I toss my keys into the glass dish on the kitchen counter and grab a beer from the fridge. We're sharing one car for the time being, and Tami's walking two house down to get our Gracie Belle. For now, we've hired a retired neighbour to watch her during the day. So far, we've looked at three daycares, and I didn't like a single one of them. The people weren't friendly enough, not like in Texas. I just didn't trust them somehow. Not with my baby girl. I know Tami didn't like them either. I could see it in her eyes, but she wouldn't admit it outright. She doesn't want to admit there are any flaws in this city she's made us move to. Hell, when we were house shopping, she even called this townhouse "quaint" instead of small.

Tami claimed Braemore would "set us up college style." Well they did all right. I haven't lived in a place this cramped since college. It has one full bathroom and a half bathroom I'm afraid to turn around in. The realtor said it had three bedrooms, but I wouldn't call that little box Tami uses as a home office a bedroom just because it has a three-foot wide closet. My home office is in the unfinished basement, of course, because I don't have a fancy Dean of Admissions job like my wife.

At least our house here won't likely get broken into, not in the safe neighborhood, with the good schools, where we had to pay $295,000 for an almost yardless townhouse.

Do you know what we could have gotten for $295,000 in Dillon, Texas?

I do, because we looked at it, and Tami begged me to buy it for her. I agreed it was gorgeous, and I wanted to give it to her, but I didn't think we could afford it back then.

Well look at what we're giving each other now. A thirty-year-old, three-story, 2,100-square-foot home. Yeah, it's all brick, and the kitchen's been updated, and the new wood floors in the dining room are nice, and I am looking forward to eventually fooling around with Tami in that big soaking tub in the master bathroom - can't wait for her to lean back against my chest, the bubbles just barely covering her, her head titled back, that thick, beautiful hair billowing down, while I reach around and cup her breasts and - where was I?

Oh, yes, the backyard isn't even big enough to toss a football in and the stairs are so narrow I feel like they're closing in on me when I go up them. That's another thing. Stairs. We have to walk upstairs twice every single night. Once to put Gracie to bed, and once to put ourselves to bed. We've got a basement instead of an attic and the basement has nothing but a cold cement slab for a floor, and it's a bit damp down there. I think my trophies are going to rust. I'm already worried about my old Longhorns helmet sitting in some box down there. Tami said I could put it in my new office at Pemberton, but I'm not sure that would be appropriate.

Pemberton. That's where I teach and coach now. Not TMU. Not Shane State. Not even for the new and improved Panthers high school superteam. The Pioneers. Now there's a team deprived enough of resources to give even East Dillon a run for its lack of money. Not that any team gets much money around here. Football just isn't that important.

You know what they spend a surprising amount of money on in the schools in our good school district? Music programs. Go figure. They have an orchestra starting in 5th grade at the elementary school Gracie will one day attend. An orchestra! In 5th grade! But they've only got P.E. twice a week at that school, and I'm not even sure they have a football unit.

The last time I drove by the community park, no one was even tossing a football. Some boys were playing basketball, which is fine as far as it goes, but another group was playing lacrosse. That sport doesn't even make any sense. Throwing and catching balls with sticks. Who thought that nonsense up?

I will say one positive thing, though. This Pennsylvania beer is pretty damn good. Yuengling, it's called. I guess it's just as good as Shiner Bock. In fact, I think I'm going to open a second bottle and hide this one in the recycling before Tami gets back with Gracie and scolds me for drinking two beers before super. Of course, she might notice there's only four left in the fridge, but probably not. She's so busy now with the new job. It's all she can do to throw something in the oven when we get home. Maybe when we get that second car she'll get home before me. We sold one in Dillon before we moved, and we've been commuting together.

Then again, after football season, I suppose I'll get home before her. I guess maybe I could cook dinner then. I bet I'd get some points for that. Might get laid a little more often. I could make my famous Chili. It almost won an award in the cook off that one year. And I could do breakfast for dinner one night. I make a mean pancake. My Gracie Belle knows. I make the chocolate chips smile for her. She loves that. Just lights up her little face so much I want squeeze her until her -

I toss the empty in the recycling because I just heard Tami open the front door. "Hey, babe. What's for dinner?" I ask as she walks in.

"I've got a lasagna I put together last night we can warm up."

"Well let me get that in the oven for you," I offer.

"Well that's sweet of you, sugar."

See. Points. "And how about I open you a bottle of wine?"

