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They never get married. Buddy Garrity proves he's not above punching a cripple when he finds out about the engagement, and after months of crying and fighting, Jason is the only one surprised when it never happens. Lyla comes to him one night, eyes red and voice raw, saying how she can't break her father's heart like this and if God wanted them to be together, it wouldn't be this hard. It wouldn't hurt this many people.
She goes to college. For about a week Jason thinks about going back to school, but doesn't.
--
Dillon is stifling; Tyra was never wrong about that. Jason only survived for so long because football was his way to breathe, but without that, he's finding living in this town almost impossible. Every year the Panthers get younger and younger – children, practically – and it makes him wonder if there ever was a time when he stood out on that field, seventeen and a god.
After Coach Taylor leaves for UT, the Panthers get worse. The glory fades, the money fades, and people start moving out of Dillon in droves. Jason thinks the only reason his family stays is because his father is trying to prove some kind of point.
Tim stays. Tim always stays. "To good friends living large in Texas," he still says, except now it comes out bitter and drunken. Jason laughs, spills his third or fourth or sixteenth beer as he doubles over in his chair. They're in the desert. Under open skies. The fire is dying and it's getting cold but neither of them wants to get back in Tim's truck and leave.
"Lyla's getting married," Tim says. Jason doesn't answer. "To some geek she met at college who wouldn't know a football if it hit him in the face."
Tim is sitting in the dirt, leaning up against the locked wheel of Jason's chair. Jason is so drunk that he keeps accidentally hitting Tim in the head with the bottom of his beer bottle, then laughing and rubbing the back of Tim's head as an apology.
"I hope she has a lot of fat babies!" he yells into the desert, and now Tim is the one doubling over. "I hope they shoot out of her cheering, 'Let's go, Panthers!' and land with a somersault!" The desert is so empty and flat that his voice doesn't even echo back.
He can't tell if he's crying from laughter or if he's just crying. Tim is practically rolling on the ground now, pounding the wheel of Jason's chair so that he feels the whole thing shake. Jason can't believe that they ever once fought over Lyla, when in the end she chose neither of them. When in the end none of it even mattered. All Jason has left now is this town, this night, and Tim.
"Come on, Street," Tim says when the laughter fades and the quiet settles over them again. The night is ending, they both can feel it, but Jason isn't feeling particularly cooperative right now. He feels angry, and drunk, and unsatisfied – like he keeps hoping for something to happen when nothing ever does. When Tim slides an arm around Jason's shoulders and the other under his knees to lift him into the truck – a thing Jason still lets Tim do even though he's perfectly capable of doing it on his own – Jason stays rooted in his chair. Tim sighs. "We have to be getting back, man."
"There's nothing back there," Jason says, grabbing Tim by the collar of his stupid plaid shirt and pulling his face close. Jason can't meet his eyes; he looks at Tim's stubble instead. "Tell me what's back there that isn't right here, and I'll go with you."
Suddenly they're both breathing hard, and then suddenly they're both kissing hard, angry and rough and mean. Jason keeps pulling at Tim's collar, like if he brings Tim close enough it'll erase everything – their past together, the future they never got to have, this night. Tim unzips Jason's pants and snakes his hand around Jason's cock and that Jason can feel. For a while that's all he can feel.
They leave, eventually. Dawn comes. They go back to Dillon.