“It would be my honor,” he said, trying to sound lighthearted, but he meant it. He felt astonishingly lucky to have emerged from this whirlwind with Sylvie in his bed each night and Emeline and Cecelia willing to keep him in their lives. William remembered seeing Charlie standing in a doorway, smiling at William, the same night he’d walked into the lake. He thought that his father-in-law would have been proud of the twins for keeping their hearts open. He would have liked that Cecelia was making art and that Emeline had allowed herself to love who she loved. William didn’t know what Charlie would make of him and Sylvie—since their love impacted his oldest daughter, he probably wouldn’t have been thrilled—but Charlie had wanted his daughters to live fully and deeply, and Sylvie was doing that.
For four months, William devoted his weeknights and weekends to replacing the insulation on the second floor of Cecelia’s new house, retiling the kitchen, and replacing the tub and toilet. The house was only a stone’s throw away from where the Padavano girls had grown up, and it was similar in layout to the house on 18th Place. Sylvie came with him to Cecelia’s each time, and she painted walls with her sisters or babysat Izzy while they unpacked boxes. William liked to listen to the patter of the women’s voices and murmured laughter while he grouted tiles and unscrewed ancient nuts from rusted pipes. Izzy would occasionally appear in the doorway of whatever room William occupied and hand him random tools. He ended up with a pile of wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers, and bolt cutters around his feet, and when the toddler wandered away, he would place them back in the toolbox.
On the evenings when he wasn’t needed at Cecelia’s, William met Sylvie at the library and they ate dinner together. There was a Mexican diner they particularly liked, and they would share a margarita and eat tacos. During their secret period, they had been careful when they talked. They’d discussed books, basketball, and the memories Sylvie was writing down. Other permitted topics were what they’d done that day, whom they’d spoken to, and anything funny that was said. They’d avoided talking about the past and anything beyond the current day. In the late fall, though, once they’d been together for eleven months and Julia knew the truth, they allowed themselves to imagine a shared future. They smiled shyly at each other during these conversations. William still believed that he didn’t deserve Sylvie, didn’t deserve the way she loved all of him, in every mood and every thought, but she beamed at him across the table, and he found that, in her glow, his plans became more concrete, more clear.
He admitted that he wanted to be a physio. He wanted a deeper understanding of the physiology and motivations of the athletes on the Northwestern team. Why were some kids’ joints more resilient than those of others? How could injuries be prevented? William had noticed that when players missed shots, they had different reactions. Some got discouraged and were scared to shoot again. Others got angry and went on a scoring run. A few—the rare ones—were the forgetful goldfish the coach urged them all to be: They made a shot and forgot about it, then missed a shot and did the same. They lived in the moment. William wanted to understand all the threads that made up the athletic humans in the Northwestern gym so he could help them not only stay on the court but flourish.
Arash helped William apply for the graduate program in sports physiology at Northwestern. The two-year master’s would allow William to keep his job with the team and take classes at night; he was also permitted to include a few graduate psychology classes, and because William worked for the university, the program was virtually free. William repeatedly thanked Arash for his assistance, until the older man became annoyed and told him to stop. But the idea of committing to another graduate program, after having failed so badly the first time, made William so anxious that he knew he wouldn’t have been able to do this on his own. One Saturday morning, when they were going over his final application, Arash said, “Stop thinking about who you were when you were living the wrong life, William. You’re built for the life you’re living now. You have a gift for seeing what’s wrong with these boys. And besides, you can’t fail when you’re doing what you love.” William was silent, considering this. “Do you not get it?” Arash had said, exasperated. William started to respond, but the older man cut him off: “It doesn’t matter if you get it, actually. It’s true.”
During one of their dinners, Sylvie said, “I want us to live together.” She had been sneaking in and out of William’s dorm for almost a year, setting an alarm for five o’clock in the morning so none of the students would know she’d been there.
William nodded and allowed himself to imagine that possibility for the first time. The pleasure of coming home to Sylvie every night, of sharing a refrigerator, a closet, and a bed. The peace of being utterly comfortable in his home, with her. He couldn’t think of anything more wonderful. William informed the university that he wouldn’t be a resident adviser the following semester, and right before Christmas, he moved out of his dorm suite and into Sylvie’s studio.
When he was unpacking his shirts into her small closet, he and Sylvie kept smiling at each other, elated. This was the first time William had lived off Northwestern’s campus since he’d arrived in Chicago, and he enjoyed making Pilsen his own neighborhood. He chose a favorite coffee shop, a barber, a pharmacy where he picked up his monthly prescription from the psychiatrist. It felt decadent to sleep beside Sylvie all night, with no alarm set, with nothing to hide. William made dinner, teaching himself to cook from books, the same way he’d taught himself plumbing and carpentry. On the evenings when he didn’t have class, he studied while Sylvie read beside him. He would turn from his textbook to look at her, not caring if she noticed, not caring if she looked up from the page. Sometimes he would pull her into his arms, or she’d climb onto his lap, and they would entwine their limbs, take off each other’s clothes, all their movements soft, gentle, reverent.
When Kent and Nicole visited Chicago, the two couples went out to eat, often at the Mexican diner. Nicole had six brothers and sisters, so she and Sylvie shared stories of growing up in chaotic, loving households. Kent and Nicole enjoyed horrifying the librarian and assistant coach with disturbing things they’d seen during their hospital shifts: a man hopping into the ER, carrying a bucket that contained his severed leg; two college kids who had superglued their bodies together; a toy dinosaur lodged in a part of a man’s anatomy where it did not belong. Sylvie recited the titles of the most-checked-out books at the library, because Kent was interested in how that list transformed, or didn’t, over time. They discussed Nicole and Kent’s ever-changing plans for their wedding. On one visit, the event was to be held on a riverboat; another time, it would be in Detroit in Kent’s parents’ small backyard, or in a window-lined ballroom in a Chicago skyscraper. “Maybe we’ll elope to Paris,” Nicole said one night, and Kent kissed her cheek. The couple clearly had fun coming up with plans, but they delayed the actual event while they tried to save money. They were both putting themselves through medical school using a blizzard of loans.
“What about you two?” Kent said. “You’ll get married.” He uttered this as a statement, not a question.
William and Sylvie hadn’t discussed marriage. William waited to see if the subject scared him, but nothing inside him changed. He was sitting next to Sylvie in the booth, the sides of their thighs touching.
“I’ve never really cared about weddings, and I feel like we’re already married,” Sylvie said. “Or more than married, if there is such a thing. And”—she hesitated—“it doesn’t seem right to do that.”