There's a western he watches with his dad once; it's not very good, something sepia-tinted out of the '70s with oversized Stetsons and Texas drawls that don't sound anything near the real thing. A man leans back on his elbows and watches the sunset, chewing on a long piece of grass, and he says, "By God, I ain't never leavin' Texas."

Just like that.

And Matt can't remember much else of the movie but his dad turns to look at him then, not saying a word, and something clicks in his head: there must be something special about cowboys, about the ways they can just pick up and go, pick up and go – men on their own particular missions - because, of course, the cowboy does leave Texas on his trusty steed with his oversized Stetson, riding off into the sunset to fight new battles and argue over new land and to restore justice in towns that don't have any left, but it must be enough that he wanted to stay.

It's the years after that spoil that for him. He can't remember the name of the movie, can't remember what any of the actors look like, but he remembers the look in his dad's eye. And when late summer sets in finally in its humid glory, he'll sit out on the front porch and listen to the way his grandma's rocking chair will squeak and all he can think is he'll never fucking leave Texas.

No matter how much he wants to.

(Years later, with Julie in his bed, her hands tracing patterns in his palm, she'll ask if he ever thought about leaving Dillon, if he ever wanted to.

And he'll brush her ankle with his foot, half-smiling, and shake his head.)

Julie doesn't think of home like that. It's not one town, it's not within city limits (this city, any city), nothing with its own zip code.

She's learned to measure her life by the comings and goings, and not the pit stops on the way. Packing the moving trucks and going to football games with her parents and first days – she's collected enough first days for a lifetime – those are what count. But for them, for the Coach's family, it was never about where they ended up, just enough that they were going someplace. (And try as you might, no matter where she goes, the football stadiums all look the same. Same concessions, same bleachers, same scoreboard, same fake grass. Home sweet home.)

It's hard to explain to anyone in Dillon. She's never been stuck and she's spent her whole life wanting to be, but every time they get close enough to settling, they're off and moving again. New job, new house, new school, new friends. And the only thing that's ever stayed the same has been the four of them: her, her parents, and, of course, football.

She's used to distance.

So when they first start to talk about Austin, to seriously talk about what it means, Julie spends hours in her room crying, trying to think of how to tell anyone that she's going. The problem with building a life in Dillon – building a life anywhere – is that it isn't as easy to tear it down and leave as it used to be when she didn't have any friends. Or a boyfriend.

(She takes the drive to Austin by herself once, just to tick the miles away in taps against the steering wheel, in the way she bounces her knee or chews on her nails when there's traffic or when she's stuck at a light.

She has to feel how far it is, and right now, however many miles or not, it feels impassable.)

The joke, of course: she doesn't go, and everything falls apart anyway.

True story, the first kiss she ever had with a boy was behind the football bleachers – such a cliche. It was some small town outside Nashville and her dad was coaching at the time and he wasn't on the football team – the boy she kissed – and he wasn't really boyfriend material and they weren't dating or anything like that.

It was just that she hated Tennessee and maybe her dad a little for dragging them there, and she didn't like her teachers or the awful music they played on the radio, and, to be perfectly honest, she didn't really like him much either. His name was Kirby Thayer (what kind of name is Kirby, anyway?) and he was cute in the jocky asshole kind of way and in her math class. His mouth was soft, and they didn't know what to do with their hands, but it was nice. Kind of weird, but nice.

And afterward, she wiped her hands on the front of her jeans and reapplied her lip gloss and started walking home. By herself. Just like that. And it didn't feel like some life-changing big deal but everyone kept talking about what a big deal it was, and didn't she feel butterflies? Or something? (Something other than the fact that his mouth was soft and his lips were a little chapped and she could taste the little bit of Ranch Doritos he'd been eating and how she couldn't stop thinking that she hated Ranch Doritos and she didn't really like Kirby that much more and how much was she supposed to be kissing back anyway?)

He kissed her, and the only thing she thinks is ... okay.

(This is when she decides that the fairy tale must unravel: Prince Charming does not come in on his white horse with good looks and a cute smile to save the day and woo her heart and shop around glass slippers. Instead, there are boys like Kirby who don't do their math homework and don't return your calls and flirt with the cheerleaders even after they tell you that they're only thinking of you. The kind of boys angry girl country songs are written about.

And there are her parents – who fight sometimes, but not really, and kiss way too much to be anyone's parents – but maybe they're the exception. The happy ending to the thousand sad ones.

And Julie's not sure which one she's going to get or which one she's going to end up with, but she's not going to spend the rest of her life waiting for someone to ride in and save the day and save her. Maybe he'll just show up when she's running around playing superhero. Like Superman and Lois Lane in reverse.)

