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She met John at the theater. She’d forgotten to cancel the season subscription she and Rupert used to share, had forgotten they’d subscribed at all, until a pair of tickets arrived in the post for the first show of the new year. It was a new play, one by a writer Rebecca hadn’t heard of, and her first thought was to ask Keeley to join her, a proper girls night on the town. It was a thought briefly interrupted by the image of Ted in a suit, looking dashing and delighted at the trappings of a gilded London theater, but a quick look at her calendar confirmed the show fell the night of an away game. None of them could go.
The theater had a strict no-refunds policy, and Rebecca certainly wouldn’t miss the money anyway, but still she found herself asking her driver to stop on the way back from a sponsor meeting so she could pop inside. She thought the least she could do was donate them back so someone could enjoy them while she was shivering in a stadium box somewhere in a chilly part of North England for the weekend. And it was there, in the tiny theater box office, that she nearly ran right into John.
He was buying tickets for his twin nieces for their seventeenth birthday, he said, and his excitement about the new play bubbled over in a way that Rebecca couldn’t help but find charming. It’d been so long since she’d been to a show- she realized now that towards the end Rupert must have been taking other women with her ticket- but she’d always loved it, loved the way the murmurs of a pre-curtain audience would give way to rapt quiet when the lights dimmed, loved the way artists and actors worked together to build something magic out of the blank space of an empty stage. The way you could see the same show dozens of times but each one would be unique in its own way.
And so she’d responded in a way she usually didn’t, as someone not normally much for talking to strangers when she wasn’t obligated for work-related reasons, and they’d compared notes on what they’d seen and what he’d heard about the upcoming season while they waited in line for the older woman at the window to decide precisely which seat it was she wanted.
‘Did you read the interview with McQuiston in the paper this morning, then?’ he asked, and Rebecca’s confusion must have shown on her face because he added, ‘the playwright? It’s quite incredible someone so young is getting so much fanfare for a debut.’
‘Oh, right, well,’ Rebecca fished her tickets out of her purse and held them up, ‘I actually came to see if I could donate mine back, turns out I can’t use them after all.’ She shrugged apologetically as though she was speaking to the young playwright herself.
‘Well that’s rather generous of you, but you should be sure you see it at some point.’ He looked away for a second as though checking that the woman at the window was still deep in concentrated thought on her seat choice. ‘Maybe we could see it together?’
The blunt question caught Rebecca off guard. For all that men so often implied their interest, usually in too-long looks or unnecessary touches, they rarely came right out with a request to spend time with her, especially not someone who was still, for all intents and purposes, a total stranger. He caught her eye and smiled, and though she looked for it there was nothing of the predatory smirk she was used to finding. But before she could answer the gentleman at the window was calling him up for his purchase, the older woman finally walking away looking satisfied with her seat option. Rebecca took the moment to assess the situation. He wasn’t bad looking, was actually quite handsome really, and she wasn’t sure if he’d recognized her but if he had he hadn’t brought it up, which earned him points for tact. He was dressed simply but smartly, and from what she could overhear he was entirely polite to the salesman at the counter.
His transaction went quickly, and when he turned back around she knew she only had a second to make up her mind before he decided he hadn’t really meant to ask her anyway. She pictured Keeley and Flo on either side of her, each of them egging her on in their own way, telling her that if nothing else she deserved a nice night out.
‘Maybe a drink, or dinner?’ she said, choosing to carry on as though their conversation hadn’t been interrupted. He smiled again, and she left the theater without her and Rupert’s old tickets but with a new phone number stored safely away in her contacts.
Keeley squealed for two whole minutes when she told her and, somehow, within five more minutes, had found a picture on Instagram of him with his twin nieces at the previous Christmas, ‘so at least you know he’s, like, actually a real person,’ she’d said.
Dating John was easy, mostly. He was a grownup in that he was always on time, held the door for her, helped her on with her coat, knew which sort of wine to order with what. They talked more about theater at first, and if it rather quickly became obvious they didn’t necessarily have much more in common, John didn’t let that bog things down, keeping up with a steady stream of stories that Rebecca didn’t feel obligated to participate in. Over dessert on their second date she was struck with a sudden urge to ask him what his first concert and best concert had been, and so she did it, right there in the middle of his monologue about something that had happened in his office (she’d lost the plot of it a while ago, too distracted by how disappointed she was in her chosen dessert), and he’d looked at her strangely for a second.
