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part i: it's like seeing blue for the first time
It's always like this after games. The quiet of the car reverberates in her skull against the roar of the stands; when her mom kills the engine Julie has to steady her forehead on the window before following her up the drive into the house. They don't really turn the lights on, just the lamp on the sideboard that casts a yellow glow on the wallpaper. Her mom pads to kitchen to pour a glass of red wine and to wait for her dad to finish shaking hands and kissing babies and giving speeches in the locker room. After he'll drive home the tight end whose parents work nights at the meatpacking plant. She always hears the truck pull in, the front door, then the clink of a whiskey glass on the kitchen counter.
Julie takes a shower, usually, while their soft voices carry up the steps into the steam. She comes out loose-limbed and still buzzing-- the crack of helmets, the shrill whistle, the bass drums and trumpets, under it all the level voice, that steady voice shouting play after play after play, words like poetry: cherry, tango, rocket, tunnel. Her back teeth are salty, from the popcorn she chewed to an anxious pulp, and her hair drips down her back when she lays down in her bed in the dark, on top of the quilt with her bare feet.
Then the window always slides up, squeaking a little, then he levers down onto the carpet, more often then not catching a foot on the windowsill and cursing his way onto the long shag rug. Usually Julie's up the second she hears the tree rustle outside, reaching for the light on the nightstand. Usually he looks up her, caught in the halo, and hooks his mouth into a smile that knocks her knees out; this golden boy, her Romeo, the worst liar in the lone star state. Usually she's up but this time she isn't, doesn't turn on the light, doesn't unfold when Matt Saracen eases through the open window, doesn't open her eyes until the weight of his body lines up on the mattress next to hers with a tight-lipped whoosh of breath.
Usually she can see the moon from her pillow, but it's just a fingernail tonight. Usually, Matt isn't this quiet.
She sits up. "Are you-"
Matt is battered. Red welts from wrist the shoulder, who knows how far under his threadbare Dillon High Athletics shirt they go, or what kind of bruised his legs are under faded blue jeans. His eyes are closed-- one voluntarily, one under a swelling orbital bone. Scratches on his neck, his arms.
Matt bumps a weary hand against her knee. "I did pretty good, right?" Hoarse.
"Jesus christ, Matt." She yanks the chain on the lamp and tries not to panic at the state of him, stretched too tall for her twin bed and its fluffy purple pillows, sneakers hanging off the end. "You look like a crash test dummy."
That makes him laugh-- the best sound in the world-- but it turns into a cough that has him clutching his ribs. Even as he sits up, he waves her off and shakes his head. "And here I thought I had a real shot at the pageant this weekend. What am I gonna do now?"
"Sit still." Julie flutters to her bathroom and grabs the first aid kid, aware in the back of her head that there's enough of a routine here for her to find it in the dark, and she comes back, makes him lean against the headboard and shove over enough to spread the plastic box open on the bedspread between them. It's hard to make it fit together in her mind, how this room is all her, every inch of the walls: magazine collages, poems copied, photobooth strips, strings of model UN lanyards and dried flowers, her brain layered in every page of the books on her desk and the shoeboxes of summer camp letters under the bed. Then somehow in the middle of it all is him, incongruous, sweaty, very much a boy, even if he draws comics and gives names to the rabbits living under his porch. Even if she feels like he fits here, belongs amongst her things the way her jewel case CDs and old Converse do. He makes sense here- or maybe he makes the clutter and chaos make sense around him. Like the world around Matt always organizes itself in his favor even when it's trying so hard to break his heart.
Usually after a game she knows where he got hit worst, where to start, but tonight-
"Hey." He has that look, like when he's going to say something so sincere it's aggravating. But he doesn't, just picks up her shaking hands in his and waits until she looks him in the eye. Familiar callouses, dry palms, not even a waver as he pulls her fingers flat to his chest. "I'm okay. Yeah?" Solid under her touch, not the scrawny kid she knew in middle school English classes but something denser now, not just in size but in presence, the way everything in this room, this town, seems to bend towards him. "I'm okay."
Julie bends, too. She sets her forehead against his shoulder and inhales. If she could only ever have him for one moment, she'd would want him like this. Where it's quiet. Where no one else has anything to ask of him, here in the after.
"Matt." She whispers, letting the hour and the closed door push them together. "You did really good."
"You really watchin' me? Like, really-really?"
