Work Text:
She was never as good as they thought. Her blonde hair. Her wide eyes. She had the look of innocence and maybe she made use of that more than was fair. Close your eyes. Fall into bed. A smooth, clean face devoid of expression. It's like making love to a statue.
Matt was the only right thing she ever did. Every man after that was a mistake, the way they usually are. You only get one chance, she thinks, despite her father's endless football platitudes about try try trying again. She would learn her lesson and then go back to Matt.
She is always learning her lesson. She is always going back.
--
Twice a year she drives to Dillon, always when Matt has a gallery show coming up, when he turns inward on himself and disappears into his studio for weeks. She doesn't begrudge him this, she doesn't leave out of wounded feelings or neglect. It's one of the few moments in their life together when she feels she can do the same – turn away, separate, let go. She gets up early, slips out of their still-dark apartment with only a small bag, drives away before Matt is even awake. They don't say goodbye. What would be the point when he'll be exactly where she left him? It'll be the same ritual, except in reverse: she'll pull into the driveway in the middle of the night, cross the expanse of their small apartment soundlessly, like a phantom without footsteps, without any trace. Only when she slides into bed, her arm around Matt's still, warm body, will she become corporeal again. Real. Whole. So what does it matter the events that take place in between, the long miles and the practiced gestures. It's as if they don't even happen. It's as if she's only closed her eyes and then opened them again, and what can exist in the blink of an eye? Nothing true.
What is the lie then. The lie is checking into a motel miles outside of Dillon, before she even makes it into town. The lie is Tim already there, sitting at the edge of the bed, looking up at her figure in the doorway. The lie is his hand at her elbow, then his mouth at the point where her shoulder meets her neck. All these small gestures, all these slow points of contact are a question, a catechism. Then and only then does she turn toward him. His mouth on hers, his body on hers. His movement and then her response.
In this way she did not choose this, in this way it is only something happening to her. Like a natural disaster, like a hurricane or a tornado. Something unstoppable barreling towards her and either she gets out of the way or lets herself be swept up. And like all acts of God, the only solace available to her is the knowledge that this was predestined, something over before it's begun.
Tim's mouth on the inside of her thigh. Her hands in his hair. She moans his name.
That is the lie.
--
Chicago is simpler, cleaner, harder. Life is a struggle the way it's supposed to be a struggle at their age. Matt is trying to establish himself as an artist, she's in grad school because school is something she was always good at but never really had to commit herself to. Every opportunity is supposed to be their next opportunity, their next big break. Matt is offered a group show at a small but reputable gallery on the right side of the river, with the right kind of people. She's excited for him, but also excited for herself. It's the only time she feels any kind of guilt, and even then not nearly enough.
His sculptures are getting wider, flatter. Long expanses of metal sheets and wooden panels. He asks her what she thinks, and she knows immediately of course. It's home, it's Dillon, it's Texas. It's the wide empty fields where the dust seems to hover in the air and never land anywhere. It's how, when looking at the razor-thin horizon, you could be mistaken in thinking the world is neither round nor flat, but never-ending.
The buildings are too tall here in Chicago, they break the sky into pieces. He hates it even if he doesn't know it. She knows it for him.
They go out with his gallery friends, his art friends. They all want to know their story, hers and Matt's. How they met, how they got together: high school sweethearts, then college sweethearts, then newlyweds. They find it cute, quaint. It gives them hope, they say in their sardonic way. Matt gets his aw-shucks grin, plays into it because he's told it so many times he's forgotten. He's forgotten all the in-between parts – the Swede, the TA, all her betrayals and mistakes and missteps. The older men. The long-haired greasy men. He forgets because it doesn't fit.
She knows their story all too well. It was written out for her long ago, that first sidelong glance on the football field, her hair in the wind and his helmet under his arm. How could she have thought to escape that, how could she have even tried. Falling in love with Matt was the first and only easy thing she ever did. Being in love with him now is still like that. But it's beside the point.
--
When did this start, then, for her. The first time was a year after her wedding. She was in Dillon to see Tyra, who was in Dillon to see her sister and the new baby. Another one, another Riggins, at this rate they'd have one for each lonely woman in Texas. Tim was there, because he was always there. He built this house and now he's a living ghost, bound to these walls.
Where was Tyra that night? She was gone. She was always gone. It was this quality that made her so in love with Tyra back in high school, that promise of impermanence. How at any moment Tyra could disappear, leave you behind or take you with her.