‘First concert must have been the symphony probably,’ he said after a moment, ‘when I was small. Best concert would be hard to say. I’m not sure I’ve thought about it.’ She put her fork aside, prepared to extoll the virtues of the Spice Girls, but he didn’t ask her the same question in return, just retreated back to the story he’d left off on, which she now understood to have involved some hilarity over a real estate deal gone poorly. She listened to the rest of it, made him laugh with an old story about the Milk sisters and a time they had come for a tour of the club and half the team had been in the showers at precisely the wrong moment.
He paid the cheque and walked her to her car, and when he kissed her for the first time she sank into the warm pleasantness of it. She did not invite him home.
But dating for the first time in over a decade also felt like re-learning a set of rules she’d never been all that familiar with in the first place in a language she only spoke at a primary school level. Rebecca needed Keeley as her tutor and translator, someone to make sure she didn’t go too far off the rails in the foreign territory she was wading into. But it was Ted who showed up in her office one afternoon when she’d been texting John (and if somewhere in the back of her mind it had occurred to her that it shouldn’t require so much mental energy and second-guessing just to talk to the person you were going out with, well, Rebecca was a first-rate talent at ignoring her own better instincts.)
Ted, for all his better qualities, wasn’t a natural at girl talk. He had a tendency to want to drag full thoughts out of her rather than the half-formed sighs and giggles she could use with Keeley, but he also caught on quickly to that fact that while she had nothing specific to complain about she also didn’t have anything in particular to highlight. She beckoned him closer on the couch to show him her phone screen and get his opinion on her exchange with John so far, and he gently took the phone from her and scrolled through silently for a moment.
‘Don’t think he got your joke there, boss,’ he said, pointing to one of her most recent messages. She leaned over his shoulder to see what he was pointing to and sighed.
‘I don’t think I explained it quite right,’ she said, wringing her hands. Ted smiled and handed the phone back to her.
‘No, nope, I think you got it, but that might have been one of those ‘you had to be there’ type things to really work,’ he said.
‘Maybe you’re right.’ She read over John’s reply again, tried to think of what to say next, her brows furrowed in concentration.
‘Hey Rebecca,’ Ted said after a moment, his hand coming back up to where hers held her phone. ‘This seems like a lot of work, this whole texting thing, and maybe there’s something to it that I’m not getting, but what are you enjoying? What is it about dating this fella that’s fun for you right now?’ He looked at her expectantly. She let her phone settle onto her lap.
‘Let’s see. I guess I like getting to go out, having someone to dress up for?’ She smiled slightly to herself. ‘And getting to go to the restaurants I always enjoyed but Rupert didn’t.’
‘Okay, there you go,’ he said, smiling again. ‘Where’s he taking you tonight, someplace special?’
‘A Lebanese place that does truly incredible things to hummus,’ she said.
‘I can’t say I’ve ever had Lebanese food, but sounds like a good time,’ he said, and Rebecca rolled her eyes fondly at him.
‘There is more to the world of food than peanut butter, Ted.’
‘I acknowledge that, and I appreciate that, but right now is there anything I can do, sitting here as Keeley’s less feminine and less capable stand-in, to help you get ready for this date of yours?’ She’d had her dress picked out since the night before, having texted Keeley eight different photos until she’d finally just Facetimed her to show off the rest. She’d Googled the parking situation at the restaurant and read over the entire menu twice so she already knew what she wanted to order.
‘I was thinking of doing my nails, but couldn’t decide on a colour,’ she said, and watched as Ted’s face broke into a grin.
‘Now that fits right in my wheelhouse, let’s see our options.’ He bounced a bit in his seat like an over exuberant little kid and Rebecca laughed as she slipped off her heels and padded barefoot over to the drawer she’d stashed the polish in. Five neat little bottles, most of them brighter than she’d usually wear, but Keeley had talked her into something a bit more dangerous. She handed them off to Ted and sat back down beside him. He picked up each one by one to assess them, spinning the bottles around as though the colour might change depending on the angle. Rebecca watched him, amused.
‘I think I like the pinkish one,’ she said, and he picked that one up.
‘Coral Kiss,’ he read off the top, ‘now that’s a name. We’ve also got Grey Opal, not bad,’ he picked out the blue one, ‘oh, but this one is Static Electricity, which sounds very superhero of you, boss, I think you’ve got to go with that one.’ He held it up to her like a prize he’d won.
‘Really? It’s just so….blue?’ He looked from her to the bottle.