She doesn't need to move, the glow is in his voice brighter than any stadium light, but when she's around him she wants to be blinded, whited out. So she peels her head up and kisses his cheek and watches his eyes shine. "Really, really good."
He chews on the end of his smile as if that would do anything to keep it tethered. "Well, okay, then. If you say."
"But I think you let them hit you on purpose."
"That so?"
"Yeah."
"Naw." He's teasing her, smartass. You can't trust a boy like him around a crumb of a compliment.
"I think you just want to get patched up a by a pretty girl."
Psssshhh. Matt Saracen may not be able to tell a lie but that doesn't stop him from being full of shit sometimes, like right now when cranes up to look behind her, bobbing left and right hard enough to nearly roll them both to the ground. "If you see a pretty girl, tell her I need medical attention immediately-"
"Will you shut up!"
"No," he says plainly. Face an inch from hers, and then they're back to square one, the thing that got them into this mess: that look. Same one he gave her the first night this happened, when they were all on the field after the whistle blew, and Julie got shoved off her dad's arm by the pull of the crowd and bounced through the crush until Matt's gloved hands wrapped around her shoulders, and for a second she panicked, thinking he was boxing her in, but really he was boxing everyone out, for her. For her to catch her breath. And when she had done that Julie glanced up and he was giving her a look. Maybe he said something- it was too loud, anyway. But she wanted so badly to hear whatever he had to say, so she asked him to come find her later, when it was quiet. Thinking he'd meet her on the side of the field or in the parking lot.
But he found her window on the back of the house instead. Tapped on the glass, soft as a bumblebee. For one gut-clenching second she thought she made it all up.
"It looks worse than it feels," Matt says, conciliatory. She presses a thumb to his ribs and he nearly bucks off the bed. "Okay, okay, but it feels pretty bad."
Julie gets to work in silence at first, shaking her last instant ice pack and making him hold it to his brow, then taking cotton rounds to the worst of the scratches. He winces at the sting of the alcohol but doesn't complain. Matt never complains. Pinkish swabs begin to line up on the nightstand. The welts and grass burn she can't do much for-- it'll all bruise by morning. But she tiptoes into the bathroom again for a cool washcloth and starts at his fingertips, wiping away the mud on his nails and between his fingers. Up his wrists, the tender crease of his elbows, the satisfying swell of muscle on his arm, all the way to the hem of his sleeve. He watches intently, dusty hair all askew and pressed flat in odd places, so she focuses as she cleans around faded grease burns from the Alamo and raw knuckles. For all the fervor and fascination that Dillon directs at this one boy's so-called miracle hands, when Julie presses into his skin- they're just hands.
"You don't hafta do that." Matt's eyes are in his lap. People call him shy and sometimes that's what this is, but she likes when he looks away, like he's trying to ball up a good feeling and squirrel it away for a few stolen seconds.
"Show me the rest," she says.
Matt obliges-- he's always so obliging when she asks for anything-- and tugs his shirt off by the collar with sore arms. It's a two-person job, his chin caught in the middle, her giggle caught in the half-light, but they manage, like always. Before she can say anything about the black and blue pooling across his chest Matt has a thumb between her eyebrows, smoothing.
"I told you," he says, "looks worse than it is. They were just rowdy, you saw 'em."
"Everybody wants a piece of you, Matt Saracen, don't they?" She can't quite make it sound like a joke, but he lets her off the hook.
"Well, I'm honored."
Julie sponges along the line of his shoulders, down his chest, feather-touch across those ribs. She'd like to pretend she's thinking hard, that's why she's quiet, but with him this close she finds it hard to think at all.
"Do you?" Matt says abruptly. He stills her path.
"Do I what?"
"Do you, uh-" Whatever it is has him swallowing a laugh. "Do you want any? I mean, a piece of-"
She gasps in her best approximation of a real Southern lady and swats his arm with the washcloth. "Head out of the gutter, seven."
"You know I hate you calling me that. It's like dating a linebacker."
She waggles her eyebrows.
Luckily his best idea of retaliation is to grab the elastic of her shorts and yank her up into his lap. The wind gets knocked out of her sails a bit, remembering that he can lift her around like this, that he's strong now.
He sees right through her thoughts and busts out a grin. "So?"
"So what."
"Do you?"
Carefully, carefully, she folds the cloth and sets it against the swelling at his brow bone. "Where else does it hurt?"
Matt runs a hand over his head, buzzed close for the season. She's never seen him with anything longer, has only ever know the soft prickle after he drags the clippers through it every few weeks. That's where he points to now, above the temple. It's a little red, maybe from the padding of the helmet, maybe from a rough hit. "Here."
