Author's note: No real notes on this one. I haven't written a chaptered story in a long time so resisting the temptation to write it all out and tie it up with a neat little bow is a fun challenge for me! I do love reading all the comment suggestions so feel free to leave more of those if you'd like to. I'm taking them all into consideration, and there's a couple that are going to show up later that haven't shown up yet. ;) Stay tuned!

Snake oil and roses, pockets of dirt

Hands of a fortune-teller's son

Young love shaking the earth like a heart shot out of a gun

Lips like gravity pull me under

Reckless weather on his breath

Smells like rain, hits like thunder, a storm is comin', I got nothin' left.

~Sugarland, "We Run"

Matt stared blankly at Julie, trying to process what she was saying to him. "You—uh—what?"

For a moment, Julie looked a little irritated, as if he should have already known this and that he was just being slow in order to make her repeat herself, and then did an about face, wordlessly looking down and rummaging through her bag to present a pregnancy test, a little shyly, as if she knew that she was holding their entire future in her hand. Matt stared at it, taking in deep, slow breaths. His head was spinning, he felt like he was going to be sick, and he knew that Julie was looking at him with those big sad eyes, imploring him to say something. Finally, he did. "Shit. What are we going to do?"

Julie burst into tears.

They drove back out to the lake and sat in the car for a long time, sitting without touching and staring out at the lake, both of them lost in their own private worlds, until Julie finally said, "I think I want to keep it" and Matt said, "yeah, me too," and then leaned across the console to kiss her. When they broke the kiss, she was crying again and he cupped her face, looking at her like he was a little afraid.

"It's okay," she said, wiping her eyes, "It's probably normal. Mom cried all the time when she was pregnant with Gracie."

That made Matt quiet, pensive. "Are we really going to have a baby? I mean, can we even take care of a baby? How are we going to afford to buy it diapers and food? I have 40 dollars in my bank account right now. I work at a fast food restaurant. I can't even afford to buy name brand macaroni and cheese, how am I supposed to give a baby everything they need?" It was his turn to start to cry, now, Julie's turn to sit helplessly in the passenger seat and watch him without knowing how to answer his questions. Finally, she said, "I don't know how any of this is going to work, but I know that nobody will ever be a better dad than you, not even my own dad, and I want to do this with you. So can we just try and sleep on all the questions and know we'll figure it out?" She hesitated. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I love you and we can do this."

Matt let out a breath he hadn't even really realized he was holding. "I love you," he echoed, and then, "we can do this."

Julie laughed a little—maybe slightly bitterly, just in spite of herself—and said, "Go team."

He leaned over and kissed her. He was beginning to realize that she just might be right.

"You know it's after midnight, right?" Street's sleepy voice on the other end of the phone sounded half-amused, half-annoyed.

"Yeah, I know. I need to talk to you."

"Well, I figured you weren't calling me to say hi at 12:45 in the morning, what's up? If this is about football, though, I'm hanging up. That can wait until morning."

Matt hesitated. "It's about being a father."

When Jason spoke again, his voice sounded significantly more alert. "What?"

"Um. Julie's pregnant."

There was a long, long pause on the other end of the phone. "Julie Taylor?"

"Is there another Julie? Yes, Julie Taylor."

Another pause. "Well, first, congratulations on getting back together."

In spite of himself, Matt smiled. "Thanks."

"Second, did you just find out? What are you guys going to do? You're still in high school, right? You didn't graduate when I wasn't looking, did you?"

"No," Matt replied, resisting the temptation to tack a sir on the end—Jason was still something of a mythical figure to him, and it made him nervous to be talking to him at all, much less about this. "But I was hoping you could give me some advice. Can you, I mean, we want to keep the baby and I mean, I'm just worried it's not the right decision and how do you know."

Jason's pauses were becoming increasingly more disconcerting. "Well, first off, does she want to?"

It was Matt's turn for a pause. "Yes."

