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May, and Tim was standing out here in Tennessee in a suit-jacket and a tie that fit pretty damn uncomfortably, feeling out of place. Trees were in bloom, pink blossoms fluttering delicately to the ground. Chatter everywhere, girls in bright spring dresses and smartly dressed young men with their heads ducked together, looking adorable. The sight of it just made Tim tired.
College, huh, Tim wanted to say, and wished there were someone next to him for him to elbow and to share a little chortle with.
When he'd left Dillon two days ago, Billy had given him a real hard look, and said, "All right, go," waved his hand, and gone right back to feeding mush to his second one, still pudgy and red in the face.
Mindy had flung a dirty dishrag into the sink -- which was not a reaction to anything Tim had done, it was just what she did all the time -- and frowned and held her belly even though there wasn't a baby in there anymore, and said, "Well, what're we supposed to do if you just take the truck out for the weekend? I can't get anywhere anymore ever since you ran the Focus into a fucking tree."
"Language," Billy had chided, then clucked, "Here comes the train, chugga chugga chugga chugga, open up, chugga chugga."
"'Sides which," Mindy said, throwing Billy a sappy smile before turning back on Tim with verve. "Don't need to remind you we have Mr. Hawthorne breathing down our neck about his SUV which you said would be done last Tuesday, and Billy says we've got the parts -- don't we, Billy --" ("Uh huh, yeah, yeah, wait, what are we talking ab--") "--so what do you think is the big hold-up, mister college dropout?"
She'd given him a little smirk then.
"Come on, now, Tim, you think she's even gonna want to see you?"
"Hey, Mindy? Come here a minute. Need to talk." Which was good old Billy, getting his back. Still good for something once in a while after all.
Tim probably could've used a toothbrush and a change of clothes, but he'd already had the suit stuffed in a bag under his arm, so he'd figured he'd just get going while the going was still good.
The second year Lyla was at school, she came back over Christmas while Tim was dating Michaela Richardson, a senior at East Dillon who wore her hair a different style every day and could hold her own against Tim in alcohol, which was a good quality in a woman, Tim thought, anyway.
Lyla raised her eyebrow at him over a glass of champagne at the godforsaken McCoy football party Tim had somehow gotten himself roped into attending -- almost hadn't gone, but then Luke Cafferty coming by to visit with Becky, had thrown out, "Oh yeah, and isn't Buddy and that hot daughter of his going to the party, too?" grinning like he expected Becky to slap him in the face. Although all Becky did was shoot Tim one of her long, agonizing, wounded-puppy looks, and hiss conspicuously, "Not now, okay?"
Tim had rolled his eyes, but here he was now, and Michaela off searching for the cheese platter. Of course Lyla had slipped through the crowd to find him. It'd been a year since he'd seen her, her off during the summer doing some ridiculous program in France made for people who went to college.
"Really, Tim, really?" Lyla said, and the little twitch at the corner of her mouth widened into an honest grin.
"What," Tim said. He didn't know what Lyla was objecting to, Michaela's pigtails, which were, if he were called upon to give an honest opinion of them himself, which he wasn't, kind of dumb -- but then, when you changed your hair every day, you'd have to do some dumb shit once in a while -- or like, he didn't even know, her face? Nothing wrong with her face that he could see, though.
"That's Michaela Richardson," Lyla said, with that air like she was telling Tim something she couldn't believe he didn't know.
Same old Lyla. Tim grinned. "Yeah, I know?"
"She's a sophomore," Lyla said, with a disbelieving arch of her eyebrow. "Her dad works for my dad. Tim, you're getting a little old for high school girls, don't you think?"
"Wait, what?" Tim said, suddenly confused, while Lyla laughed. "She told me she was a senior." And in his head he was still thinking, kind of angry if you really got down to it, well, if you'd just come back.
Not that Tim didn't make every effort to pick himself up and get on with life; besides Michaela there was Tricia, who didn't last long -- actually broke up with him by pitching a big ugly Mickey Mouse mug (a mug he'd specially bought for her and everything) at his head, which shattered against the wall, and Tim had had to get fucking stitches. On his fucking eyebrow.
At least she'd had the decency to look contrite about it at church the following Sunday, but seriously what the hell.
Fall the next year, he'd signed up for some class at the community college, telling the tired young woman working the counter, "Just gimme something at night, 'cause I've got work in the day. Something easy, doesn't matter what."
And when she'd given him this look over the top of her glasses, like she thought he was retarded or something, he'd added, "You look tired. Come on out and have a drink. It's on me."
She'd looked up at him with this sort of sweet smile, disarming in its suddenness, and said, "You know what? I just might take you up on that." Clickety clack as she entered his name into the computer, then she said, "I've got an open slot for Thursday night at 7 in creative writing, how's that?"