Julie grabs the icepack and holds it against the skin for a moment. Then, pushing her long hair over her shoulder, she leans in and lays down a kiss. It makes her lips tingle from the cold.
"Where else?"
Matt, gaze downcast, points to his neck. Julie rests the ice against the row of scratches and chases the chill with her mouth.
"And?"
"Here." Shoulder.
"Here." Finger.
"Here." Eyebrow.
"Here." Rib.
No bruise too small, no hangnail untended. Matt's hands don't stray while she administers these cures but stay on her waist, hooked in her shorts until he tucks his chin and taps his lower lip. "Here." Then, with rote manners, "If you want, please."
Julie cups his face and makes him look at her, that baby blue gaze dark and bottomless in the dim as she raises the ice pack and holds it against his mouth. Breath fogging on the plastic until she sets it on the nightstand and pulls him in to kiss his flushed lips, hot and cold and unbearably plush against hers. Never mind; this is what she would pick, her one piece of Matt Saracen, the single private moment she gets to keep for herself the way he pockets every compliment she gives him, every careless touch she deposits when they're walking down the hall, knocking knees on the couch, passing behind him in the kitchen with a tap on the back. If she has to choose she'll keep those and the choked sound he makes now, when she runs her nails down the back of his neck. It's not like no one touches him- Matt's always bumping fists with his friends and waltzing with his grandma, and football is a contact sport for god's sake- but when it's Julie, well. It's like every inch of skin is suddenly lit with wires, like he can drop the charade and stop pretending he's not starving for it.
Under her, Matt spreads his fingers wide on the small of her back, then palms lower, rocking into her until she risks toppling. Julie gathers him close in her arms, headboard creaking, and the sigh he lets out warms her, revs her up. Their breathing is so quiet, so careful, but that just makes every sound amplify itself in the negative space: the clack of teeth, the rustle of her tank top as it drops the rug, the itch as he drags his fingertips along her thighs and lets himself be kissed senseless.
"You- ah, you have to go soon."
"Uh huh, I have to go soon."
Headlights flicker and fade on the wall. For a second, the white shell of his ear glows between her lips as the light crosses his face.
"You really have to go."
"I hafta go, Jules, Julie-"
He can't help it; she's tilted her hips down to find him solid and straining in his jeans. At the sound she claps a hand over his mouth and they freeze, ears trained on the hallway, eyes wide, chests rising and falling.
"D'you think-"
"Wait."
They wait. Another car passes, dappling shadows into the dips and hollows of their bodies.
"I should go," Matt says, finally.
"Probably."
Neither moves.
She has to revise it again, because this, this is what she wants to have. Matt raising their locked hands, spotting the shadow puppets cast on the wall and biting his lip, his happiness completely transparent, clear water all the way to the bottom of the creek. It spills into her and pools.
"You know I want you to stay, right?"
"Course I know." It's always so simple to him.
"If I was in charge-"
"Oh, man." He cuts her off with a low whistle. "Julie Taylor in charge, we'd all be in trouble. Myself especially."
She glares but he doesn't stop smiling; you can't dam a river with one look.
"What would you do, Miss Taylor, if it was you in charge?" Fingers twisting idly in the bright blonde ends of her hair. Languid.
"I would outlaw curfews."
That earns her a kiss. "Deal. And?"
Julie traces the swelling on his brow. "I would fine everyone who tries to tackle you. One million, billion dollars."
Matt closes his eyes and once again he's not a miracle or a captain, just a bone-tired boy covered in scrapes. "Deal."
She kisses him that time, insistent and needy and proud, because as long as he's here in her bed he's not out there getting pummeled by life and linebackers and all the things in Dillon with careless fists, and if she can keep him pinned to the pillows she'll do whatever it takes, she'll embarrass herself and say cheesy lines and let him run his hands all over her for hours if he'll just- if he'll just stay.
You don't have to go, Julie says with her arms, her lips, her full weight sinking into him.
It's not up to me, he replies with his gentle redirections, fending off her wandering hands, swerving where she bends in, lazy grin like he's throwing up blocks and watching her bounce off. Maybe one of these times she'll feel like she actually broke through, but despite all the hours and kisses and practice she still lands ass in the grass every time, eyes on the wide blue overhead, lungs empty.
