A Team Has No Name
After Dax left that morning, I made myself some coffee, sat down at my kitchen table like I was about to pay bills or do my taxes, and read through each and every one of those responses. On a legal pad, I listed the names of all the eligible bachelors and created columns for pros and cons.
When all was said and done, one man stuck out: Robert James Casey.
His pro list was long. I found him attractive. He owned his own successful business, and he was good to his mother. Having grown up together, we already knew a lot about each other and could skip over the whole “getting to know you” phase.
Cons, I wasn’t so sure about. He’d been married before, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. And, if I remembered correctly, he liked watching sports a lot, which was one of my least favorite recreational activities, but we were talking about marriage here, not fusing our bodies together. He could watch sports on his own time.
One item straddled both lists: my mom loved him.
If I ended up marrying Rob, I would never, ever, ever hear the end of it.
At lunchtime on Saturday, I headed out, as usual, to my mom’s house. Already things were not going as planned. I’d wanted to get out to Edison Park early, to get my chat with Rob over and done with before lunch, but I had several patient calls I had to take.
No problem. Mom and I would eat together, assuming I could choke anything down, and then I’d head over to Rob’s.
As I pulled into my mom’s driveway and shut off the engine, my eyes traveled to Rob’s house, right next door, a big, old, yellow-brick Chicago bungalow with a mossy green awning across the front windows. I saw no lights on in the house, but that didn’t mean anything. It was midday, and the sun was out.
I hadn’t even considered that he might not be home. Frick. I’d been going for the element of surprise. I should’ve planned this better. Damn it.
Oh well. Couldn’t dwell on that now. I grabbed the bag of sandwiches from Tony’s Deli and headed into my mom’s house.
Voices came from the back of the house. Probably my mom watching the news on TV. She kept it on all day, every day, whenever she was awake. “Mom!” I called.
“In here!” she responded.
I tossed my heavy purse on the wingback chair just inside the front room and headed back toward the kitchen. “Something smells good,” I said. “Did you ba—”
I stopped short as I realized my mother was not alone. Sitting at the island in the middle of the room was a very familiar-looking man about my age, with blond hair that had dulled slightly since our teen years, sun-tanned skin, and muscular arms peeking out from under an old Cubs T-shirt with Greg Maddux’s name and number on it. Back when we were kids, he’d always reminded me of Johnny Lawrence from The Karate Kid, in a good way. I’d always found Johnny much hotter than Daniel LaRusso.
“Hi, Rob.” My throat nearly closed up. We were supposed to meet at his house, not here. At least that was the way I had planned it in my head while also foolishly neglecting to relay that plan to anyone else.
He smiled, looking just as nervous as I felt. “Good to see you, Annie.”
“Robbie came over to help fix my sink.” My mom passed him a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies. “It started leaking yesterday.”
He raised one of the cookies, smiling. “This is my payment.”
“Thank you so much, Rob,” I said sincerely. I let that sentence do some heavy lifting—thanking him for being there for my mom when I couldn’t be and expressing my gratitude in advance for him not saying anything embarrassing in front of her while he was at it.
“Maybe you want to join us for lunch,” my mom said.
Both of our heads snapped to her. Lunch. With Rob Casey. And my mother. I’d never survive it. Not today. “I’m sure Rob has—” I started to say.
He stood and chimed in. “I do,” he said. “I’m meeting a client about a kitchen remodel.”
“Next time, then,” my mom said as Rob leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.
I knotted my fingers together as I worked up my nerve. “Hey, Rob,” I said, nodding toward the back door, “can we…?”
Avoiding my mother’s gaze, I led him out to the backyard and onto the patio, away from the windows and the prying eyes of my mother.
He grinned sheepishly. “So…” Rob folded his arms, as if looking for something to do with them.
This was my cue. “Rob,” I whispered, taking a moment to make sure my mom wasn’t hiding on the stoop or that his mom wasn’t just beyond the bushes, spying on us, “first of all, about that text: I’d just found out my best friend got engaged out of nowhere, and I was overserved at the bar—”
“So you didn’t mean it?” His face darkened.
“I…didn’t,” I said, “or, well, at least I didn’t think I did, but then I read some of the responses…”
“Mine?”
“Yeah.”