‘Maybe it looks different once it’s on, you know? Only one way to find out.’ And then he was setting the other polishes aside and unscrewing the top of the little bottle of Static Electricity. She let him get as far as pulling the brush out before reaching a hand out to stop him.
‘Give me that, you’ll make a mess.’ He let her take it from him, but then he held out his hand, and for whatever reason it felt like the most natural thing in the world to take it into her own gently and brush blue polish across one of his nails, followed by all the other colours one by one. She worked in quiet concentration, as though her handiwork needed to look good and wasn’t about to get scrubbed off with the next after-training shower. Ted was oddly silent too, and when she looked up after the last nail he was looking at her, and she got the strange impression that he might have been holding his breath. She looked from his face to his hand, still settled where she’d propped it on her bare knee.
‘It’s still very blue,’ she said to break the silence.
‘Can’t go wrong, you’d rock any of these,’ he did a sort of one handed jazz-hand. ‘And if this John chap doesn’t notice, he might be colourblind.’ A whistle rang out from the training pitch behind them then causing them both to jump slightly. ‘That’s me,’ he said, standing quickly and picking up the few things he’d brought with him into her office- his phone, his backpack, a stray set of papers he’d probably originally meant to talk to her about. ‘Let me know which one you go with, yeah?’ he said when he was already halfway through the door.
‘Of course,’ she said, standing up too, and he nodded and disappeared from her office. She brought the nail polish back to her desk and lined them up, studying them again. In the end, she didn’t use any of them, feeling somehow like it would be bringing a piece of Ted along on her date, and not questioning why the thought made heat rise in her cheeks.
Later, after Roy had cracked her heart open on a freezing late-night sidewalk after their double date, after she’d ended things with John and confessed to Flo and Nora over the phone that she was relieved, in a way, to not have to spend so much time and energy devoted to playing the role of ‘Rebecca, woman dating John,’ and after Nora, with all her twelve-year-old wisdom, had responded with ‘you deserve someone who is so much fun, Aunt Rebecca. That’s what I told my friend Iris when she had a crush on boring Brian in our class,’ Rebecca found herself alone in her office with Ted again. He’d come upstairs with an easily resolved question about the schedule but then made himself at home on her couch with his laptop, socked feet up on the coffee table. It was something he’d started doing over the summer break, when the mostly empty locker room downstairs gave off what he’d deemed ‘weird vibes’ and he’d declared that he worked better with company.
Rebecca was answering emails while also watching him answer his own. She sometimes forgot he was capable of being so still. Eventually her focus drifted entirely from work, and she startled a little when he caught her staring out the window at the last of the evening’s sunset.
‘Whatcha thinking about over there, boss?’
‘When you first met Michelle, did you feel…’ she paused. ‘Was there lightning?’ She kept her eyes on the fresh darkness outside, but he turned fully to face her across the room.
‘No, totally clear skies that day. Now, there were fireworks when I told her I loved her the first time, but that was kind of cheating on my part. It was 4th of July.’ She hummed in acknowledgement, but only caught his eye when he continued with, ‘what’s brought this on?’
‘Oh, nothing really, just something Roy said to me the other day. Told me I shouldn’t settle for anything less than lightning.’ It sounded silly to her own ears when she said it out loud, but Ted just nodded as though nothing had ever made more sense.
‘He’s a smart guy, that Roy Kent.’
‘Keeley’s just crazy about him. It’s sweet to see.’
‘Hat tip to the Diamond Dogs on that one,’ he mimed doffing an imaginary hat to her, and she grinned. ‘But you want to know what I think? I think he’s right. You’re a force of nature, boss. Only fair your person make you feel like one.’ The easy casualness of the statement would have knocked Rebecca off her feet had she not already been sitting down. She blinked at him for a second. ‘They also say lightning strikes when you least expect it, right? It’s not something you can study for. There’s no right way to do this, Rebecca.’
‘That’s… well that’s just,’ she tucked a piece of loose hair back behind her ear. ‘What a thing to say Ted, thank you.’ For just a second she thought she saw something wounded flash behind his eyes she couldn’t make sense of, but then he broke their shared stillness, checking his watch and shoving his feet back into his shoes as he declared he was late to meet Beard at the pub for dinner.
‘You know you’ve got a standing invite to join us, if you’re hungry,’ he said as he tucked the last of his work things into his backpack. ‘It’s a nice night out.’
