Chicago (a Friday Night Lights fanfiction)

Dance

The next night's dinner was much more fun: They met Tim Riggins and Tyra Collette at the bar where Tim was working, eating ribs and drinking beer, and laughing at things that hadn't been so funny once but were hilarious now. High school seemed like a long time ago, and they had all come a long way since then. Not all their experiences had been the best—Tim had spent much of the past year in jail for car theft—but they had learned from them, and they were better people now.

Or at least, so Matt liked to think.

Tim came back to the table with a fresh tray of drinks, including a bottle and four shot full shot glasses. He distributed the shots, and lifted his beer bottle. "All right. To Mr. and Mrs. Saracen." The rest of them lifted their bottles as well, and they took turns clinking the necks together. "Cheers, guys. Congratulations."

"I always thought you'd be the first person to say that," Matt said, grinning at his former teammate across the table. In truth, they hadn't really been friends, not off the field anyway, and Matt wouldn't have thought of Tim as the kind of guy to congratulate anyone, much less to toast an engagement.

Understanding him exactly, Tim chuckled, taking a long pull off the beer.

"This is crazy," Tyra said. "Look at us. Y'all are engaged, I'm halfway through college, kickin' ass, by the way," she added, gesturing with the beer bottle for emphasis.

"And I'm out on good behavior," Tim added.

Julie lifted her beer bottle to toast him. "Hear hear to that!"

"Sweetness." Tim smiled at her. "Cheers on that."

"Here's to that," Matt added. He'd wondered what happened there, how it was that Billy and Tim had been working together and only Tim had gone to jail, but he had never asked. Likely he never would. Dillon, Texas, had more or less expected Tim Riggins to go to jail at some point. Now he had, and that was behind him, and Matt hoped he could move on from what Dillon, Texas, had always expected him to be and discover what else he could be, if he put his mind to it.

There was silence at the table after the toast, though, the rest of them not sure what to say, and none of them wanting to note that Tim had switched from the beer bottle to the whiskey bottle.

Fortunately, a slow song came on the jukebox just then, and Matt put his beer down and pushed his chair back from the table. "Let's dance." He reached for Julie's hand over her laughing protests. "Let's do it. Come on."

Behind them, Tim and Tyra got up and came onto the dance floor as well.

"Hey," Matt whispered. "Is that a thing? Tim and Tyra? I mean, I know they were, and then they weren't ..."

"I think they still aren't, but ... well, it's hard to let go of something you used to have."

Matt looked at her. "Julie. Are you sure? About us? And ... and the future?"

"Of course! This isn't about not being able to let go. This is about ... you and me, and what we can be together. Somewhere that's not Dillon."

He twirled her around and drew her back into his arms. "Hear hear to that."

"My parents will come around, you know. They've always liked you."

"Really."

"Well ... they've always trusted you."

"Yeah, like the way they trusted me the time your dad walked in on us in bed together."

Julie giggled. "Maybe not then. But other than that."

"I suppose I am making an honest woman out of you."

"At last."

Matt grinned, twirling her again. "I love you, Julie Taylor."

"You better, Matt Saracen."

The song ended and Tyra indicated that a switch in dance partners was in order, so Matt danced with Tyra, whom he had always found a little frightening, and Julie danced with Tim and coaxed a smile back onto his face.

Matt and Tyra returned to the table first, and Tyra excused herself to the ladies' room. Only after Tim and Julie came back did Matt realize that Tyra had snagged the whiskey bottle and returned it to the bar.

Tim noticed, too, lifting his beer and taking a long pull off it. "So what do you think, you guys ever coming back to Texas?"

Looking at Julie, Matt shrugged. "Maybe? I don't know."

"Me, neither. I mean, technically I still go to school here, so ... there's that."

"Sure. So does Tyra. But it's not the same."

"No. No, it's not." Matt looked away. He respected that Tim's home was here, and that Tim had never wanted anything other than to spend the rest of his life in Texas, but Matt wasn't sure he ever wanted to come back. Oh, for his grandma, and for Julie's parents, but to live here? Matt was increasingly less certain he was a Texan anymore.

Fortunately Tyra came back, and they played drinking games and laughed at the stupidity of high school some more, and the night ended as lightly as it had begun.