Her second kiss? Well, that's with Matt. And it's nothing like she expected either. His face is still sticky with sweat from the game and he smells like grass and deodorant and she isn't expecting him to kiss her so his nose kind of bumps into hers but he kisses her and her heart kind of jumps a little. In the good way.

And when he pulls away, he's smiling and she can't help but smile back and it just feels so ridiculous – they just won the game and everyone's cheering and screaming around them and she can't even form a thought besides the very obvious fact that a) he just kissed her and b) she may have kissed him back a little.

He smiles, and someone pulls him to join the rest of the team in celebrating their W, and she stands there for a second and waits for the feeling to fade. (It doesn't.)

His second year on the team, and Julie tells him maybe we're just headed in two different directions.

(Yeah, and hers is in the general direction of that Swede guy.)

There's a scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off – which Landry had insisted they watch one weekend because come on, man, it's a classic! – where the camera's just sort of looking at this impressionist painting and getting closer and closer until it doesn't really look like anything more than just these thousands of dots of paint on top of each other?

And his relationship with Julie feels kind of like that right now.

They've been going out for a while and everyone keeps talking about them like they're a celebrity couple or something and it's always that he thinks they're one thing and then it turns out that he hasn't been looking at the right picture, that she's on something completely different.

Yeah, okay, now there's the Swede – or whatever his name is – but even before that, there's something about them that's just gone off and he doesn't quite know how to fix it. (His grandma just sighs, her chair squeaking lightly, and says, "Matthew, a girl likes to be given things, you know. Not just dragged to football games every week. Take her out somewhere nice, and see if that don't get you into her good graces again.") He doesn't even really know what's wrong, to be honest, just that Julie sees there's something wrong with them and she won't talk to him about it.

Part of him feels a storm coming, something his grandma used to say was in the bones. And he can feel it – he can feel her drifting away and he can feel the tension in their conversations and the dread that rises in him every time she turns her head so that he ends up kissing her cheek. And he keeps waiting for it, for the other shoe to drop, for her to finally realize that he isn't what she was looking for, that even though she never wanted to date a football player, she also didn't really want to date him. Because who is he?

(I'll always love you, no matter what happens, she said.

And he believed her – believes her – but the tricky thing about faith is that no matter how much you put into it, it's always a gamble. Leaps of faith, Hail Mary passes – they're all about heart and what you put into it, how much you put into it, but he has to remember that not every prayer gets answered. Not every prayer is supposed to be.

He has faith, but Julie Taylor has always been doubt, down to her soul; she questions everything, checks everything, wants to know about everything. It's part of why he loves her, and it's part of what makes her her, but it doesn't change the facts.

He let the ball go, and there's nothing left to do but wait.)

She breaks up with him –

She breaks up with him and Carlotta leaves and he doesn't really want to think about any of that so he drinks and skips class and drinks and skips practice and gets dead-ass drunk in the middle of the day.

Landry finds him at the bar, sits next to him at the table without saying anything. He keeps wrinkling his nose, chin jutted forward same way he always does when he wants to say something and isn't sure how to go about it, and Matt just tips one of the empty beer bottles on its side, giving it a hard spin just so there's noise.

"Don't you think you're maybe taking this a little too hard?" Landry says, and Matt flicks a bottle cap onto the floor.

There's the low punch in his gut again, and it feels like something's trying to dig its way out of his ribcage.

"No," he says, with a half-laugh, taking another long sip of his beer. "I think I'm taking this just fine."

(Landry's never seen him when God's refused to deal with him before, and maybe he's not ready for it, but Matt has bigger things to worry about. He gambled, and he lost his faith and now there is nothing to do but to try to fill up the god-shaped hole in him with something else.

It isn't really his first time at the rodeo.)

"Really? 'Cause, uh, you've been skipping class and I heard you called your art teacher a bitch – "

"She is a bitch."

"Well, now, that might be true, but you don't – hey, you don't usually tell them that to their faces and it – it just doesn't sound like you."

He closes his eyes, rubbing at his face with the back of his hand. "I don't really want to talk about this right now, but, uh, thanks for the concern," he says.

"You're welcome, Matt, but see, I still don't think you're taking me seriously."

He downs the rest of his beer – "I'll talk to you later," he mumbles - and slams the door on his way out for good measure. Not that it does anything, or means anything. It's Dillon, and there's nowhere else he can go.

He'll be back.