‘Oh, you go on, I’ll just finish up some of this,’ she gestured at her laptop that had long since put itself to sleep. Ted looked at her.
‘It’s late, it’ll wait. Let me at least walk you out.’ Looking at him, she couldn’t say no.
‘Alright then, let me just get my coat on.’ Before she could stop him he’d plucked it from where it hung and held it out to her, motioning that she should turn around to slide her arms in. She rolled her eyes but did so, straightening out a sleeve when she felt him run his hand ever so lightly around her neckline, lifting the ends of her hair free. He hadn’t even touched skin, but the unexpected gesture alone was enough to make her shiver slightly.
They parted ways in the car park with good nights and a promise on her part to eat something when she got home. She sat in her car for a few minutes after he’d walked away whistling to himself, feeling like her center of gravity’d been knocked just slightly off kilter.
She worked on embracing fun next. She went out to real honest to goodness bars, not just the Crown and Anchor, with Keeley and some of her model friends and danced with men who were definitely too young for her but whose eyes lit up at the sight of her and whose strong hands on her body on the dance floor made her feel powerful and feminine.
She went with Keeley to watch one of Phoebe’s football matches and fell into easy banter with a divorced dad of one of Phoebe’s teammates, a man who taught history at a secondary school and who knew nothing of the world of professional football but did know how to make her laugh in bed, even if he was still too hung up on his ex-wife to make a real go of it.
She went to yoga and spent a class spiraling into a vivid daydream about what might happen if she went home with the bendy brunette in rainbow print socks in the row ahead of hers, only to have Keeley laugh and hit her on the shoulder when she confessed to the thought of it over lunchtime salads in her office later. ‘You definitely fucking should have,’ she said through a bite of lettuce. ‘Though it would have broken my heart not to get to be the one to take your lady cherry.’ She pouted and Rebecca had scrunched up her nose and laughed and tucked the idea of pursuing women back into the deep storage place in her brain where it usually lived.
And then came the app. Keeley got a gig working to promote it and eventually cajoled Rebecca into downloading it, ‘for me, just as a favor, you don’t even have to use it but it makes my numbers look good.’ For a while it just lived on her phone, this little box there in the corner taunting her. She assured Keeley she was past the optimal age for dating apps, that she’d heard little but horror stories, and that Flo had once actually managed to match up with someone they quickly determined was her second cousin. She had no interest.
Except, that was a lie. Truthfully, she was deeply curious to see who might be out there, who the wisdoms of the algorithms might say was perfect for her. She finally poured herself a glass of wine one night, opened the app, and went about setting up her profile, trying to channel the same sort of unfiltered optimism that used to accompany getting ready to go out on Friday nights at uni, that unselfconscious conviction that of course you’d meet the right someone if you just did your hair precisely the right way and went out often enough. Mostly that had led to Flo disappearing home with whoever she’d hit it off with while Rebecca walked back to their flat alone, reminded again that teenage boys were not easily accepting of a woman taller than they were. But this time, she thought, things could be different.
There was an opportunity to list her height right in her profile for one, so she never even need deal with the men who couldn’t handle it. She had all sorts of flattering photos to choose from with Keeley in her life playing regular photographer, documenting everything they did. She filled in the whole thing, then, with a sudden jolt of deep embarrassment, she stuffed her phone under her pillow, as though that would stop anyone from seeing that she’d been vulnerable enough to put herself out there into the world.
She didn’t look at the app again for two days. On the third day, under Keeley’s excited supervision, she opened it again and cautiously scrolled through her options. When Dani’s face popped up she’d shrieked and Keeley’d cackled before quickly showing her how to update the age range on her match pool. She could feel Keeley watching her closely as she scrolled for a few minutes without selecting anyone.
‘Come on then, there has to be someone in there that’s fit,’ she leaned across Rebecca’s lap and snatched her phone away. She quickly dispatched a few lesser contenders, then held her arms up in triumph. ‘This guy, he looks good, yeah?’ She said, selecting him before Rebecca could even get a good look at his face. ‘And this one, he’s got a dog in his photo, you like dogs don’t you?’ She selected him too before Rebecca could say that she indeed liked dogs but wasn’t sure she was willing to base her choice of a date on the mere presence of one. She made a half-hearted attempt to get her phone back but Keeley just ducked away and Rebecca laughed, leaned her head back against the edge of the couch and stared at the ceiling while Keeley did her thing. She supposed there were worse things in life than having a dear friend screen dates for you.
