Chapter One
Aspen
London, Maine
Handling balls isn’t for everyone.
But here I am, playing with the decades-old football that the Golden Fleece keeps around for whenever a Levi enters the pub.
Growing up, I always pretended the honor was bestowed upon us because someone in my family did the world a good deed. You know, something inspiring, like curing a rare disease or establishing a school for god-knows-what or proving, once and for all, that aliens exist and Earth isn’t the sole survivable planet. I don’t know, something monumental, something that carries weight and importance—something more than the truth.
And the truth is, us Levis are notoriously notable for only one thing: football.
The town of London loves us for it. Loves me for it, even though I have two strikes against me. My lack of penis being the first, and my status as a “traitor” trailing behind in a close second place. The minute I eloped with Rick, the general manager for the Pittsburgh Steelers, heads started to roll. My mother’s included.
No New Englander betrays the beloved Patriots like I did and lives to tell the tale.
Luckily for me, Londoners are the sort to forgive, if not forget, a fact I’ve never been more grateful for than when Shawn, the pub’s long-time bartender, flips over a fresh pint glass, fills it to the brim with Guinness, and plunks it down in front of me with a we-knew-you’d-come-crawling-back-at-some-point gleam in his dark eyes.
Out loud, though?
No questions asked.
No snide remarks about how my ring finger is surprisingly bare since we last crossed paths or that I’m already straddling the thin line between sober-and-boring and drunk-and-dancing-on-pool-tables.
It’s probably for the best that the Golden Fleece isn’t a pool table kinda place. It’s the oldest pub in town, built sometime just before the turn of the twentieth century, and the only technology in here is wired to the cash registers, the jukebox blasting Aerosmith like the 90s have risen from the dead, and a massive TV hoisted behind the bar. The bathrooms are hooked up to electricity, too, but that’s to be expected. The rest of the place is a waltz back in time, complete with tapered candles, which sit dead-center on every table, and equally fancy sconces decorating the walls.
I’ve missed the quirkiness of the place.
I sigh into my Guinness. Fifteen years is a heck of a long time to be away.
Catching my eye, Shawn drops his hands to the bar, a damp rag slung over one shoulder. “Never thought I’d see the day when Aspen Levi walked back on in here.”
Might not look like it, I want to boast, but I’m in celebration mode.
Celebrating my return to the motherland, as well as my new teaching job at London High. History isn’t my passion—not like football. Which is why I’m even more thrilled to take over as the new head coach for the Wildcats. The football field is my home away from home. Whistles blowing, refs charging up and down the turf, the sound of bulky pads colliding as players make contact, like modern-day knights hurtling toward victory.
I graze my thumb over the football’s cracked leather laces and breathe through the lingering grief. I’m here because Dad’s not. Not at the Golden Fleece, not at London High, not anywhere. He’d be disappointed to learn about the events that led to my return to London. His baby girl was strong, a badass on and off the field, intensely focused—and I’m . . . divorced, for one. An expert at putting on a brave face and a cheerful smile, for another. Unfortunately, I haven’t felt like a badass in years.
Beneath the football, my knee jiggles up and down. Dad may have passed away three years ago, but it’s Mom who wore me down eventually and convinced me to come home.
You’re not happy in Pittsburgh, she told me almost weekly.
Rick’s a good-for-nothing cheating bastard.
We need you, Aspen. I need you.
Mom hasn’t asked me for anything since I dropped out of Boston College in my senior year. Back when I was the first female kicker in all of the NCAA. Back when the NFL—for the first time in history—was considering drafting a woman to the professional level.
All my life, my parents urged me to rock the boat.
Push at sexist, big boys’ club sensibilities.
Show the world at large that just because I was born with a vagina, that didn’t mean I couldn’t make my mark on a league dominated by cocks and balls. It was nothing but an unlikely pipe dream.
Let’s put it this way: I had the world at my fingertips, and I lost it all.
No, that’s a lie—I gave it away.
And all because I met an older man with a slick smile and a magic penis. Scratch that. There’d been nothing remotely magical about Rick’s dick. Just because he was packing below the belt didn’t mean he knew how to use it, but I’d been young and inexperienced and naïve enough to fall for false promises of love and happily-ever-afters.
Stop ruminating and count your lucky stars.
Idly plucking at the laces, knowing that Shawn’s waiting for me to get my shit together and answer, I count out three doses of luck:
I’m grateful for having a job that pays me to do what I love.
