The Love That Split the World(30)

I start to laugh and I can’t keep my pace. It’s like being tickled, when you suddenly lose control of your hands and feet. As I see Beau come into my peripheral vision, I veer right, biting back laughter as I fight to keep my lead on him. He catches me around the waist, and I let out a half-screamed laugh as he spins me in place, the ball falling between my arms to the ground. He sets me back down, his arms still locked loosely around me, his chin over my shoulder. We just stand there like that, swaying back and forth, my back warm with his heat, the side of my face barely touching the side of his. I’ve never liked the smell of sweat so much. His is nice, warm and earthy, soft.

I turn in his arms to face him. “Thanks for finding me tonight,” I say quietly.

“It’s fine,” he says, shaking his head.

“Fahn.”

A smile crooks up the side of his mouth, his forehead lowering against mine. “Do I sound like that?”

I nod against him. I could kiss him right now, but I barely know him, and then there’s Matt . . .

I move out of Beau’s arms, my cheeks still burning. I pick up the football again, jogging the few remaining yards to drop it in the end zone. Beau throws his arms out to his sides in mock disgust. “You little snake. I should’ve known you were just distracting me.”

“The oldest trick in the book,” I say.

“The one where the other team makes you think you’re about to make out,” he agrees. “Usually doesn’t work quite that well.”

“Well, I’m really good.”

We sit down on the grass together beside our beer cans, and a few minutes pass silently, but I still don’t feel uncomfortable. In the least creepy way possible, this reminds me of when I used to go to the stables with my dad. We could easily spend the whole day in silence and not even notice until we were greeted at home by Mom, the extreme extrovert, who’d fire off a million questions and demand stories from our time away. I like being around people, most of the time, and I certainly wouldn’t call myself shy, but there are certain people you can just be silent with—like Dad, and Megan—and it’s every bit as good as a long heart-to-heart. That’s how sitting with Beau feels.

He lies back on the field. “Natalie Cleary, you are pretty,” he says quietly.

I laugh and lie down beside him, letting my head rest in the dip between his shoulder and collarbone. I feel his lips and nose against the top of my head, and I know if I looked up at him right now we would kiss. I can imagine exactly how it would feel. “Where are you from?” I ask instead.

“Here,” he says, and I don’t think he’s going to say any more. His eyes are closed, his forehead serious. “But when we were kids, I went to live with my dad for a while in Alabama and then Texas.”

“Why’d you come back?”

His shoulder shrugs under me. “My dad got sober and then he remarried, and then his wife got pregnant. They decided it didn’t make sense for me to stay. He still cares about the important stuff, though. Course, he misses all that stuff, but he makes sure to mail me a fifth of whiskey every few months in his place.”

I sit up on my elbow and look at him until his hazel eyes open. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fahn,” he says. “This is home anyway.”

I wonder what that must feel like, to know that for sure. This is home. I look around the field, up at the stars, back down to Beau’s hazel eyes. I listen to the crickets sing and watch the sparkle of lightning bugs around us. When the world is quiet and no one else is around, Union still feels like home. I don’t think that feeling ever left me, really. It’s the noise and eyes of other people here that make me feel stilted and caged, like I’m onstage and everyone is watching for signs that I don’t belong in everything I do. I’d like to think I’m self-aware enough to know that thought is both narcissistic and ridiculous, but at the same time, I can’t make myself stop acting like it’s true. Being around people is exhausting. Being around Beau is like a really good version of being alone, as easy but more fun.

I lie back down, and Beau’s arm wraps around me, his fingers soft on my shoulder. “I don’t know my birth parents,” I tell him. “I was adopted when I was eleven days old, and I’ve always lived here, but I don’t really know where home-home is.”

“I bet your mom was a doctor,” he says.

“Oh yeah? What makes you think that?”

“Same reason you knew I played football, probably.”

“My muscular body and worn-out T-shirt,” I say.

“Tell me you’re not going away to some fancy college to become a doctor or a lawyer or something like that,” he says.

“Actually, no,” I say.

He looks down the plane of his face at me. “So you’re staying here.”

“Well, no.” I’m unable to meet his eyes. “I am going away to some fancy college, but I think I’m going to study history.”

“History.” His thick eyebrows rise. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises.”

“Are you surprised by how boring my future sounds?”

“It was never my favorite subject,” he says.

“What was?”

“Probably gym,” he teases.

“Well, that was my second choice,” I say. “I’m just not sure Brown offers degrees in classes that are named for the room they take place in.”