"Sounds great," Tim drawled. "Writing. I am... awesome at that."
She laughed, "Don't worry, it's an easy class, don't think anyone's failed in years," then told him to sit down somewhere and read a magazine, she still had fifteen minutes on the clock.
So that was Haydee, who lasted about two honestly pretty great months before Tim started getting this crawling deja-vu feeling up his spine and had to leave her before he shivered right out of his skin. He would've explained it to her -- this feeling that he had to leave something, and it was either going to be her or like, Dillon, Texas, altogether -- but he had a feeling it wouldn't help, so when it came down to it, he did it over a phone call... or more like several phone calls, 'cause Tim's never been too good at dumping people.
The third time he made up a dumb excuse not to go see her, she let the quiet buzz of the phone line stretch between them a long, expectant second, before she finally snapped, "Are you dumping me?"
"Um," said Tim.
A couple of nights later while Tim was having dinner with Billy and Mindy, Haydee came by (and why had Tim ever told her he sometimes stayed the night with Billy?) and out on the porch gave him some ridiculous speech about how much wasted potential he was until finally he just -- because he didn't believe in slamming the door in girls' faces -- said, "I'm gonna close the door, ok? I'm really gonna do it, I'm doing it now, all right? In 3, 2, 1--"
He came back in and sat down at the table, picked up his fork in the silence and stabbed some peas. Gently. He wasn't angry. Clinking sound as it slid against the plate.
"What was that?" Billy said, his face a big question mark in the warm yellow light. Mindy made an agreeing mm-mm sound of vague interest, sipped from her cup, and waved grandly for Tim to speak up.
So Tim had to explain, right, where the hell Haydee had come from -- the community college, yeah, and okay, so she'd signed him up for these classes, or whatever, and that had been fine except now she wouldn't get off his back about them, so basically, Tim concluded, "I dumped her."
Billy watched him a long second or two, then shoved some mashed potatoes into his mouth and sucked thoughtfully on the spoon before saying, all affected nonchalance, "Why didn't you tell me you were taking classes at the community college?"
"Dunno," Tim said, stirring his food around on his plate. "Guess I didn't think it mattered. Probably gonna drop them anyway."
He did drop the class, but not before he somehow talked himself into writing this five-page masterpiece. (It counted, he argued to Landry Clarke over Thanksgiving break, as a masterpiece for him because he didn't think he'd ever sat down and written five pages straight through before, to which Landry gave a little eyebrow-raise-shrug-grin and said, "Point, Mr. Riggins," before getting so serious on Tim that Tim had to shut him down quickly with a six-pack of beer. Who knew Landry Clarke was such a lightweight, right?)
He'd written it all in one go, just one evening before the teacher of that class -- whose name Tim never did catch -- was about to kick him out, and he still couldn't explain what had prompted him to do it, whether it was just feeling fed up about all the Billys and the Haydees of the world and the quiet, sad disappointment in their eyes when they looked at him, or if it were some last-ditch surge of pride he didn't even know he had, not wanting, in the end, to fail out of this class that apparently nobody else had ever failed at.
Maybe it was just that afternoon itself, the long drive he took east out of Dillon after escaping from the babysitting duty Mindy was always trying to foist on him, heading nowhere in particular, and out the window to either side, the long flat forever of cows and fields and Texas Texas Texas, far as the eye could see. Used to be the sight of it made him smile, made him feel like he was home, laughing in his truck with Street in the passenger seat holding Lyla balanced on his lap, all three of them waving at the police as they passed 'cause nobody gave the Dillon Panthers' star quarterback and starting fullback trouble in this town.
Thought, Texas forever, to himself, then had to pull the car over for a minute and get out, kick at the dirt and breathe, breathe, breathe.
When he got back in the truck, he turned it around and drove it right back to the Dillon library, where he banged out some crazy crap which started in the sixth grade when this girl he knew called Lyla Garrity first moved to this dump of a town, and ended in New York, then brought it in the next week, waited for the professor to read it, and said, before the asshole could get in a word edgewise, "I'm dropping your class."
Professor stared him down over the bridge of his nose and said, "You know I don't say this lightly, and I never expected to say it to you, but I think you're making a mistake."
"All right," Tim told him, then picked up his stuff and left.
He put himself back into work, stopped skiving off early so much and finished most of the jobs he said he'd take on, which was more than he'd been doing before. They even made a bit of a profit in the spring, then had to spend it all on a vet when Kit-Kat got sick, which led to a fight between the three of them (Billy: "I told you not to get that fucking bull!" and Tim: "You love that fucking bull!") and Mindy almost packed all her things up and took off for her mother's place with little Gwyneth in tow. (Gwyneth: named after the actress, whose films Mindy had gotten mysteriously obsessed with in the last term of her pregnancy, but Tim called her Ness because he liked to have a down-to-earth kind of name to call his little niece by.)