An airplane sailed over us, and my breath caught in my chest as Rob stepped closer, probably just to hear me better. His fresh, soapy scent made its way to my nostrils, and I was transported back a million years to when he took me to his prom, where we swayed to “Crash Into Me” by Dave Matthews Band in the middle of the Notre Dame High School gym floor before leaving together and making out in his car in the alley next to Brooks Park.
Now that guy, who’d been my first…not everything, but some things…was looking at me with fear and uncertainty, like he did that night so, so many years ago. I was pushing forty, but I could still so easily access those high school feelings. My brain kept them in a folder at the front of the old neural pathways filing cabinet.
“And?” he said.
“And, Rob…” I straightened my shoulders, preparing myself to give the speech I’d been practicing since I finished my pros and cons list yesterday. “I know we don’t know each other well as adults, but we do have history together. Our families have history together.” I paused, ready to drop the bombshell. Rob would either be open to it or would run away screaming. “I’m open to giving it a shot.”
“Giving what a shot?”
He was going to make me say it. “Like…” I swallowed. “Marriage.”
He shot me a crooked smile that sent me back twenty years. “Well, you are almost forty.”
“What?”
Rob chewed his lower lip. “Didn’t we once, back when we were kids, agree to marry each other if we were both single at forty?” He grinned.
I shook my head. “I don’t—”
“I was probably about ten, so you were nine,” he said. “We kissed behind the big oak tree…”
The memory came flooding back to me. We’d kissed in his backyard and vowed to be man and wife. Blood rushed to my cheeks.
“You’re coming up on your fortieth birthday, aren’t you? In August?”
“Oh my gosh, I am.” My cheeks flushed. I couldn’t believe this guy was actually on board with my ludicrous proposition. “Are we really seriously agreeing to this?”
“Honestly, yeah. I’m willing, if you are.” He smiled nervously. “Your message the other night was like a sign from the universe. I’d just come home from another really bad first date, and—ping!—there was a text from Annie Kyle. It seemed like fate.” He reached for my hand, and I let him take it. His rough, hardworking hands felt like heaters against my ice-cold ones.
“How do we do this?” I asked, grateful to actually have a partner in this—someone who hadn’t been completely scared off and horrified by my text, Dax.
“We don’t have to rush into anything today. Let’s make a plan to go out—say we’re open to getting to know each other as adults.” He chuckled. “You know, at least a little bit, before we head over to the church and talk to Fr. Paul—or get our mothers involved, for that matter.”
A large truck barreled down Touhy Avenue, just two houses down from my mom’s place, shaking the ground below my feet.
Rob’s hand caught my elbow. “What do you say?”
I gazed up at him, Rob Casey, with his soulful blue eyes and mature crinkles on his ruddy, Irish skin. He was a man who owned his own business and cared deeply for his mother—and mine, for that matter. I didn’t know him well as an adult, but I did know that he was a bit of a homebody who enjoyed watching sports and hanging out with his friends at the local pubs.
I…could actually see myself getting used to all that.
I could imagine our wedding—officiated by Fr. Paul, the priest to whom I’d made my first confession. (I had crumpled up my little brother’s prized possession—a two-dollar bill—and I’d been certain I had boarded the Hell Express for that.) I could see us at our reception afterward, Kelly, my now-matron of honor, giving a toast and explaining how Rob and I got together. “He was the boy next door,” Kelly would say, “and after Annie sent him an embarrassing text, Rob didn’t make fun of her. He told her it was okay and that he’d thought the text was fate’s way of telling him to go for it.”
That wouldn’t be so bad.
“Okay,” I said, squeezing his hand. “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s go out and see what happens.”
“Excellent.” A smile of relief spread across his face. “Why don’t you check your schedule and text me later to set up a date.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Rob, still holding my hands, pulled me closer, leaned down, and kissed me softly on the cheek. My insides fluttered, as they used to when I was a young girl who had a bit of a crush on her slightly older next-door neighbor.
“Oh my goodness!”
The spell broken, I dropped Rob’s hands and spun around. My mom stood on the top step, looking down at us from just outside her back door. Her hand had gone to her lips, and her eyes glistened with tears.
“Oh my goodness,” she said again, “I knew it! You’re in love!”