Awwww….look at that smile of hers. I love that smile. That smile leaves me conflicted, though: I don't know what it makes me want to do more - hold her and tell her how much I love her or rip her clothes off. It's just that kind of smile.

"I'd like that," she says.

I like that she'd like that. I like it when she likes the things I do. Maybe I should do more things for her.

"You'd like that would you?" I don't know if I just winked or not but now she's laughing in that sultry way of hers. "What time is Gracie's bedtime again?" I ask.

"Daddy! Come heeeere!" Gracie calls from the living room, and after I get the lasagna in the oven and open the wine and pour Tami a glass, I go out there to join my daughter. She wants to show me some craft she made over at the neighbor's.

I have no idea what that concoction of colored construction paper and cotton balls is supposed to represent. Not the faintest clue. "Beautiful, sweet pea! You really put a lot of thought into this, didn't you?"

"You like it?"

"I love it!"

"What do you think it is, Daddy?"

Oh now, c'mon now, why did she have to go and ask me that?

"It's a work of art is what this is." I put it down on the coffee table and squat down and open my arms and she gives me one of those Gracie hugs. I love Gracie hugs. They're adoring hugs. Not like Julie hugs, which are kind of stiff and I'm-too-old-for-this and quick-greeting-after-months-apart hugs. I miss Julie, though, more than I care to admit. But I don't miss her rolling her eyes. I can't say I miss that. But I do miss the way we used to joke gently with each other. I miss her telling me about her school day. I miss her talking to me about literature as if I were an idiot and then me surprising the socks off her when she finds out I actually know something.

I hope Matt is treating her well. If he's not I'll have to give him a stern word, but I suspect he is. Matt's an a'ight guy. He has a job. I don't get what he does in that gallery, exactly, but he seems to be paying the bills, with just a little help from Julie's part-time job. Responsible kid, Matt. So he probably won't knock her up. I hope.

Gracie asks to watch some TV and I say yes even though I know Tami will scold me because she thinks I let our little one watch too much TV. But we've got thirty minutes while that lasagna warms, and I just want to relax and not have to entertain my daughter for every minute of it. I switch on the electronic babysitter and sink onto the couch. I don't sink into the recliner because I'm kind of hoping Tami will come in and sink down next to me.

She does. And then she pushes the hair away from my forehead and smiles at me, and I feel about a hundred feet tall. I let her know with a kiss that lingers too long for her taste, because she pulls away. That's okay. I'll treat her to a longer one later, when Gracie's in bed.

"We need to buy a second car soon," she says.

"I know. I've got that scrimmage Saturday, but we'll go car shopping Sunday after church."

"Let's agree on a budget before we start haggling."

"Well, I don't want to finance more than $10K of it," I tell her. I don't like having loans over my head. "We've already got this ridiculous mortgage, and don't forget the income tax." We've got to pay state income tax in this state! That's a three percent reduction in my salary right there.

"Sugar, I'm making almost twice as much as I was in Dillon."

She's got to rub that in, doesn't she? When I'm making a little bit less than I was in Dillon. Not only am I making a little bit less, but I have to teach full-time on top of the coaching to make it. They don't even have me teaching P.E. They're using me like duct tape, to patch holes.

I'm teaching a remedial English class, for one. Julie laughed her ass off when I told her that, but it's not precisely Shakespeare. I can handle it, even if I don't love it. I also have a health class, which will be fine except when we get to sex ed, and something called a "life skills" class - and hell if these kids don't need some serious life skills. No one has ever taught the boys how to pull up their pants, for instance, or how to say "Yes, sir" or "Yes, ma'am," or even how to show up on time. I'm also in charge of a study hall. That's not so bad. I just have to smack a ruler down on the occasional desk to get them to stop talking and start studying. I've got a weightlifting class - now that's relevant, at least - and a remedial math class. That's two remedial classes. I guess I've got remedial written all over me. Of course, a lot of these remedial kids really just need a swift kick in the ass, and I suppose the administration figures I'm just the guy to give them one.

"Yeah," I tell Tami, "but the cost of living here is twice as high."

"it's not twice as high," Tami insists. Her voice gets high, the way it does when she's annoyed. Honestly, it's a little like chalk scraping on a chalkboard when it gets like that.

Now there's a sound I never hear anymore - chalk against a chalkboard. First it was overhead projectors in the schools, but now its smartboards. They didn't have smartboards at East Dillon. I'm still trying to figure those damn things out. They don't seem too smart too me. You know what's smart? Chalk, an eraser, and a chalkboard. Hell, I'll even take dry erase markers, an eraser, and a white board. Either of those can be used to produce and reproduce an infinite combination of instructional information, and they never freeze up, or lose power, or need to warm up.