This is the punchline to the joke: the first time Matt lies to her, Julie feels something curl tight in her stomach that makes her feel like she's going to cry or throw up – no other options accepted; by the time summer rolls around again, she can't look at him the same way she used to, and it's nothing about losing her trust or not believing that he's a good guy anymore, but that it's all that she sees.

She hadn't been sure if she'd loved him then – at least, not with the full weight of the word – but she had trusted him and she thought she could love him and a rally girl is a rally girl is a rally girl. And he apologized, and apologized, and apologized, but all she could focus on was her own pain; there wasn't any room left in her for forgiveness between the rage and the hurt.

But this summer? It isn't even about Matt; it's about her. The problem with settling down anywhere (or with anyone) is that eventually things start to shift and she remembers what it was like to move, to jump into new things and new places, to start to figure out where she belonged. And with Matt, she knows who he is and she knows who she is around him and he's sweet and he's a good person and he loves her, and she loves him, too, but maybe how she loves him is starting to shift.

And maybe they're better off as friends, and isn't that a good change in its own way?

(A series of jokes – the second punchline: that she tries to take him back and then, apologizes, and apologizes again; that they are caught in their own loops and make each other's mistakes.)

Change is a good thing.

He says I love you first.

She's still not sure he's the first one to figure it out.

Here's how it happens: somewhere between the leg wrestling and the falling asleep, Julie tucks her head against his neck, her hair brushing against his cheek, lips skimming his skin, murmuring something he can't quite catch.

"What?"

She snorts before giving a loud yawn. "I said, you don't listen to me."

"No, you didn't."

"Did so."

"Did not."

"Did so." And she presses a kiss against his jawline and he can't help but break into a smile and it feels like it's splitting him open right there, his cheeks pinching and everything, and he loves her so much right now that just looking at her –

It takes him a few seconds to catch that, too.

And when they're in the car and the sun is coming through the dirty windshield at odd angles, it keeps catching her still-messy hair and he has to tell her even though it's bad timing and even though Coach Taylor is never going to let him near Julie again if he doesn't kill him –

"I love you," he says – because it's all he can think to say and all that he wants to say and it feels like the biggest Hail Mary of his entire life.

She bites her lip, her chin dropping a little so her face is hidden a bit, and she says, "Me, too." The longest beat of his life, and then, "I love you, too."

Everything else - the sound of her getting out of the car, running towards her house, the lecture his grandma gives him, Landry's insistent questioning – is an afterthought.

It takes seeing him with that cheerleader in the car to make her realize just how big a mistake she's made. It isn't even that she regrets breaking up with him, but to see him moving on with somebody else – with anybody else – is too much.

She hadn't counted on it.

And there he is, with another girl, kissing her, and it hurts because she knows the kind of person that he is. And he doesn't just go and make out with random girls at Panther parties like the other football players; he's better than that. And if he's better than that, it means that she's better than that and that she means something. And it isn't right, and it isn't fair of her to expect this, but if the new girl means something then they're halfway to saying that Julie doesn't mean half as much as she used to.

And sure, best case scenario, they'll still be friends and they'll talk and hang out but it won't be like it used to, and she's not sure she can handle that right now.

(The thing about Dillon is that it changes her in ways she doesn't like to admit and doesn't expect. Change is good, that she knows. But change hurts every single time; it's only when she doesn't care about leaving that the transition is easier.)

Over dinner, she tries to figure out how to talk about Chicago. The food is good and he's been sweet the whole time and they haven't been on a real date in such a long time, but none of it seems to sit right with her right now.

She has never wanted to be anyone's sinking stone, and she can't get what that Sherman guy told her out of her head either. What if she is holding him back from the kind of person that he's supposed to become? And what if she's the thing keeping him tied to Dillon?

There isn't anything for him here beyond his family and her, and she knows that. And she can feel his dissatisfaction, even if he swears that everything's fine. (Because that's Matt in a nutshell: everything's fine because he's determined to make sure that it is fine, that it stays fine; the moment that things aren't fine is the moment when it's finally too much, when everything just explodes.)

He wanted to do more than deliver pizzas to overhyped football players in this town, and he wanted to do more than just go to Dillon Tech.

He deserves to do more than that.

(He says, "Hey, I love you. I wouldn't leave you, all right?"

She kisses him. "Okay.")

They run into each other at the grocery store and she feels that kind of dizzying feeling again, the one that makes her feel jumpy and nervous. She's talked to him before, talked to him a thousand times, done more than talking with him, but for some reason –

Here, right now, in public at the grocery store, she suddenly feels like they're so alone, and she doesn't really know what to talk about so they talk about her dad and his grandma and all she wants to do is kiss him or ask him how his life is going and if he ever thinks about her because she thinks about him all the time, and if he doesn't think about her, that just doesn't seem fair.