‘You done then?’ she said, eyebrow raised, when Keeley finally turned back.
‘Lots of potential in there, I think. Now we just have to wait for them to match you back.’
‘You say as though that’s a given.’ Keeley’s eyes went wide and she waved her hands at Rebecca.
‘It’s you, Rebecca, they’d be mad not to match you back.’ Rebecca should have been used to Keeley’s compliments, but she still found they made her blush every now and again. She patted her friend on the knee and stood up.
‘Right, well, I’ve got actual work to do, so we’ll have to revisit whatever this is,’ she pointed at her phone, ‘later.’ Keeley made her pinky-swear that they actually would, then swept out of her office in a flurry of ponytail curls and faux-fur.
‘The men from the thing,’ as Rebecca took to calling them, were not actually all bad in the end. As Keeley had predicted, most of them did select her back, and Rebecca was a little thrown off by how much it thrilled her to see that she had options, that she could select from abundance as though she were a kid in a sweets shop. She messaged with a few and made plans to meet with one particular stand-out for a drink. He was tall, with gunmetal grey hair and an easy smile, and he worked somewhere in the intricate government bureaucracy that kept the beating heart of London going. She mentioned her plans to Ted over biscuits with the boss that morning, and he fidgeted in his chair a bit while she went on about Matthew, his name was, and how good it would be to meet him in person after talking nonstop over the app for days.
‘He sounds great,’ Ted said. ‘Just be careful, stranger danger and the internet and all that.’ He said it in his usual light manner, but she could tell by the look in his eyes that he was perfectly serious.
‘I’m sure I’ll be quite alright, we’re just going to a pub,’ she said.
‘All the same, text Keeley or something when you get home, alright?’ he said, preparing to head down to start training for the day.
‘I will Ted, thank you,’ she said, and it came out sounding like thank you for being you.
‘Alright,’ he tapped the top of the door frame on his way out, tossing ‘have fun, boss’ over his shoulder as he went.
She liked Matthew. He was easy to talk to, and they had fun over a few pints at the pub, Rebecca letting herself enjoy the teenage-flirtation of it all as they took turns accidentally on purpose brushing their feet together under the table or shifting in their seats until thighs or hips or shoulders were pressed close as they talked. By the end of the night she was fluttering just on the sober side of drunk when he offered to walk her home. She took his hand as they walked, and he grinned at her, squeezed his fingers against hers. The night was cold and clear, but Rebecca felt like anyone who looked at her would be able to see that she was glowing, a cozy warmth pooled behind her ribs. Matthew asked her questions about the rest of her weekend plans - a phone date with Flo, a novel she’d been meaning to finish - and when they reached her door and she tugged him by the hand onto the stoop with a ‘this is me, then’ he slid his free arm around her waist and kissed her. They were both tipsy and it showed in the imprecise sloppiness of the kiss, but it was wanted and good and Rebecca waited for the butterflies in her stomach to morph into lightning shock awe. It was quickly apparent it wasn’t going to happen. She broke the kiss to breath and rested her forehead briefly on his shoulder. Buying time before having to decide if she wanted to take things further or not.
To his credit, he sensed enough of her hesitation that he stepped back, putting some space between them, and when she finally looked him in the eye he smiled. They parted with another brief kiss and a plan to get together again they both knew they wouldn’t keep.
In her kitchen, she kicked off her shoes and filled up a glass of water and drank the whole thing. She brought a second full glass into the living room and set it down before sprawling across the couch. The soft glow of her phone screen made her eyes hurt a bit when she picked it up - she knew she was in for a less than fun hangover in the morning- but she tolerated it long enough to type out a quick message.
Made it home safe and sound. No axe murderers in sight. She’d barely had time to set it down again before the response came through.
Glad to hear it, boss lady
Keeley just laughed when Rebecca told her the story.
‘I’m not sure it’s fair to judge off of just one drunk kiss,’ she said.
‘You knew, with Roy, didn’t you?’ Keeley’s eyes grew more serious as she nodded.
‘Yeah, I guess I did.’ Rebecca held her hands out as if it say well, there you have it then.
It became a thing. Rebecca started to feel like a character in a bad film, going out on one-off dates with men who seemed lovely on paper but did nothing for her once the reality of them was in front of her. At times she could have strangled Roy for getting the idea stuck in her head, the fact that all of these men were fine but little more, and really why did she have a right to expect more than that anyway, couldn’t she be very happy with fine? She’d hand her phone off to Keeley to choose more matches, sometimes stayed up too late scrolling through herself trying to read between the lines and find the one person who could make her really feel alive.