I’m grateful for divorcing Rick the Prick a year ago—finally.
I’m grateful to Mom, who ditched her knitting club tonight to watch Topher so I can socialize with people over the age of thirty.
Actually, the last one came from Topher himself, my fifteen-year-old-son, who shouldered on up to me, rapped his knuckles on my forehead, and confessed, “I think you need to adult, Ma. I love you, but maybe I could—I don’t know—play video games tonight without you hovering over my shoulder?”
I think I’m failing at this adulting thing.
The locals are keeping their distance, Shawn is eyeing me like he can’t trust me worth a damn, and at this point in the night, I’ve shared more intellectual conversation with my Guinness than with anyone in possession of a heartbeat.
“Couldn’t imagine staying away forever,” I lie to Shawn, hoping he won’t hear the tipsy tremor in my voice. I balance the tattered football on my bent knee, wishing the Golden Fleece rocked more than candlelight so that I might be able to make out my dad’s signature scrawled across the textured leather. I miss you, Dad. Miss his hearty laugh and the crazy knack he had for staring at a group of players and bringing out the best in every one of them. Holding this football, the same one he caught in the end zone back in 1982, when he played for the Pats, makes me feel a little less lonely.
When Shawn’s silence stretches on uncomfortably, I paste on a happy-go-lucky grin. “Oh, c’mon. I know you secretly missed me. No point in denying it.”
Shawn’s expression radiates all kinds of in-your-dreams vibes. “The last time you stepped foot in here, I served you your first legal drink.”
Wiggling my brows to tease him, I give my pint glass a little swirl. Tap it down on the bar in an informal toast. “If I remember correctly, it wasn’t the first drink you sent my way. How old was I the first time? Eighteen? Nineteen?”
Finally, the tightness around his eyes softens. Internally I rejoice when he lets out his familiar, raspy chuckle. “You ever tell that to your mom and I’ll be dead by morning.”
“If she has it her way, you’ll be dead no matter what.”
“Nah.” He cups the back of his neck with a weathered hand, then swipes the rag from his shoulder. “What? Gossip doesn’t reach as far as Pittsburgh?” With gusto, he wipes down the already polished mahogany bar. “Your mom and I have set aside our differences. I’m nearin’ seventy, Levi. You think I care about what happened fifty years ago?”
I blink. Stare down into my dark stout and wonder if I’m already drunk enough to be hearing things that can’t possibly be true. Then I blink again for good measure because the up and down motion of my head is not doing me any favors.
At thirty-seven, you’d think I’d be a pro at managing my liquor intake, but drinking has never really been my thing.
I press a stabilizing hand to the bar and pray for soberness. “You really want me to believe that Mom forgave you for dumping her at Homecoming?” Everyone knows the story here in London. And if you don’t know the story of how Shawn Jensen declared his love for someone other than my mother at 1971’s Homecoming—that “someone” being her ex-best friend—then you’re one lucky son of a gun. I’ve heard it retold so many times I can recite the night’s itinerary down to the second. Last I heard, Mom went so far as to ban Miranda Lee from joining her popular knitting club a few years back. Some gossip reaches Pittsburgh, it seems. “She hates you, Shawn.”
The muted light emphasizes the silver strands in Shawn’s surprisingly thick head of hair as he snags a cocktail glass from where it hangs upside down from a rack. “Hate’s a strong word.”
Is it?
I have a whole list of things that I hate. Pickles. The band Journey. Drivers who don’t know how to navigate a four-way intersection. Ex-husbands named Rick.
“Has she baked you her famous casserole pie yet?” I ask, swishing the beer in my glass before taking another heavy gulp. Mom is an absolute sweetheart, but apologies aren’t really her thing. She prefers to gloss over I’m sorry with homemade casserole and a good amount of booze.
Shawn’s bushy brows knit together. “Casserole?”
“Yup.”
Hand-delivering a (store bought) casserole to my mom’s front door was the first order of business when I moved back a month ago. As expected, she’d laughed, ushered me inside, then promptly informed me that I had shit taste in men.
No surprise there.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news but . . . without the casserole”—I shrug, feeling only slightly evil about messing with Shawn—“you’re not in the clear yet.”
“What the hell do you mean, I’m not in the clear?”
“The casserole is the gateway to forgiveness.”
His thin lips flatten—all the better to play the role of grumpy old bartender—even as his dark eyes light with humor. “That might be the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.”