"C'mere," Matt says, rough as gravel, locking them together and burying his face in her neck, holding her still until their breath is slow, measured, the room undisturbed, the streetlights whining fluorescent outside.
"Stay 'til I'm asleep, Matty."
And that's all it takes-- he's always so obliging when it comes to Julie, after all. She scoops his shirt off the floor and he turns around, chivalrous, as she drops her bra and pulls it on, caught briefly in a whirl of detergent and sweat and lingering warmth, then climbs back under the quilt and laughs at the sight of him in her Dillon Volleyball tee, precariously tight where he's filled out.
"Lookin' good, Saracen," she whispers, and holds out a beckoning hand.
He stretches out next to her again-- this time on his side, still too tall-- and covers her eyes. "Sleep. Now."
"I mean it, you have to wait for me."
"Scout's honor."
Crowded against him it doesn't take long. When she wakes up in the butter-pale light she half expects him to be knocked out on the pillow next to her- more than half. But the morning air is too cool, the window is open, and it's like he was never even there.
part ii: you will be the end of me
Nowadays it's like this, after games. Julie drives herself home because her mom leaves to put Gracie down at the end of the third quarter if they're up by more than fourteen points. She keeps the radio blasting-- usually Shania, but tonight it's John Mayer-- and the wind screeches through the open windows. It's still echoingly quiet when she gets home, but the minute Julie steps out of the shower she jams her headphones into her ears and wedges her iPod into the waistband of her shorts before she's even paused to lotion her legs.
The Panthers lost tonight's game, but that's not why she needs the noise.
The lights stay off, even though she always stubs her toe fishing dental floss out of the cabinet. Her tee shirt goes on backwards twice before she figures it out, but that's better than a sliver of light threatening to keep her awake. She's got it down to a science: shower, tea, Bright Eyes on repeat; loud enough to drown out any conceivable thought but quiet enough to blur into a haze until she can't stay awake anymore. Window closed and latched. Curtains drawn. Memories of other afters boxed up and squashed flat.
Usually she doesn't hear her dad get home, not over the music, and because everyone's attention now centers on not waking the baby.
That's why she startles when her door cracks open, with the hall light cutting across the floor as he peers in, still in his hat and jacket.
She squints and tugs the cord of the headphones. "Dad?"
"Hey, kid."
The mattress creaks as he lowers to sit. He looks older. The game aged him, maybe, but she's been seeing it more and more.
"I'm sorry it didn't go how you wanted."
"That's alright, darlin', I'm glad you came out to support." He's got that hundred yard stare, like he's hitting rewind, rewind, rewind, already reviewing and analyzing and revising.
"The tapes won't walk away overnight."
"I know, baby, I won't be long." He pats her legs and tucks her in with flat palms. My beef burrito, he used to say when she was little, and she'd wail and squirm and kick the blankets. Nowadays she just lays there. He frowns. "How are you doing lately?"
"Oh my god, dad, I'm fine-"
"Alright, I'm just saying I have eyes, you know-"
"Really." She winds the cord around her hand 'til it starts to bite. "Worry about your wide receivers, not me. I'm not the problem."
"Touché." He raises his hands in surrender. "I want to tell you that I'm inspired by the way you juggle everything that's been going on, you know. With Gracie and the school work and, well, I know it's not my place but Matt's just as tore up about all this as you are-"
"Out. Now."
"Okay. Okay." Standing, he lays a hand on her head. "Sleep tight, Juice."
"Love you."
The door clicks closed and the quiet sluices in. She can't catch her breath, can't let it soak into her skin, so she fumbles for the headphones and jams on the volume button until the clamor brings her heart rate back down.
She isn't listening for it, so the murmur of the window sash sliding up registers as a dream. That's the only way she'd hear that sound again. That's the only way she would prop up, bleary eyed, and watch the lean stretch of Matt Saracen drop onto the carpet, panting slightly, flat on his back, taking up all the air in the room for the first time in a year.
"Matt." Brain starting to kick on. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Hey, Julie. I'm just-" He coughs. "Sorry, that tree is so tall, I swear it got taller-"
"You can't be here."
"I know, I promise I know that."
"I'm sorry you lost but you can't just show up like this-"
"I can't go out there, Julie."
"It wasn't your fault, people understand that."
"No, I mean..." He huffs, knees drawn up. "Riggins and everyone's out gettin' loaded. I don't want to be there bawlin' all night but if I go home they'll come drag me by my collar and I got work tomorrow, right, so then I'll be puking behind the Alamo-"
"So you thought you'd come here?"