Summer and Tyra came back for a month, and sitting in a window booth at Applebee's with her and Landry Clarke, it just almost felt like -- "Like 2008 again," he said, grinning. "'Cept maybe, Tyra, I like my burger a little more well done, if you think you could just take it back to the kitchen for me."
"In your dreams, Riggins," Tyra said, rolling her eyes, and propped her heels up on the table, which she said she'd always wanted to do except now she wasn't gonna get fired over it.
Landry gave her a awkward half-smile, which Tim guessed things were still a little rocky with the two of them though they were supposed to have moved on, then Landry turned to Tim and said, "So! About that story you wrote, that time, do you remember? You showed me? Did you ever like, seriously take some time to edit it and, like, submit it to something? Remember I said? That you should try? Right?"
Which just made Tim regret ever sharing anything with Landry ever. Goddamn worst secret-keeper in Texas -- no, America. no, the world.
"What story?" Tyra said, getting interested now, that mean little smile creeping up into her face, and Tim had to distract them both by ordering the biggest dessert on the menu. Three of them, just to make the bill more outrageous.
There was a big dust storm along the interstate 20 in July, a couple of pile-ups, and business was good all summer. Mindy made a brief show of feeling guilty about profiting from other people's misfortune, but she was pregnant with her second one now and even before she'd taken the time off work she'd been cutting back her hours pretty much all year. Tim figured she was pretty glad not to have to be worrying so hard about where the money was gonna come from, and she quit pretending she cared around when Tyra, after dinner one night, looked up from this big book she was reading, and said, "Oh, shut up, Mindy."
With all the work, Tim almost didn't notice Lyla was back till she showed up in the garage herself one day, thumbs hooked in the pockets of her pants and wearing that sort of shy smile he'd always loved so much on her.
"Hey, Tim Riggins," she said. "Long time no see."
She had him take her out on a ride, and they caught up, sort of. She was graduating this coming year, looking into law schools -- "Lawyer," Tim said, impressed, and she threw back her head and laughed, "Yeah, I just took the LSAT in June, Tim."
She asked him a bit about his life, and he said it'd been okay, he'd been seeing this girl Rachel for a bit -- "Not underage," he added, and she laughed, "Well, good!" -- but not real seriously, and then she said, "Are you happy?"
Which was just like Lyla to throw these curveballs at you out of nowhere when you were least expecting; Tim frowned at the road before him and was gonna say something, really, but nothing came out. The silence stretched out long and uncomfortable till Lyla shifted in her seat to look out the other window, murmured, "Sorry," and changed the subject.
Nashville was a sudden decision, he'd thought he was just going to let her go this time for good, he always thought he was just going to let her go, but then he couldn't help but check up her graduating date, and once he knew it, he couldn't help thinking how Nashville was only two days away, which wasn't so bad of a drive.
Almost didn't go, then Buddy Garrity had to come in to get his wheels re-aligned and wouldn't fucking shut up about how excited he was to see his baby girl graduate, "And she's going to N.Y.U.," Buddy all but sang, "And my little girl is gonna be a lawyer--"
And somehow the thought of New York just seemed so final and so far away to Tim, maybe it was because of Jay, whom he'd only seen a handful of times since he'd moved away, or maybe Tim had just needed one final little push, and that was it.
Now he was here, and there was Lyla right in front of him, maybe ten, fifteen yards away, she'd just seen him, and her mouth had dropped right open. He didn't hear her, but he saw her lips form the word, "Tim?" with her brows furrowed in disbelief.
He had thought about it for a while, of course, like, what he was gonna say once he got here. Congratulations, that was a given, but then all the other things, like how when he thought about it it felt like everything he'd done since she'd left had just been somehow about her, or how he still remembered the first time they'd met, back before she'd gotten braces and there was still a gap in her teeth, not that she'd been any less beautiful for it, or even maybe like how he understood now what she wanted when she tried so hard to get out of Dillon, how he finally thought he got it, how sad she'd been when she thought she couldn't go to college, that he was really happy for her, actually, really.
But then she closed the distance between them, squeezing through the crowd and leaving her friends and her family, all baffled, behind, and shouted, a grin sort of spreading across her face, "What are you even doing here, Tim?"
Tim, looking at her, couldn't really remember anything except the long endless fields rolling past his window as he drove up the 20 out of Dillon, the suffocating blue of the Texan horizon. Whatever he'd been planning to say, he forgot, and instead he just said, "Lyla Garrity, you know Texas just hasn't been the same since you left."
And it was just the sweetest thing, the way she tilted her head to one side and smiled, like that was the saddest thing she'd ever heard. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, you know, I've missed you too, Tim."