Before I have the chance to respond, a guy three stools down from me summons Shawn with an empty glass hoisted in the air.
I wave Shawn off with the promise to behave.
“It’s not your behavior I’m worried about,” he tells me, his tone as dry as the Sahara. “In case you haven’t noticed . . . no one’s come to welcome you back into the fold yet.”
No need to rub my lackluster reality in my face quite so bluntly.
Ugh.
Peering over my shoulder, I meet the eye of an older gentleman who used to sit front row at my high school football games. He hasn’t changed at all—aside from his shiny, bald head and the Wildcats T-shirt that’s been swapped out for a flannel button-down. “Him,” I say, just short of pointing at the man as I swing around to look at Shawn, “I remember him. What’s his name again?”
Shawn grumbles under his breath. “Elia Woods. Don’t initiate conversation.”
Don’t initiate conversation?
Sounds like a challenge if I’ve ever heard one.
I stare at Elia a little harder, keenly aware that I’m balanced precariously on the edge of my bar stool. “What? Does he have fangs now? Claws? Some sort of air-transmitted disease?”
“Heya! Shawn! I need a refill, man!”
Shawn taps me on the top of my head with his knuckles, the same way he did when I was a kid waltzing in every spring to sell him Girl Scout cookies. “Not Elia, Levi. He’s had it rough the last few years.”
That’s great. Okay, not great. But that gives us something to talk about. I have my divorce and shitty ex-husband and he has . . .
Well, time to find out.
I slip off my bar stool and land on my sneakered feet without a hitch.
Around the pub, unwanted attention swivels in my direction. Elia himself lifts his head from where he’s drawing in a notebook—on second thought, it looks more like a crossword puzzle—and stares at my face.
Oh, goody.
Eye contact.
Giddiness (and Guinness) swims in my veins. We’re off to a great start.
My hand finds the back of the chair opposite Elia’s and, below the gravelly undertones of Steven Tyler belting his heart out from the jukebox, the wooden legs screech like a banshee as I pull the chair out.
Be friendly. Smile big. Be the girl they all used to love!
Riffing off my mental pep talk, I wave at him like a lunatic even though I’ve already invaded his space. “Hey there! Elia, right? I’m not sure if you remember me. I used to play for the Wildcats years ago.”
I sit down.
Elia promptly stands up, confirmed crossword puzzle in hand, and moves two tables over.
Like I don’t even exist.
The tiny hairs on my arms stand up in a melee of dejection and embarrassment.
Tipsy me thinks it’s a great idea to try again, but just as I clamber to my feet to make my move, a deep voice calls out, “Figures you’d only come home when it was time to take your dad’s old job.”
Oh, boy. I should have known news would travel fast.
I find the source of the voice, then rack my brain for the accompanying name. Stuart. Stewart? Doesn’t matter. He was two years behind me in school and we played football together during his sophomore and my senior year. From what little I’ve seen of him on social media, he married his high school sweetheart and popped out a brood of dark-haired children.
A smile hitches to life on my face. “Stuart!” Stewart? Oh, my God, stop thinking about it. “It’s so good to see you! How’s Beth-Anne?”
His expression darkens to a veritable glower. “Dead.”
I—I . . .
There are a few snickers to my left. My heart threatens mutiny with a virtual white flag of surrender.
With empathy and humiliation warring inside me, I manage a hushed, “Stuart, I’m so, so sorry for your loss.”
More snickering.
The chair squeals again as I launch to my feet.
“Your beer is waiting,” Stuart/Stewart sneers, flicking his fingers toward the bar in a casual dismissal. “Wouldn’t want it to go flat on you.”
He doesn’t need to tell me twice.
I flee with my nonexistent tail tucked between my legs, hopping up on my recently vacated bar stool. Immediately, I snatch up my phone and shoot off a quick text to my younger sister, Willow.
Me: Beth-Anne is dead?!!
And even though she totally claimed to be too busy tonight to come out with me, Willow answers almost immediately.
Willow: Who the hell is Beth-Anne?
Me: Stuart’s wife!!! Stuart—football player, dark, curly hair, definite beer gut. He was in your grade. Remember your small penis theory?
Willow: Ohhh HIM. Yeah, I still stand by that theory. Husband #1 proved it.
Willow: Also, Beth-Anne?
Willow: Do you mean Annabeth?
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