Matt
Being with your dream girl was weird because she stopped being a dream. It meant you stopped being a dreamer. The distance dreaming gave, the possibility of perfection, disappeared, and you were left with the reality of who you were and who she was and who you could be for one another.
Before Julie, Matt didn't know he could hurt someone so deeply. Caring for his grandmother, looking after his home, and even being QB1 in a Texas town that only had a high school football team to carry its name were things he could handle—he kept his eyes wide open and took things as they came. He hadn't known being in love would be a kind of responsibility, too. It made claims on him that were different from those of his family and teammates. That he'd stay in Dillon for Julie, that'd he'd tread water and put up with the frustration and weariness of the monotony of his hometown just so he wouldn't have to be away from her, rattled him. It made him realize he had a tendency of showing his love by sacrificing himself. So he left her, even though he already knew, even then, that she was it for him.
When he was finally able to work up the nerve to call her without running back to Dillon she told him, "We were together for almost four years, Matt. I know everything about you." She'd seen all of him, when he was low and when he was mean, and she knew something about him that no one else did, that being good to people wasn't simply his personality or natural disposition, but something he chose. He wasn't used to that kind of intimacy, the way Julie brought it out of him so easily that he could cry in front of her or ask her for help or just, finally, be his own age when he was with her, without feeling like any of that made him small or weak or stupid. That's what he missed most in Chicago. He craved it. He knew it when he left and he knew it each day without her, that loving her was a fact for him. There was no mystery to it, no poetry. And maybe it wasn't very romantic, like in a story, but it was real and it was true. And it was for always.
Julie
Eric and Tami Taylor were hard to live up to, that kind of partnership, that kind of commitment to warm, real functionality. Julie witnessed their marriage, the day-to-day workings of it, her entire life, and even to her it was myth-like. She didn't want to be like them because it scratched at a resentment in her, that they had laid down a map of what her life could look like, and all she had to do was follow in their steps, no thought and no risk. She spent her adolescence trying to be a daughter who made them proud and didn't disappoint them, so that the total love they gave her didn't feel undeserved. She didn't want her adulthood to be a shadow of that. She wanted to be herself, Julie Taylor, without chasing after what her parents had been before her.
That's what getting out of Dillon and going away to university was supposed to be, but adulthood came up at her like water going over her head before she'd gotten a chance to hold her breath. She wasn't sure of herself. She didn't know what she wanted. She had dreams of travel, could envision a future self where she was worldly and sophisticated and happy, but the truth was she didn't know if that girl was real, or how she could make her real. She didn't know how to make something of her life, and it hit her all the harder because that wasn't how her mother had raised her to be. She couldn't help but think that Matt had gotten out of Dillon and was thriving, while she'd left and come crawling back, ashamed and hiding. The irony of it was too cruel. How could his hometown have more of a hold on her than it did on him? It made her feel so small, that the only thing she knew for sure was that she wanted him. She wasn't supposed to be a Dillon cliché, the girl whose life revolved around the guy she loved.
Still, when she was angry with herself and feeling lost, she went to see him, the person who knew her best. And he told her, "I don't want to be your safety net," as though it was a bad thing, as if he was just something she picked up as an afterthought, when the opposite was true—that she returned to him, again and again, because no one else made her feel as good, no one else compared. It scared her a little, because it made her think that maybe the love she had for him was the best thing about her. It came so easy, easy the way she wished her future would come easy. She wanted to be more than just good to him; she wanted to take care of him. She wanted to be gentle with those vulnerable parts of himself he'd shown her. Because for all his country boy aw-shucks simplicity, Matt hurt deep and kept it close to him. But he'd shared it with her. She wanted to keep being that person. His person.
With Matt, Julie knew who she was. She didn't have to think about it or question it. With the other men she'd been with, she'd molded her personality and interest to theirs, wanted what they wanted, did what they did. With Matt she was herself. It was when he proposed that she finally realized she had to stop making a story of herself, stop thinking of what she should want and what she should be, stop measuring herself up to a girl who didn't exist.
Years later people would ask her if she married so young because her parents had done it, and she'd answer simply that she'd just married the person she loved. But the truth was she'd known that with Matt she could build something stable and sure, something she could hold onto while she found herself, that kept her from the self-destructive tendencies she sometimes found so seductive. He was reliable and he was deeply kind. He let her fuck up. He didn't punish her, or judge her, or reject her when she didn't live up to the standards she set for herself. He allowed her to be free.
Matt
Seeing Julie bloom was a wonder. It made him feel bad for Coach and Mrs. Taylor, that they didn't get to witness their daughter coming into her own up close. All they got were phone calls and visits during the holidays, while he got to be next to her as she became a top student in her class at UChicago before graduating summa cum laude and started working in community development.
It turned out he was kind of a loner. He was amiable enough with everyone, but he only had one or two close friends. Julie, though, she had passions and ideals that drew and tied her to people. She was the one who followed him to Chicago, but it was her friends who came over each Thursday night for what she called her authentic Texas-style vegan chili. She found community outside of her university, in the neighborhood where she lived with him, with tenants who organized for affordable housing and moms who protested food deserts, and even with a few members of the arts collective he'd become a part of. She gave herself over wholeheartedly. It made him see her parents in her, the way she reached out and touched people and let them touch her in return, but he didn't tell her so because he knew she still felt vulnerable about carving out a world for herself away from them.
They usually split holidays between Philadelphia and Dillon. On Thanksgiving, they visited Coach and Mrs. Taylor first, spending the Thursday and Friday with them, and then flew down to spend the weekend with his grandma. She barely recognized him and didn't recognize Julie at all, but she was as caring and funny as she'd always been, and Matt felt blessed to have her with him still. They sat on his front steps like they had when they'd been teenagers, Julie snuggling up to him with his arm around her. He felt sweetly nostalgic, but he was also ready to go back home, the one he'd made with Julie.
She must have been feeling nostalgic, too, because she asked him, voice quiet, "Why was it so easy for you when you left? I remember going off to Burleson, and it was so hard. It was like…like I didn't know how to be myself without Dillon around me to tell me." She sounded kind of embarrassed, kind of ashamed. Like she should have found her footing easily and she didn't have any right to have been unsure.
Matt squeezed her shoulder and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then kissed her sweetly on the mouth. "It's not that it was easy for me, really," he said. "It's just that, I don't know. I've been an adult since I was twelve, basically. Mom left and Dad shipped out, and then it was just me and Grandma. So all of that, you know, growing up stuff and finding yourself stuff people do after leaving home, I think I'd kind of already done it."
Julie hugged him from the side, snuggled closer to him. "I wish you'd gotten to be a kid," she said.
Matt felt so loved then. "Thank you," he said. He could have left it there, but he shrugged and continued. "I didn't have any reason to be unhappy, though. I had Grandma. And Landry. And Coach and the team and football and drawing. And you."
He kissed her again, then, longer this time, and when they pulled apart Julie looked at him with a world of tenderness in her gaze. He remembered how he'd thought of her back when they were teens, when he'd still been second-string and had never spoken to her. It'd only been a crush back then, hadn't known it'd grow to be a lifelong love. The only things he'd known about her were that she was pretty, that she was Coach's daughter, and that her parents loved her. It'd made him so inexplicably happy, knowing that she was cherished.
"I'm glad you got to be a kid, though," he said, and he hoped she understood what he meant—that he only ever wanted softness for her.
Maybe he was still a dreamer with her, because he could see their future, them older than they were now, maybe still in Chicago, maybe not, but with the loved they'd built still intact—steady, comforting, and full of warmth and kindness.