And after each of these dates she’d text Ted. Sometimes she was too drunk or too tired or too sad to form full sentences and the message would just be some combination of emojis she hoped conveyed the situation, like a house and the little face with the sleepy zzzs. But he always responded right away, like maybe he’d been waiting up for her. He calibrated his responses to whatever she wrote, replying emoji to emoji when that’s what the night called for, but the evenings when she was still wired and awake they’d taken to talking. He’d tell her what movie he was watching on TV and she’d flip through to the same channel so they could send each other notes, and he made her laugh with the obscure film facts he always seemed to know. Or she’d ask him how Henry was doing and he’d tell her about whatever they’d talked about that day or what Henry had asked to see on his next visit. (He didn’t know it, but she had a saved file on her computer full of ‘fun things to do in London with kids’ that she’d been quietly adding to whenever she saw something featured in a news story or Instagram post.) Those nights she’d text him all through her last cup of tea, through brushing her teeth, until she was falling into bed and had to end it with something like, Headed to bed, Ted (yes, I know, it rhymes). See you in the morning.
To which he inevitably replied, Sweet dreams, darlin’
Her dreams those nights filled with storms and baked goods and men who smelled like sugar and grass and sunshine.
The strange thing though was that she stopped actually seeing as much of Ted around the club. He frequently popped in with biscuits only to rush off to something important downstairs, or sent Nate or Higgins to deliver them to her (on one memorable occasion it was Phoebe, who’d eaten half of them before she’d made it upstairs.) He didn’t come up to her couch to work through the evenings anymore, and when she went in search of him the times she worked late the lights in the manager’s office were already out for the night. She chalked it up to stress as the team barreled through the second half of the season, having finally escaped from their all-draws nightmare and actually started putting some wins on the board.
She was in the middle of deciding on whether to select a rather striking blonde who was maybe a little bit too sarcastic in his profile for her liking when she looked up at the sound of Ted’s distinctive double knock on her door.
‘Aw, now I know that look, you were hoping I was Keeley again,’ he said, coming into the room.
‘No, of course not, it’s good to see you,’ she said, surprising herself a bit with how much she actually meant it. ‘I was just thinking of asking Keeley’s opinion on something, that’s all.’
‘Not nail colours again, is it? ‘Cause I have to say that stuff was a lot harder to get off than I thought it was going to be.’ He sat down next to her on the couch, but right on the edge like he was ready to make a quick exit if he needed to.
‘No,’ she turned her phone to him, ‘just whether or not she thinks this guy would be a good match.’ He looked from the phone back to her and she held it out further, indicating he should take it. He did. He studied the photo of the man on the screen.
‘He’s very blonde,’ he said finally. ‘Is that… is that a good thing, something you like?’ He looked at her like it was taking a lot of effort to keep his facial features neutral.
‘I don’t know, I suppose it could be,’ she said, pulling her feet up underneath herself where she sat so she was fully facing him. ‘Read more, what about the profile?’ Ted scrolled through for another few seconds, but then he stopped abruptly and put her phone down on the couch between them.
‘I think,’ he said quietly without quite looking at her, ‘that maybe I am too much of a man for this type of girl talk. And you know, I don’t like to say that because of toxic masculinity and all that,’ he had stood up and was halfway to the door, ‘but I think this is probably a job for the real Keeley.’ He was gone before she could process what had happened.
Biscuits with the boss were delivered by Keeley herself the next morning. Rebecca offered her one as she sat in the chair opposite her.
‘Have you noticed anything weird about Ted lately?’ Rebecca asked, causing Keeley to choke a little on her bite of biscuit.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, you’re here for one thing, and not that it’s not always lovely to see you,’ Keeley shrugged, accepting, ‘but he always used to bring the biscuits up himself.’
‘I think it’s just hard for him, what, with everything,’ she trailed off.
‘What, with the team? We’re actually winning now, I wouldn’t think that would throw him off so badly.’
‘No, I mean with you dating.’ Keeley said it matter of factly, popping the last of her biscuit into her mouth. Meanwhile Rebecca felt her face freeze with the shock of her statement. Keeley noticed and her own face stretched into one of horror, ‘Oh my god, babe I thought you knew!’
‘Knew what, exactly?’ She pushed the box of biscuits aside to rest her elbows on the table, suddenly needing something solid holding her up. In the chair, Keeley curled up like a cat. Rebecca could see the moment she decided to say whatever it was she was about it say.