But none of that seems like stuff she's actually allowed to say, given what happened between them (with the Swede and the break-up and everything else).

Still, it's nice to know that his smile hasn't changed and that he's just ... Matt in all his glory and familiarity, that he still smells like grass and deodorant and just him, that even in the supermarket, he can still make her feel like she's the only person in the world. (Not that she's the only person entitled to that anymore.)

"I'll see you around?" he says, and the wheel on the shopping cart squeals and sticks a little bit as his grandma tries to round the corner, and she bites her lip and nods.

Every time they go out or just talk or spend the night on the porch of his grandmother's house, watching the sun set, she's always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

For her to show up at his house and find that he isn't there, to find out from Landry that he'd left, that he'd quit his job and left for Chicago anyway –

She knows he's going to leave; the problem is figuring out when.

They're still in bed even though it's late morning and they were supposed to be on the road about an hour ago. "We're going to be late," she says.

"S'all right," he murmurs, pressing his mouth against her shoulder. "We won't be that late." She laughs, her heel knocking against his calf. His teeth graze her skin in retaliation.

"Come on, Matty."

The light's coming through the windows all bright and a little too-cheerful and it's moments like these when she feels sixteen again, in bed and still so in love with him, when everything feels giddy and makes her a little dizzy. They've only been in this apartment for about two years, and it still doesn't feel as homey as the last one they had, but mornings like these? – it makes her feel like they've been here for years.

"Dad's going to kill us if we're late." Matt grins, all teeth, snaking his hand underneath the small of her back and pinning her slightly with his weight. "I could still take you, you know."

"Oh, I bet."

"You don't believe me?"

"I believe you."

Julie hums, hands running through his hair. "You don't sound like you believe me."

His knee presses against her hip and she pulls him down by the collar of his t-shirt and they meet halfway, and it's like she's falling in love with him for the first time and she doesn't know how to describe it, doesn't have the language to tell anyone about it, and all that she can remember – all that she can process – is the feel of his hands against her hip, the bare skin of her back, her stomach.

He pulls away to press a hot kiss against her collarbone and she can't stop laughing. It's like how dancing made her feel – suddenly so aware of the muscles in her body and the way that they moved, and where her hands went and the angle of her neck, and every single movement – like she was building something beautiful just with her body.

(Sometimes when she's sitting at the dinner table and doing some work she brought home, or trying to balance her checkbook, or read, or just something totally ordinary and uninteresting, she'll catch Matt sketching her hands, and it always surprises her – the detail in his drawings, the attention that he pays to even the most minor parts of her.

She doesn't ask him about it, usually, but sometimes, he'll look up at her, small smile on his face, and taking a sip of his beer, just say, "You've just got great hands.")

"You're the most important person in my life," he tells her one night when he drops her off at home.

"I love you," she says.

The first time he sees her in the hallway after the break-up, nothing seems to have changed. They're not really talking to each other and she doesn't meet his gaze, but everything else in the school hallway seems to have stayed the same. Everyone's still caught up in their own lives, the clocks are still off by three minutes, the school bells aren't in sync with each other, and the rally girls still get caught in the hallways a minute after the bell rings for talking too much.

The space between him and Julie in the hallway seems huge and too close at the same time, and saying hi to her feels like an impossible act right now.

So all in all, maybe he's not doing great.

She looks up from her stack of books once to smile at him, and then just brushes past him going down the hallway in the opposite direction.

As far as brush-offs go, well, it wasn't the worst he's gotten.

He shows up at her house, hands in his pockets, and asks if she wants to spend the day at the lake. The screen door hinge squeals a little bit and she just shrugs and says, "Sure. Just... let me pack?"

It feels familiar, she thinks, and maybe this is the first step towards them fixing whatever it was that they broke. Becoming friends again.

(In retrospect, she should have seen it coming.

She didn't, or doesn't think she did, anyway, and it kind of feels like leaving the house and remembering you've left the stove on or something, everything touched with that kind of urgency, and she can't remember whether or not she thought this was leading anywhere.

But the truth? He smiles at her, and she feels that flutter again and the screen door hinge squeaks and she says, okay.)

So, of course, nothing goes according to plan.

It's been ten minutes and he's still trying to light the campfire, and she's still trying not to laugh. "There's always matches," she says.

The branches knock softly together when he looks up at her, half-exasperated. "I'll have you know, Julie Taylor, that I was an excellent boy scout."

She laughs then, and he just shakes his head. "I did bring matches, you know. Just in case."