Matt's jaw works. It's pitch black, the way she likes it nowadays, but that means she can't quite see his expression. They both know he has nowhere to go. Julie draws the blanket closer but he doesn't try to approach. Instead, he drags himself up to sit against the wall by the closet, where the streetlight can finally lay a hand on him and illuminate the weary bends of his face, the defeat in his brow.
She takes a pillow and tosses it to him, hurls it more like, followed by a spare blanket. "Just until they stop looking for you."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And if they turn up here you can be the one to explain that to my dad personally."
The rustle of him stills. "I don't think that's gonna happen."
Her stomach drops. Of course that's why he came here- where no one would think to look, because everyone in Dillon knows Julie Taylor and Matt Saracen are ancient history. They whisper it in the hallways, in the bleachers, in the bathrooms. There goes the girl who dumped QB1. Her dad was right, everyone sees it. The way Julie takes the long way around to avoid the practice field. How Matt fills every free second with shifts at the Alamo Freeze, and it takes three tries for teachers to get his attention instead of the usual two. The dream of him coming back through that window, that's all it is. A dream.
Matt interrupts. "Do you have a band-aid? I, uh, don't wanna stain your carpet."
He's lined up up the blanket and pillow between the bed and the window, head cricked against the nightstand, feet disappearing past the end of the bed. One hand wrapped around his forearm, around something slick and black in the dark. "Sorry," he says lamely.
"Jesus, Matt." She slides to cross to the bathroom and, on second thought, turns on the light in there, so there's just enough washing back to see his face redden. "You could've said something."
"I'm saying it now."
Julie rolls her eyes and comes back to crouch with the first aid kit. "What did you do?"
"I swear, the tree swung first."
She fixes a stare.
"It was a tackle in the third," he amends. "I caught a cleat or something. It's not that bad."
Nothing she hasn't cleaned up before. Julie lays her tools on the carpet and starts with alcohol wipes, clearing the dried blood that must've been dripping since he left the field. He's showered, at least, trading sweat for Irish Spring, which makes the tang in the air even more disconcerting.
"So." Matt nudges his knee into hers, breaking her focus. "How've you been?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Seemed polite to ask."
Julie hmm's and goes back stacking gauze on the cuts. They aren't deep, just long. She fishes for the tape and almost drops it when Matt asks, "Are you still talking to that Halloway kid?"
She recovers from the fumble; she doubts Matt would notice when he's keyed up like this. Once he told her it usually took until Tuesdays for his leg to stop shaking. "Who told you that?"
He won't meet her eyes. It gets alarm bells ringing in her head when she remembers how much she used to like that, when it was endearing instead of a line drawn in the sand: what Matt is thinking versus what he'll allow Julie to see. The reminder sours in her throat.
"Well, I'm not talking to anyone. He was my trig partner." She rips the tape with a little more gusto than necessary. "No one is going to come within ten feet of the coach's daughter, don't worry. You were the only one stupid enough to think the trouble was worth it."
"Don't say that." His hand goes to her knee where it's tucked up to her chest, sudden grip, raw knuckles. Lucid, always so serious, the boy can't take a joke, they say, but Julie thinks back to those humid days on his front porch and all she can remember is laughing, and laughing, and laughing.
"It wasn't all trouble," says Matt.
"Don't."
"What?" His brow creases, then smoothes. "Oh, sorry." The hand withdraws.
She wants to grab it. She wants to rip all the tape off so he'll feel the sting she feels, even for a second. She wants to yell in his face that the hand isn't the problem here. She wants to cover every inch of him in six inch steel, bulletproof glass, a diamond second skin, whatever will keep every drop of blood in his body until the last game of his senior year.
But there's a line between them now, a trench Matt dug in the dirt over and over with every averted gaze, every distracted answer when she probed about money or family, every sin he hastily tucked behind his back because he thought Julie wouldn't want him if she knew he experienced jealousy, wrath, pride. Like she was too pure to touch him. Like she wasn't strong enough to endure it.
