Bright headlights swing around the road. I hurry to the side of the path as a junker truck drives past, then reverses to stop beside me. The glare of the headlights is blinding, but I can see the door swing open and someone squinting through the darkness at me.

“Natalie?”

Beau swings his legs out of his truck and comes toward me.

9

“What happened?” he says. “Are you okay?”

I bite my bottom lip and nod. If I speak now, it’ll only lead to sobbing. He stands in front of me, his hands resting on his hips. “Natalie, what happened?”

I drop my face into my hands and try to press back the tears. “I can’t” is all I offer up. When I look back up at him, he gently grabs my shoulders and pulls me against him, wrapping his arms around me and cupping the back of my head with one of his big hands.

“Are you hurt?” His low voice rumbles through me, and I shake my head. “Do you need a ride home?”

“Mm-hm,” I manage. Neither of us releases the other right away. I feel a terrible sadness sweep over me, the last cleaving of myself from the world I thought I knew.

Beau’s hands lift to gently hold the sides of my face, and he pulls back to look me in the eyes. “Let’s get you home,” he says softly.

I follow him to the truck and climb in on the passenger side. It’s not like Derek’s Ford; it’s boxy and sits low to the ground, the interior a rough fabric covered in spills and burns, and the windows the kind you have to crank by hand. “What were you doing here?” I ask him.

He starts the engine. “Friend of mine invited me to a party.”

“Oh.” I run my hands over my cheeks to wipe them dry. “I’m sorry—you should go. I can find another ride.” The thought of calling my parents to come pick me up from this disaster makes me nauseous.

“Heard it was pretty close to your track,” Beau continues. “And I figured you might still be waiting for me to find you.”

I’m not really sure how to respond, but then he smiles, and my mouth follows his lead.

I tear my gaze from his and pull my phone from my pocket. “I should let someone know where I’m going.” I was supposed to stay the night at Megan’s; her parents are way less strict about knowing where she is or enforcing a curfew. But when I press Megan’s name the call won’t go through, and I get an automated message informing me that the line isn’t in service. I press END and text her instead, cursing my carrier under my breath.

“Ready?” Beau says.

I nod because I’m not sure what else to do. He stretches his arm across the back of the seat as he cranes his neck to check for traffic behind us. We rumble backward over the gravel and onto the bridge, through the strip of forest to the parking lot beyond. Then he takes the truck out of reverse and pulls up by the church.

That’s when I realize the church is wrong. “Oh my God.”

He looks over at me then ducks his head to follow my gaze. It’s not the wrong color or in the wrong place, but it is much too big. There’s a whole wing that shouldn’t be there—that wasn’t there when Megan and I arrived. “Do you see that?” I ask.

“See what?”

“That wing right there.” I roll down the window to get a better look and point at it. “When did that get there?’

“The Kincaid family donated that,” he says. “Or the money for it, I guess.”

“You know the Kincaids?” I say, confused.

“No,” he says after a pause. “My mom used to go out with a guy from the church. Real nice guy. They were gonna get married for sure, just as soon as he and his wife got divorced.”

“The Kincaids don’t even go to that church,” I say.

He just shrugs and pulls onto the road, cranking his window down to match mine. For a while we don’t talk, but it’s not awkward despite the obvious tension between us. At least I think it’s obvious. I only have experiences with Matt to compare things to, and this feels like something else entirely.

Matt. Thinking about him makes my stomach roil.

“I don’t want to go home,” I admit. If I go home, I’ll be sad and lonely, upset about Matt and endlessly fixated on Grandmother’s warning and the way the world keeps changing. Sitting with Beau, I don’t feel like those things can get at me as easily.

“Where do you wanna go, then, Natalie Cleary?” Beau says. “You want beer and cereal?”

His hazel eyes flash from the road to me, and I feel an instant flush of heat from my chest out through my shoulders and neck. He gives me that smile that makes his eyelids look heavy, and the wind whipping through his window blows a piece of his hair against his mouth.

As if to prove our thoughts are in sync, he moves his hand from the headrest and tucks a stray wisp of my own hair behind my ear, then sets his hand down behind my head and turns back to the road.

The thought of going to Beau’s house makes me feel like my veins are full of butterflies. But I turn cold as everything that happened tonight pushes to the forefront of my mind. I don’t think I could handle it if something real happened between me and Beau tonight. “I think I want to be outside for a little bit, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.” He draws up to a stoplight, scans the abandoned intersection, and turns us back the way we came. When we pull onto the driveway to the high school, we pass the side of Matt’s property, and I can vaguely make out the sounds of the party in the distance. My stomach turns sour, and I close my eyes, focusing on the warm breeze rippling over me to stave off tears.

Beau pulls around the street behind the field house on the far side of the football stadium and turns the truck off.

“I knew it,” I say.

“Knew what?”

“Let me guess,” I say. “Fullback.”

“What makes you so sure I play?” He climbs out of the truck, and I follow him around to the back.

“Don’t you?” I ask.

He pulls aside a tarp in the truck bed, lifts up a six-pack of Miller High Life, and rests the cans on the tailgate.

“Come on. You’re such a football player.” I glance down, and sure enough there’s a battered, battle-weary football lying there in the bed. I hold it up.

He stares at me for a long moment, then finally says through a smile, “No idea how that got there.”