The Love That Split the World(59)

“Even if what she’s thinking is that she’d like to shave your head?”

“That would be her mistake,” I say. “I’d look great with a shaved head.”

“Probably so,” Matt says, blushing. The joking, the flirting, the feeling that it means something to be wanted by Matt Kincaid. God, this feels so familiar. But he’s also different from my Matt, more relaxed. Definitely less animated or affected, though just as friendly.

I look over his shoulder into the kitchen. Rachel’s gone, but Beau’s been hijacked by Derek and some of the other players. He’s leaned up against the pantry door, staring straight past everyone to me, and when I meet his gaze, he just barely smiles. It’s such a small, quiet expression, but it lights him up, makes me flood with heat until I have to look away.

“So is he any good?” I ask Matt.

“No, he’s pure evil,” Matt jokes.

“I mean at football,” I clarify.

“Yeah, he’s good. Really good, but lazy. He could be great if he wanted.”

“You don’t think he wants to be great?”

“Nah, not really. I don’t think he’d know how to handle it if the world found out how good he was. He can barely handle having us rely on him, and most of us have played together since we were ten.” Matt pauses and scratches the back of his head anxiously. “It was the same way with Rachel, you know.”

“Oh.”

It feels like a slap in the face, and he must notice because he hurries to say, “Not as you and him. I mean, he was the same way with her that he is with football.”

“I don’t get it. What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain,” Matt says, staring out over the pool. “They only lasted as long as they did because she kept settling for less and less. She’d cheat on him and he wouldn’t even care, but every time she got in a fight with her mom or got pushed around by some other guy, he’d be there for her and they’d slip back into it.”

I find myself thinking about my Matt, how many times I let things drift on because I couldn’t parse out loving him from just wanting to be with him.

“When it comes down to it, Wilkes can’t help himself,” Matt says. “He’s a martyr. A self-sabotaging martyr, actually, which in my opinion is the worst kind.”

I laugh. “What a monster.”

“Exactly,” Matt says, smiling at the ground. “It’s probably what makes him so good at the game, but it’s also why he took all the blame when we both accidentally burned down my family’s barn when we were thirteen. And now I’m forever in that dick’s debt.”

“Do you want me to trip him or something so you can catch him?”

“Would you? That’d be great.” After a second he adds, “He’s a good guy. Remember that . . . if he starts to push you away.”

He holds my eyes, and a strange ache passes through me. This is more like the Matt I know than the Other Matt has been in weeks. This is what it would be like if we’d managed to stay friends instead of falling into a relationship. I miss him, I realize. I miss a Matt Kincaid I’ll never have again. “I should go save him from the team,” I say, tipping my head toward the kitchen, “before anyone needs anything from him.”

“Yeah.” Matt’s voice carries a hint of regret only someone who knows him well would catch. “Definitely.”

I squeeze between the Other Brian Walters and the Other Skylar Gunn and make my way inside. Beau straightens up as I approach him, setting his cup on the counter and sliding his arms around my waist to pull me in close to him. “No tequila shots?” I ask over the music.

He shakes his head.

“Who’s your friend, Wilkes?” Derek shouts. “You know her name, Four?”

“You better get it before Rachel assaults her and you have to make a statement to the police,” Other Luke Schwartz says.

“Four?” I stand on tiptoe so Beau can hear me.

“Football number,” he says.

“That’s Matt’s number,” I say. My birthday.

He shakes his head. “Kincaid’s nineteen.”

Giddiness and nostalgia flutter through me simultaneously. There’s a whole world where Matt didn’t build his life around me, didn’t plan a forever with me that I couldn’t give him, where no one thought we were headed down the aisle. Here’s a world where I am nothing but myself, where, by coincidence or chance or fate, Beau is number four.

My birthday.

Luke and Derek are still carrying on, trying to one-up each other in their game of making me uncomfortable, completely unaware that I’ve seen them get pantsed, hammered, dressed in Buzz Lightyear and Woody Halloween costumes, and spanked by their parents on field trips. Beau’s ignoring them completely, his eyes heavy on me.

“Let’s go outside,” I say.

He follows me back out to the patio. We walk along the illuminated pool and sit down at the edge, ignoring the flurry of mosquitos circling the warm surface. Rachel’s left the kitchen, but she and her friends aren’t out in the yard anymore either, and I feel a momentary flash of guilt that I might’ve chased her away, the same way seeing her and Matt together sent me running.

It occurs to me then that it wouldn’t matter. Just like Beau said, if we’d all been born into the same world—if Matt and Beau were best friends and Beau and Rachel were exes—it wouldn’t change anything for me. I can’t undo everything that’s happened between me and Matt; I can never go back to just being his friend, but I can move forward from the past I have.