Then at homecoming her dad brought her to stand on the sidelines with him in the pouring rain and she watched the team claw and scrape their way to a tie in the fourth with twenty seconds on the clock, and her dad called them all in, soaked and blackened with turf, and asked Matt if he could make it happen. Julie had to crane to see him through the jostle of blue helmets, each one glittered by the rain caught in the lights, and there he was- still as an achor in the roil of bodies around him. When coach asked again, louder, if he could please win the game for them, Matt turned his face to the black sky and smiled wider than Julie had ever seen, like every drop of rain was falling exactly where he wanted, then he looked at the anxious mess of everyone gathered and said-- with that hook of a grin caught in his cheek-- I can do it, 'cuz you asked so polite. I can do it. And he didn't see Julie, but Julie saw him. Radiant. A neon cross, a firework, a ball of lightning shining from toe to crown with the power of his own belief.
Matt never looked like that when he was with her. And if she was keeping him from that feeling-- well. She loved him, so badly. There wasn't a choice.
"Julie-"
"All done."
Julie wadded up the cotton swabs and stood. No- there was always a choice, and she made hers with open eyes.
Swabs in the bin, kit in the drawer, back into bed. The silent room was louder than a stadium as the house settled, the tree tapped morse code on the windowpanes, the telephone wires hummed, her heartbeat scratched against the pillowcase, and Matt- existed, motionless on the floor below with the volume cranked to the top of the dial. Just breathing. That used to be enough to knock her out in minutes, the sound of Matt existing. The best nap she ever took was on Matt's threadbare couch, listening to the scribble of his pencil as he doodled in the margins of an English assignment, and having him here now is that same feeling of waking up untethered from time. Cotton-mouthed and confused.
His whisper carries upward. "You asleep?"
She doesn't answer.
Matt sighs, a defeated sound. It makes her skin crawl, a noise like that coming from him.
She sits up. "What is it?"
"What's what?"
"You- actually, no. Never mind."
Matt sits up, too. "No, tell me what."
But Julie's turned her back, rolling onto her other side, determined. "Goodnight, Matt."
"I can't sleep."
"Just count some sheep." She can feel his eyes on her still.
"I mean I'm not sleeping, Julie. I haven't been sleeping good, for this whole year," he says quietly.
Julie rolls to face him and there he is, like he always is. Hanging on to a complicated smile, like this confession is a gift he's trying to give her, proof of- something. She reaches her hand out into space and he catches it without hesitation, links their fingers together on the duvet.
"You are going be okay without me, Matt" Julie says, throat tight. "Wait and see."
"And what about you?" Matt asks, and there's a force there that she hasn't heard in a while. It reminds her where she is, who she is, and she pulls back, not unkindly.
"Let's just try to sleep." She lays back down and stares at the ceiling that's been over her for her whole life. "What do you usually do?"
There's a long pause. "I recite the playbook."
"Are you serious?"
"No point to lying."
It's all so Matt it hurts. She tries to think about it but she can't think with him just feet away, she can only oblige. "I'll be right back."
Two creeping minutes later, the door swings open, then shut. The box springs squeak then settle. A flashlight clicks, then papers flip, flip, flip.
"Okay," Julie says, then reads, "'Twenty-six cola: QB ride the fullback-'"
"What are you doin'?"
"Lay back down. 'Ride the fullback on the twenty-six, then pull the-'"
"Give it to the tight end on the reverse, I know." Matt peers over the mattress and horror dawns instantly. "Oh, you gotta to be joking, you put that back or he'll kill me-"
Julie shines the flashlight in his face and he recoils; she goes back to the blue binder in her lap, recently pilfered from the backpack in her dad's office. "Fifteen cherry wing counter."
"Fake it to the fullback but give it to the wing." It's muffled; he's propped his arms on the edge of the bed and buried his face in them. "Keep an eye on downfield blocking. Oh, I'm so dead."
"Good." Julie turns the page, caught for a moment by the round curve of his crown at the edge of the flashlight's beam. Annoyed as he is, she doesn't doubt he could knock out in seconds to this patter. Cherry, tango, rocket, tunnel, blue, blue, blue- Matt, eyes open, heavy-lidded, giving her The Look. No. A look. One she hasn't seen before. Cheek on his arm, completely unguarded, and now she can see how deep that kind of tired goes, only knows he's found the bottom of it because she's right there, too.
"Get up here," she says. "Before you hit your head on something."
This is how it always should be, after games: Julie leaning back, calling plays steadily in the dark, Matt curled into her pillow, chest rising and sinking, forehead pressed to her hip and warm hand on her knee, so she can tell the exact moment he falls asleep, mouth going slack. She keeps reading, even softer, and pauses only once to trace the red shell of his ear with her fingertip, hoping for herself that he'll still be here in the morning, hoping for him that he knows he's better off gone.