"Then half the battle is over. But I know you've still got Coach to grapple with, so I guess what I'll say is that this is your baby, yours and Julie's, not Coach's, and it's your decision to make. Sometimes, especially when it comes to making your family, you have to do the scary thing that feels right and not the safe thing that feels wrong. So go with your gut, and everything else will work out. Maybe not the way you think it will, but it will. Does that make sense?"

Matt let his breath out. "Yeah. Yeah it does. I—thanks, Jason."

"No problem, Saracen. If you need anything else, let me know. Just maybe not at midnight, okay?"

When Julie didn't show up for school at all the next morning, Matt didn't even bother to make a panicked circuit. He just decided to cut his 9 am biology class and climb through Julie's window, to find her sitting up in bed, still in her pajamas, reading a book.

"I told mom I was sick," she explained. "Which wasn't a lie, I spent about an hour throwing up, so thanks."

Matt kicked off his shoes, climbing in next to her and resting his head on her shoulder. "Sorry."

Julie grinned—mischievously, almost. "No you aren't."

Wrapping his arm around her waist, Matt's hand came to rest on her abdomen, right below her belly button, where he imagined their baby was already starting to form, little arms and legs and a head and—stop. "No, you're right," he agreed. "I'm not sorry about this."

Julie's hand came to rest over his. "Me, either."

He kissed the side of her head. "So, you still think we can do this?"

"Yeah. We can. And we are."

"We are," he echoed. "I—so I think I'm going to take more hours at work, and I'll figure out what to do with Grandma. Maybe we can just move into the house? I don't know how I'm going to do school and work and Grandma and the baby, but, I don't know. Maybe I'll drop out."

"You're not dropping out," Julie closed her book and gave him one of her please stop being an idiot looks. "If I can possibly stand the smell of appetizers…" she looked vaguely nauseated at the idea of appetizers, which didn't seem to bode well, "then I'll work more too. Maybe we can take shifts with Grandma or see if my parents will help pay for help with her, and we'll go to school and work and just…figure it out. Because that's what we do, and because I want this baby."

Matt leaned over to kiss her. This time it was his turn to say, "go team."

Two days later, Matt and Julie sat opposite her parents at Ray's BBQ, fidgeting and refolding their napkins and dedicating at least five minutes each to picking up every single crayon Gracie flung, until finally, Coach said, "Okay, you two, I know you didn't just invite us out here because you had a hankering for ribs. Spit it out."

"Well, technically…" Julie started, and then realized that right now she needed every one of the cards to be in her favour, and somehow she figured that sassing her father was not going to accomplish that. "…no, we didn't."

"We have something to tell you," Matt said, reaching down to retrieve a crayon.

"Y'all aren't getting married, are you?" Tami asked, sounding alarmed. "Because no member of our family is getting married before they finish high school. It's not gonna happen."

"Nobody's getting married, mom." Julie glanced at Matt, and he nodded, reaching for her hand. "But we do have to tell you something, and I hope that you understand, and that you aren't mad, and that you're going to help us and not just get mad, because we could really use your help right now." She swallowed. "I'm, I'm pregnant."

The silence at the table was overwhelming. It felt like the entire restaurant had fallen silent and that everyone was staring at them. "You're what?" Coach finally said.

"Pregnant," Julie said to the table.

"And when did that happen?" Coach asked, staring at Matt with such intensity that Matt was certain he was going to hit him.

"We—we found out a couple of days ago," Julie said, still staring at the table, and the way she was breathing, Matt knew she was about to cry. He put a hand on her back, rubbing it back and forth in small circles.

There was another of those eerie silences. Julie finally added, "We want to keep it."

Tami and Coach shared a long look, and Tami finally said, "Thank you for being honest with us. We can talk more about this when we get home, but as your mother, who loves and cares about you, I can't in good faith encourage you to do that. We can make a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning and they can talk to you about your options there, but Julie, you are not keeping this baby."

Julie, without warning, turned and bolted from the table, leaving Matt to sit in stunned silence for several long moments before he finally said, "I better go find her," and took off after her without so much as looking back.