She didn't plan for it to happen this way. (And the thing to understand about Julie Taylor is that to everything, there is a plan, must be a plan – there is high school, journalism class and the school newspaper, and writing and editing, then college, and internships, and working towards her dream job and her dream life, but all of these are mapped out spots, circled and highlighted, and she knows point A and point B and about four different ways to get from one to the other – because she doesn't quite bank on God getting her from one to the other Himself.

And that's fine. She's never pinned much on God beyond just being there and occasionally listening, and these things – well, everything takes work. Even relationships.)

They're sitting by the campfire and they're joking and he keeps bumping his shoulder against hers, leaning some of his weight against her while they eat, and then there's the sun setting, the reminder that she has to go home.

He kisses her so quickly she's dazed, but she just goes along with it, moving with him. She's missed him – every single part of him – and now he's pinning her to the ground and they're still kissing and she isn't sure if they're together or if they're not together, but she doesn't really want the kissing to stop.

He pulls away then, leaning on his hands to give her a little space, and she's a little breathless and can't really think of what to say. "What are you doing?"

"I – I'm sorry," he says, "I didn't mean – "

And that's when she reaches up and pulls him down towards her because she doesn't want to think about it, doesn't want to listen to him apologize and then have to pack up the rest of the things and put out the campfire and drive back to her house. She's never wanted to live in the present as much as she wants to do just that right now.

"I want you," she says, and he braces himself on his hands and just looks at her. "I want this."

He kisses the tip of her nose. Then the corner of her mouth. "I love you, you know."

She smiles, and he stands then, fetching the blanket from the top of the cooler, laying it down on the ground. "You sure?"

She rolls her eyes. "Yes. I'm sure."

He kisses her again - softer and slower this time – and she runs her hands through his hair. He loses his balance and his knee slides against hers as he half-falls to the ground, half on top of her, and she can't help laughing.

He grins at her then, skimming the pads of his fingers up the sides of her ribs until she's writhing on the ground, giggling. It's nothing like she thought it'd be – the first time. It's not as serious, not as ceremonious; the further that they get, the more clothing he takes off of her, the more he explores parts of her body with his hands (and not just the sexual parts, but weird places too like the backs of her knees and the groove of her hip and the side of her thigh – every part of her, like she's something that he wants to study) and she realizes nothing could have prepared her for this.

It's more than just the idea that they're having sex. It's that they're having sex together, that he keeps looking at her like she's something he wants to keep, that every time he does something wrong or accidentally elbows her or something, there's these weird moments of laughter because everything is so ridiculous. And it's not perfect. And she's not sure she would have wanted it any differently.

There's crushed leaves in her hair and she just pulls off her top and takes off her bra and that's it. She's just sitting there, half-naked, in front of her ex-boyfriend – who she guesses isn't her ex anymore? Hopefully, anyway – and it's warm and kind of humid and the sun is starting to hang low in the sky.

He shifts his hips and she can feel him hard against her, and she just tries to move her hips with him. He kisses her again, and then there's wet kisses along her collarbone, along the tops of her breasts until he just dips down and lets his tongue brush her breast, his other hand curling against the small of her back. It's quieter now, just the sound of the water at the lake, and their breathing.

When they're parked a block from her house, he brushes the crushed bits of leaves out of her hair, his fingers trailing lightly down her neck; it makes her shiver.

She looks at him, and she wonders if he can see how different she is now, how differently she must look to him.

"My dad is going to kill us," she tells him, giving him a hard nudge to the shin. "We're going to be so late, and we have Thanksgiving Eve traditions and I have to be there."

He laughs, moving to sit up. "What are you talking about? There's Christmas Eve, there's New Year's Eve, but Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving."

"Not for the Taylors." And then she's moving into the closet, still undressed, tossing his nice shirts and ties on the bed.

"Well, that's 'cause y'all are weird." She rolls her eyes, wandering into the closet again. "We're not going to be late, Julie."

"And I want to see Gracie." He reaches for her hand, pulling her back towards him. "We can't be late, Matthew. We have to pack."

"Mmhmm," he hums, pulling her in for a kiss.

"If we're late, I'll kill you."

"I know."

She pushes him back down onto the bed, grinning. "As long as you're taking me seriously."

The day they drive into the Dillon city limits, Julie tries not to think about everything she's leaving behind.

"Looks like we're not in Kansas anymore."

"Oh, come on, honey," her mom calls from the front seat. "You got to give it a chance, at least."

Julie leans back against the seat, and tries to imagine herself living here. Julie Taylor, from Dillon, Texas. She wrinkles her nose.