"It's almost twice as high," I say.

Yep. Tami's completely unwilling to admit a flaw in this place she's made me move to. I get it, I do. She feels guilty for uprooting me, and she wants me to love it here, and she wants to point out all the positives. I know. I did that too the six times I made her move. I gave her the hard sell on every new town. Now it's her turn to try to put lipstick on a pig. "I'm just trying to be practical here."

"Your salary will likely go up in a year or two," she reassures me.

"Maybe," I say.

"Mine will."

She's very confident. I'm not going to naysay her. I don't want to lose any points. But I don't think it's going up anytime soon. They're paying her pretty nicely to begin with. But they need to be. "This house is so expensive."

"It was a good deal for the area. And the value is going to go up."

"I don't want to take out a loan of more than $10,000 for the car," I insist.

"Okay, fine. Well, we've got plenty for a downpayment in savings." She looked around the living room. "I think maybe that bookcase would look better against the other wall."

Jesus H. Christ! She's had me re-arrange the furniture in this room three times. Would she make up her damn mind?

I think I get points for rearranging furniture though. That takes manly strength. "Well, babe, I'll help you move it after dinner if you want."

"Thanks, hon, I appreciate that."

I appreciate that she appreciates me. I see other guys with their wives, and they don't always get much appreciation from them. They get a hell of a lot of taken for granted is what they get. Sometimes it seems like they can't do anything right. Me, I can do a lot of things right. I kiss her again, and I linger again, and she pulls away again. She gives me that look, that I know you look. "What?" I ask.

"You laying the groundwork for something, Coach?"

Why does she think every time I'm affectionate with her I want sex? I mean, I do want sex, but that's not why I'm being affectionate with her. "I love you," I say. "And I just want you to know that."

She chuckles like I don't mean it, or like I'm only saying it to get laid, which is not true. It annoys me when she does that, but I try not to be annoyed, because if I show my annoyance, that'll reduce my odds of getting laid later tonight.

"You're kind of cute," she tells me, and it's if I can feel the smile pulling at my lips.

My wife loves me. That's a good feeling to have.

"Yeah?" I ask. "C'mere," I whispser, and she scoots a little closer, and kisses me. Her lips are soft and warm and for some reason she smells like peaches, like those big, lush, white-flesh peaches we used to be able to buy in Texas, but can't get here. I put my hand on the back of her head and kiss her more deeply. I can feel myself stiring and I know I'm going to have a hard-on in 3.5 seconds if we don't stop. Then I'll have to grab a throw pillow and cover it up so Gracie doesn't see, just like my senior year of high school, when Tami would tease me in the stairwell and I'd have to walk to class holding a three-ring binder in front of myself.

Tami pulls away before a throw pill becomes necessary. Maybe she knows the exact number of seconds by now.

"It'll be nice to have my own car again," she says.

"You know you'll have to drive yourself then. No more handsome chauffer."

I've been driving her home from work every night. Well, she takes the car, then drives it to Pemberton, and then I drive us home. Because that's the man's job, driving. That and filling up the gas tank. And taking out the trash. And mowing the lawn. I wouldn't mind the driving, except that this isn't a comforting, tension-relieving drive like it was in Dillon: the wide open roads, the stark, raw beauty of the dry Texas fields, the quiet, the chance to wind down on the way home.

"Do you like it here, sugar?" she asks.

I know what she wants to hear, but the truth is I don't. I don't like Philadelphia. It's crowded and people-dirty (not nature-dirty like west Texas), and the traffic is awful, and people are always in such a hurry that they don't often stop to say hello. They don't know my name everywhere I go. Sometimes it seems like they don't know my name anywhere I go. I ran into a teacher in the halls of Pemberton today who asked if I was the new technology teacher. No one asks after my family at the grocery store, and they look me up in a computer at the pharmacy instead of just pulling the bag right out of the bin the second they see me walk in the door. The coaches and teachers snicker when I say y'all, insist on calling me "Texas," and I can't find a decent barbecue joint anywhere.

I miss home something awful.

"Here?" I ask. "With you? I love it, babe. There's no place on earth I'd rather be."

I can see from her smile that response earned me double points, so I push down every negative thought I have, and I lean in and kiss her smiling lips.

And I'm going to need that throw pillow.

THE END