I’ll be putting your name on the list for tickets, so watch out for that - Saul, Cherry, John.” How he knows everyone in this building he’s never set foot in is a mystery, but that’s just who he is.
He’s practically floating when they walk back out to her parked car. He bumps her shoulder this time, beaming beneath his mustache. And kisses her when he hands back her keys, so quick she could almost think she imagined it.
“Ted?” she asks, hand going to her lips, and he looks frightened, like he’s done something he never meant to, something he didn’t plan. She pulls him back in for a kiss before he can overthink it, before he can say anything, presses her mouth to his firmly, because she wants to feel it this time, wants to replay it in her mind over and over again.
Ted clears his throat when they pull apart, a mutual realization that they’re standing on the sidewalk in front of the DVSA, and everyone on the inside can see them through the large glass windows. “Hey now,” he says, “you just promised me you’d go dancing!” Her face flushes, whether or not he meant an innuendo in his words.
“Keeley suggested we ‘bump uglies’ in the backseat,” she admits, because if she can’t say it to him, then who can she say it to. His cheeks pink up too, and it’s an endearing sight.
“Haven’t done that since I was in high school and a Varsity football jacket practically came with condoms stuffed in the pockets,” he says as they walk to her car. She feels buoyant, almost giddy, because it’s all so normal, even though he just snogged her face half-off and she knows her lipstick is smeared.
She pulls him in again before he can move to the passenger’s side, kisses him gently, softly. “Congratulations, Ted,” she says, in a voice that sounds girly and breathy to her own ears. “And forgive me, but I’m not planning on doing anything in this car that Rupert might also have done with one of his many Instagram models.” Ted’s face hardens at that, whenever he’s reminded that Rupert treated her horribly, and she feels his hand squeeze against hers, doesn’t know if it’s involuntary or not.
“That’s not to say I’m not interested in -” she flaps about a bit, trying to find the right words without embarrassing herself too much.
“Rebecca?” Ted says, interjecting, saving her, and she closes her mouth, looks at him. “Me too.”
The place they go dancing is a place Keeley recommended, says there’s good music for people their age, and Rebecca takes it as a compliment that their demographic is being taken into consideration. She can’t quite picture being pressed up against Ted with the bass thumping through her skull, sweaty twenty year-olds all around them, and an oppressive haze of marijuana and vodka.
But where they end up is nice, a little calmer, a little more room on the dancefloor, not that they need it. Ted’s mustache tickles her neck as he wraps himself around her from behind, lazily affectionate, the pint he’s already downed easing him, relaxing him. The DJ’s playing hits from the 70s and Ted’s murmuring lyrics in her ear. If anyone recognizes them, they’re letting them alone, not one person shouting “wanker,” which feels like Richmond’s blessing, if nothing else.
He disappears after Hotel California, and she wends her way back to the bar, orders two gin and tonics, casts around to see where he went, sees him talking to the DJ, sees him pointing at her, and she hastily pretends to be looking at her phone.
When ABBA comes through the speakers ten minutes later, she knows it’s Ted’s doing, “Dancing Queen” loud and bright, and he pulls her out to the dancefloor, hips swaying and hands flailing, and she can’t help but feel such an overwhelming fondness for him as he pulls her into his orbit of wild abandon. She feels silly and maybe mysterious and all those other things Ted thinks girls are. And she kisses him in the middle of the club, hands on his cheeks, holding him to her, his hands at her waist, strong and warm and tickling her just enough that it makes her breathless and hungry for more.
They stay for three more songs, ABBA’s best hits, and when “Take a Chance on Me” fades out, Rebecca doesn’t stop herself from pulling Ted from the dancefloor, from hailing a cab to take them to her flat. She kisses him in the backseat of the car, coming dangerously close to straddling him, thinks Keeley would be impressed to see her now. Thinks Keeley has probably already pictured this, more than once.
Ted asks once, just before she opens her front door, “Are you sure?” and she just nods.
“Very,” she says, and lets them inside. They fumble their way to the bedroom, blindly moving because they’re too busy kissing. Rebecca’s hip knocks into a table, making a lamp shake, and Ted hits a door knob with his back but just waves away her concern, says “keep going, keep going,” and so she does.
He undresses her with a hasty reverence, like he wants to savor it and can’t get enough all at once, his mouth going to her bared breasts, spending long enough there that she has to gently remind him there are other parts of her anatomy, that she wouldn’t mind if his shirt came off too.
His upper body is as wonderful as she remembers it from training, and she slides her nails against the sparse hair on his pectorals, circling his nipples. She looks up at him, and smiles, arches up for another kiss, sliding her tongue between his lips.
“If I’d known this was under the towel,” Ted says, whistles, his hands moving down her body, fingers firm against her hips when he finds them. “Seems like a sin to keep this all covered up all the time.” He noses against her belly button, his mustache tickling, surprising a giggle out of her that makes his sheepish grin reappear, and now she definitely knows it’s a look reserved for her alone.
“Thinking of joining a nudist colony, Ted?” she asks, rubbing his arms, marveling at what he, too, has kept under wraps all these months.
“With you? Most definitely. Think they have a naked football league?” He pauses, lost in thought, and Rebecca takes the chance to watch him, to really see him, those kind eyes bracketed with wrinkles, the dimples in his cheeks. She reaches up to touch one, her finger soft against his face, and he leans into her hand.
“Something to look into,” she says, and he turns his face to kiss her palm.
At one time in her life, she thought Rupert was the best she’d ever have. And he is good at sex, she’s mature enough to admit it. But sex with Rupert was about Rupert, and it was never very satisfying in the end.
Sex with Ted is about them and her and us and she tries to keep up, to make sure he knows that she wants him too, holding him in her hand, pumping him up until he’s ready, until she’s ready, and then their bodies come together, and she feels wholly different, like she’s experiencing it for the first time. He’s kissing her neck and she thinks she’ll have a rash there tomorrow, maybe even bruising, as he nips her tendon with his teeth.
She runs her hands through his hair and marvels at the solidity of him, how safe she feels, how taken care of. She already knows she’ll text Keeley in the morning and that text will lead to a phone call, and maybe she’ll even appear in Rebecca’s office, maybe she’ll even be waiting outside the doors, and soon the whole team will know, if they don’t already. Maybe someone took a picture of them at the club, maybe someone at the testing center called The Sun.
There’s an infinite number of ways this could go wrong, but she thinks of brown bread and fish sticks and hand holding and mustaches and the hundreds of ways it could go right.
They fall asleep tangled together, her leg over his hip, hands clasped between them, and when she wakes up in the middle of the night, like she always does, she just squeezes her fingers against his, feels his automatic squeeze back, and closes her eyes again.
When her alarm goes off, she blearily fumbles for her phone, jostles Ted in the process, and it’s new and different and strange and clumsy, but he just kisses the top of her head as she tries to turn off the annoying bells through squinted eyes. “I’ll make coffee,” he says, and she doesn’t bother asking him for tea instead.
They drink their coffee in bed, and shower separately because they both have somewhere to be, even if it’s the same place, and can’t afford distractions, not when they don’t know what the day will bring.
“Ready for work?” she asks, perhaps a shade too brightly, but she doesn’t think she can dim her light, not today.
“Why don’t you let me drive?” he asks, and she hands him the keys, with a smile on her face.