’It’s just Ted’s been crushing on you for ages now. I really thought you knew.’
‘How on earth was I supposed to know? It’s not like he said anything.’
‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? It’s Ted.’ The truth of that washed over Rebecca like a wave. The two women sat there in silence for a moment, each of them absorbing the live wire jolt they’d just received.
‘How do you know, then?’ Rebecca finally asked, aware that even as she asked it she wasn’t sure which would break her heart more, to find out if it was true or untrue.
‘Roy overheard the Diamond Dogs talking one day, and he is surprisingly shit at keeping secrets. His yoga mum friends have no idea how much I know about them.’ Keeley leaned towards her then. ‘I swear I would have said something, but you seemed so set on your ‘kiss a lot of frogs’ plan. I didn’t want to mess things up for you.’ She pulled Rebecca’s hands into her own on the desk. ‘Honest, I didn’t.’
‘No, really, Keeley, it’s fine. Really,’ she repeated to herself in effort to make it sound believable even to her own ears. ‘Just a lot to think about.’ She saw a glimmer of mischief begin to form in her friend’s eyes and pulled her hands away.
‘
But, good things, maybe, right?’ Keeley smiled. ‘You know I think you’re both mad fit, I might just die of gorgeousness if you two got together.’ Rebecca still hadn’t regained feeling in all her limbs, but she bit back a laugh to sternly tell her friend to bugger off and leave her alone to think. Keeley winked at her and went. Rebecca sat at her desk for a long time after.
She went on another date. She’d already had it set up before Keeley dropped a bomb on her head over biscuits, and she’d thought this particular guy had seemed above averagely interesting in his profile. And he was. He was funny, quick to make her smile. He alluded to being maybe, somehow, distantly related to the royal family, which she didn’t so much care about as find amusing. He listened to her when she spoke, played along with ‘first concert, best concert.’ Even sang the first few bars of a Spice Girls song when she named them. And he worked in medical research trying to cure pediatric cancer. He was maybe the best of the dates that she’d been on.
But the whole time they were out she kept thinking about how nice it would be if it was Ted in his place. If it was Ted making her laugh, and sharing stories about a job that wasn’t quite curing cancer but did generate life and hope in other ways. Ted’s arm fit snugly around her waist while they stood at the bar for their tabs. Her date offered to walk her home, and she let him down gently with a kiss on the cheek and a confession that she just didn’t think she was cut out for dating right now.
Didn’t quite make it home tonight. She hit send on the message before she could chicken out, and pulled her coat tighter around herself where she stood balancing on her heels on cobblestones. As always, his reply came nearly instantly only this time he called her.
‘Where are you, everything okay?’ At the sound of his voice her adrenaline boiled over into giggles. ‘Rebecca?’
‘Ted, I’m fine.’ She could hear him moving around in the background. ‘I just need you to let me in.’
‘What do you mean where are -‘ His question cut off when he opened the door, phone still to his ear, to find her standing on the other side. She wanted to laugh again at the sight of him, not to mock his obvious concern but just out of the sheer relief she felt at seeing him. It wasn’t too late, but late enough that Ted’s street was mostly quiet save for a few drunk pub patrons down a ways and a late-closing store keeper pulling down his grate. The two of them just stared at each other for a while.
‘You look a bit like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Rebecca finally said, smiling at him. Ted ran a hand through his hair and she noticed for the first time that he seemed to have thrown on his coat over his pajamas.
‘I’m not sure I haven’t.’
‘Can I come in?’ He stepped aside so he could follow her up the stairs. She hadn’t been to his flat since the day she signed the lease and was happy to see as they stepped inside that he had made it his own. There were pictures from Henry hung on the walls and a stack of paperbacks on the side table. Ted had taken his coat and shoes off again, his pajamas underneath just a plain tshirt and drawstring pants that looked a size too big.
‘Do you, uh, do you want some tea?’ he asked, carefully, as she studied him, like her presence in the room was something fragile he could shatter with a sudden movement.
‘Alright,’ she said. She draped her own coat over the back of a chair while he moved into the kitchen and filled the kettle. She took off her shoes then too, and followed him. She watched him move around his kitchen, fetching tea and mugs. His broad shoulders, his bare feet, the way his nighttime self seemed much more just ‘Ted’ than ‘Coach Lasso.’ He paused with his back to her, waiting for the kettle to boil, and suddenly she couldn’t take it anymore. She crossed the kitchen and put a hand on his forearm, willing him to look at her. He did, the look in his eyes unlike any she’d seen from him before.