That night she had been left behind, and instead she found herself on the back porch with Tim, a beer bottle hanging loosely from her fingers. The sun was setting a violent red, throwing blood over the fields and disappearing behind a horizon that, no matter how many seasons or years passed, never seemed to change. Not the Earth tilting on its axis, not the shifting of orbits, not her exodus or her return. The tip of Tim's cigarette cast the same red glow, and she had to stop herself from taking it from him, from tasting that kind of death in the back of her throat.
He must have sensed her stillness, her silence. He reached out to her instead, ran the back of his fingers against her arm, starting at the crook and ending at her shoulder. It was a gesture she remembered from years ago. When had he started doing that? She couldn't recall. It must have been after the storm, after the tornado, after all that wreckage. You saved my life, she wanted to say, but couldn't bear to look at him.
Instead she said, I wish I'd never left here, and her voice sounded too young, too far away. It was a lie, she had never wished that. She only said things like that when she was with Tim, because Tim Riggins was the type of man to whom you could say things you didn't mean and somehow it'd be true. Perhaps it was how, when she spoke, he wouldn't look at her but at the hollow of her throat. In that space, it was the only truth.
You could come back, he said. It wasn't a plea but a statement, a fact immutable to time or distance. Home was a place you could always return to. Texas forever. How could she explain to him she couldn't, not ever? Not because Matt wasn't there, not because her parents weren't, or Tyra. It was because he was, because Buddy Garrity still was, because people here never made it any farther than the spot they started from. Like this town, like that horizon, Tim remained ever constant, and therefore inevitable. It would feel too much like fate.
She turned to look at him then. He was closer than she expected and his fingers on her shoulder felt, though barely touching, blistering. Heat radiated from their point of contact. When her hand reached out, almost of its own volition, to brush the hair out of his eyes, he gently grabbed her wrist to stop her. She had a choice then, pull away or lean in. Run from the fire or let it engulf her.
And if it was a choice, later how could she say she couldn't help herself?
He tasted like ash.
Not fate then. Something else.
--
Do you remember, Tim says from the bed. She's pulling on her shirt but he's still naked. He's in no rush. She looks around the motel room, recognizes it as one of the places Buddy Garrity used to take his mistresses to. She hates herself for that.
That's not what Tim means. Do you remember, he says again, when your dad kicked me out? He says it like a joke, a lopsided grin on his face. She was expecting something more significant, but then again maybe it was. Maybe that was when it all could have changed for him, but didn't.
She does remember. She wants to say, You saved me then too.
He looks up at her expectantly. He thinks she's going to say the type of things women like her say to men like him. This can't happen again. This is the last time. Lies other women in her position must have said, until they became the truth. She doesn't though. She can't think about next time, or any time after this moment. For some reason when she's with Tim she can only seem to remember how it was.
Why did you kiss me that night, on the porch? She wasn't expecting to say that, she doesn't mean it to sound like an accusation. The smile falls from his face. Is that disappointment she sees?
I didn't, he says. He moves to get dressed.
There it is then, the blame laid at her feet. Even he knows the truth. She started this.
--
No, the porch was only the first time. It's not where it starts.
This is where it starts. She is sixteen, at her locker. Someone has left the doors at the end of the hallway open, and sunlight is streaming in. It's midday, it's blinding. He appears before her, she's not sure from where, at first a silhouette against the light but then real again. She blinks. She is surprised at his solidity, his mass. What had he been before this? He leans against her locker, his long legs stretched out in front of him. There is a spot of bare skin where his shirt rides up from his jeans, she thinks how she could place her hand there, how it would fit. He is here to ask about some homework: Literature or Geometry, he's been held back in both, she can't remember which. It doesn't matter, everything she's written down on this piece of paper is a symbol anyway. She hands it to him.
He looks down at it, says, We must do what the gods did in the beginning.
She doesn't understand. She wants to say this to him but his hand is already at her shoulder, a gesture of thanks. How does this silence her? Why can't she speak? His hand drops to her elbow, an innocent movement surely but the trail he has left against her arm feels searing, incandescent, a bright mark for all to see. How is everyone not staring? She has to close her eyes against it.
When she opens them again, he is already gone, a trick of the light. Outside she can hear the pulsing of cicadas. She can hear the grass growing.
That was the moment. It all started there. Everything that came after was just a continuation, a repetition.
--
When she gets home, Matt is awake. He pulls her into bed, draws her close to him. She feels terribly old, and impossibly new, all at the same time.
You're back, he says. Is it a statement or a question, or a fact immutable to time and distance. She can't tell anymore.
There is no end then. There is only this, returning.