-1The Tide

It's that moment in life when you touch her and you feel alive.

Matt's breathing pretty hard by the time it comes down to the final play.

It's been a tough game, his first as the team's official quarterback, and he's running purely on nerves and adrenaline now. They have to win this. It's his only way of proving to a town full of skeptics that he can actually do this.

And he can, if these last seven seconds are any indication. The football arcs out of his arms effortlessly, as if pulled by a string, and spirals through the air to land cradled in Smash's hands and be carried past the goalpost. The crowd is on its feet at once, a dull roar of cheers and catcalls, and Matt is nearly knocked over by the force of it all.

So this is how it feels to play, he thinks, grinning like a maniac as he slaps hands with teammates and jogs off the field. To earn every second of field time you get, to feel the calluses form on your hands and the aches melt into your joints like they're a part of you.

It might be just his imagination, but he thinks Coach Taylor's eyes linger on his while he makes his congratulatory speech. "It was a good game," the older man confirms, and is Matt seeing things, or is that a nod in his direction? "Get out there and celebrate. You deserve it."

He floats his way out to the parking lot, barely aware of his feet touching the ground. Landry has agreed to pick him up after the game, but the blonde boy is nowhere in sight when Matt glances around.

"Hey."

"Jesus." This time, it is him who's caught off guard, and Tyra who has done the startling. "Oh. Hey. You - you scared me."

"Little old me?" she drawls, her voice slow and thick like molasses. "Scaring the big, bad quarterback? Don't let the team find out."

He laughs, a little nervously, and wonders how she managed to bridge the distance between them so quickly. "Did you enjoy the game?"

"Some of it," Tyra allows, her lips curving upwards as her eyes dart down to his feet and back up again.

Matt coughs. Did her eyes linger - no, he shouldn't even think it. "You a big football fan?"

"Hate it," she confides, taking one more small step closer, so that their bodies are lined up and almost touching.

"Well, then." Trying for bravado, Matt puffs out his chest and takes a stab at humor. "I'm afraid we can't be friends."

"That's fine by me." Her teeth flash, glinting brightly in the semi-darkness. "I don't want to be friends."

He's about to ask what it is, then, exactly, that she wants, but suddenly her hands are on his chest, pressing him back against Landry's car, and her lips are fused to his and he thinks he gets it.

XXX

The fact of the matter is, Tyra doesn't even like football.

She only shows up at the games because Dillon offers little else in the way of entertainment and, until very recently, she'd been sleeping with one of the players. But tonight, her eyes had been drawn consistently to a different team member - even when the ball hadn't been in his hands, Tyra had found herself searching the backs of each uniform for his number.

That had pretty much decided it for her. She wasn't sure where she stood with Tim, who had yet to come around like he usually did after they fought; all lonely eyes and empty apologies. And she was bored, restless; and Matt Saracen had stepped onto the field out of nowhere and become a household name and, okay, who wouldn't be a little bit intrigued by that kind of transformation?

Cornering him in the parking lot is easy - almost too easy, she reflects even as her fingertips glide across the waistband of his jeans and up under his shirt. His skin is still slick from his shower, his abdominal muscles tightening beneath her touch. For all the stammering and shuffling he does, she'd expected him to be clumsy, even shy, but it seems like this quiet boy is just full of surprises.

"What are you -" He breaks away from her, untangling his hands from her hair. He has no idea how they'd gotten buried in there to begin with. "What are you doing?"

Tyra arches one eyebrow and purses her lips in a way that wouldn't be lewd if it were anyone else doing it. As it is, he has to swallow hard and push about a dozen inappropriate mental images out of his head. "Do you really not know? 'Cause if that's the case, then, boy, do you have a lot to learn."

He makes that noise; a kind of choking, laughing noise that she finds just a little bit endearing. "I took Ms. Radcliffe's sex ed course, too, thanks," he says wryly, taking both of them aback with the joke.

She doesn't bother to hide her surprise. "Wow, Saracen, that's the first full sentence you've spoken without stuttering," she remarks, tucking her hands in her back pockets so that her breasts command even more attention. It's a trick she learned back in the fifth grade, when all the other girls in her class were still in training bras and she was shopping the juniors section of WalMart. "I didn't think you were capable."

"Join the club," he mutters ruefully, thinking of the odds that the townspeople have stacked against him.

Intrigued by the tone, her head cocks to the side. "How does it feel to have all eyes on you these days?"

Matt shrugs, obviously uncomfortable under her shrewd gaze. "I hate it," he answers honestly, suddenly aware that she hasn't stepped back at all to allow him any breathing room. "Wouldn't you?"

"Being the center of attention?" Her laugh, too, is quiet and not quite amused. "I'm used to it. For entirely different reasons, of course."

"Right." His eyes are an indecipherable shade of grayish-blue, sharper than she would have expected. "Of course."

"Hey, guys," Landry calls out, making both of them jump as he shoulders his way in between them. "What's up, Matt? Tyra, how are you? Did you enjoy the game? Where were you sitting? Maybe next week, we can come together, you know?"

Tyra makes a show of peering around him at Matt, who is obviously quite used to his friend's behavior. "You played a good game, Matt."

He chuckles a little. "Thank you, Tyra."

"Oh, yeah." Landry hurries to redeem himself. "Matt, my best friend, great game - as usual, buddy." Turning back to Tyra, he puffs his chest out proudly. "Taught him everything he knows. And I'm his official chauffeur - drive the guy everywhere. How 'bout you? You need a ride someplace?"

"I'm good, thanks," she refuses, but gently. Annoying as he is, he's also harmless, and there's a kind light in his eyes that makes her want to treat him with kid gloves. "You boys behave tonight. I'll see you around."

"Drive safe," Matt calls out after her, as Landry waves wildly.

She takes a minute, once she's seated in her truck, to watch them in her rearview mirror. She can't hear what they're seeing, but she sees Landry punch Matt's arm, watches as he grins and nods. "Boys," Tyra mutters under her breath, figuring she knows what they're discussing - but then Landry rears back and arcs his arm the same way Matt did during the game and she realizes they're rehashing the game.

A tiny grin twists her lips. It looks like Matt Saracen isn't the type to kiss and tell.

XXX

"Dude." Even Landry has the sense to wait until Tyra has clearly driven out of earshot before begging his friend for details. "Okay, that is the second time Tyra Collette has approached you in one week. Do you know what this means?"

Matt sighs, preparing himself for another monologue on how all of the unexpected turns his life has taken lately are going to benefit both of them. "What, Landry?"

His friend nods, very seriously, as he pronounces, "She likes you, man."

"That's crazy - you're crazy, Landry," Matt denies, forcing a laugh to show just how absurd the idea is. But he can't help remembering how her lips felt on his, the sparks that had shot up his spine at her close proximity.

If he'd thought he was energized after the game, it was nothing compared to how he felt after touching Tyra.