‘Sorry, can I just… try something? Please?’
‘Rebecca,’ he said, and it came out as a growl but he also nodded, ever so slightly, and that’s the answer she chose to take when she slid her other hand over his cheek and jaw to hold him still and kissed him. For a moment, there was perfect quiet. Then he caught up to her, his own arms going around her back and her hips as he pulled her closer and leaned into her kiss. Then all she could hear was the rush of her own pulse in her ears, the crackle of embers in her veins, the distinct cleaving of her heart as some piece of it severed itself and was swept away to his keeping. To her mind it could have been hours they stood there wrapped up in each other, but it must have only been minutes because the whistle of the kettle sounded and brought them back to their surroundings. They were both out of breath, and he kissed her nose before turning to finish making the tea. This dear man, she thought, and stopped him with a hand on his hip.
‘I don’t actually need the tea, Ted,’ she said, and he dropped the spoon he’d been holding.
‘Oh, thank god,’ was all he got out before pulling her back into a kiss. They made out against the counter a while longer until her hands started getting antsy at the hem of his shirt, anxious to be rid of it, then they stumbled their way through to his bedroom. Once there the presence of an actual bed in front of them seemed to sober them both up a bit. Their kisses turned a little more tender, a little less urgent. When she finally succeeded in getting him to lift his arms enough to pull his shirt off, he tossed it to the ground but then stopped her before she could get her mouth on his again.
‘I think I just need to know,’ he trailed off and ran a hand down her arm and tangled his fingers with hers. Then he looked her in the eye. ‘I’m just as much of a feminist as anyone, and you can date whoever you want, but there’s a part of me that needs to know that I wasn’t just your last choice here.’ Rebecca felt tears well in her eyes, and when he saw them too he let go of her hand to cup her face and wipe them away with his thumbs.
‘As it turns out, you, sir, were actually the only possible choice.’ She turned her head and kissed his wrist as punctuation. His smile then could have lit up a room, and she was powerless but to kiss him again, to let him unzip her out of her dress and laugh with fizzy joy at the overwhelmed expressions each new bit of her bare skin inspired. She hadn’t let herself think overly much about what Ted Lasso might be like in bed, but the reality of it was that she suddenly found herself the recipient of his boundless enthusiasm. So even though she’d laughed when he sheepishly mumbled into her stomach at one point that he was woefully out of practice putting his mouth on anyone he hadn’t been married to, or that she giggled at the feel of his mustache against her breasts, his ability to read people meant that half the time he knew what was working for her before she even did, and the other half he was willing to learn. He loved her with his whole body, no holds barred, and the strength of her response to that left her feeling joyfully boneless and sated in the aftermath, curled against his chest as their sweat dried cool on their skin.
‘I don’t think I’m ever moving again,’ she said, stretching one long leg alongside his. He chuckled, and she felt it under her ear.
‘You’ll hear no complaints from me.’ He was drawing aimless lines against her back with one finger, a motion that both tickled and soothed simulatenously. They traded lazy touches back and forth for a while until eventually he tilted her chin up to kiss her, said ‘you should get some sleep,’ and pulled up the blanket to cover them, keeping her tucked against his side.
She must have dozed off then because what woke her later, sometime in the middle of the night, was lashes of rain against the windows. Ted was snoring softly, and what a thought, that she now knew Ted Lasso snored. She kissed his chest, then his neck, felt the moment he woke up. He let her suck what she was sure would be a bruise into the spot above his collar bone before pulling her up to kiss her. With the rain at the windows, surrounded as she was by him, Rebecca could almost pretend they were at sea, just the two of them alone beneath the stars.
‘I don’t want to start something I can’t finish,’ he whispered against her, and before she could protest that really she hadn’t meant to start anything, just needed to be close to him, he was sliding one warm hand between her thighs. He kissed her, her mouth capturing the low groan he gave when he found her slick with wanting him. Then he deftly took her apart with his fingers, teasing her until she nearly begged him to let her fall. She kissed him again as she came back into her skin, her nerve endings all hot and sharp like fresh cut glass. He pulled away after a second. ‘Hey, do you hear that?’ She tried to listen, heard only the steady thrum of the rain and her own heartbeat. ‘Thought I heard thunder,’ he said, and she beamed at him.