Home is a Four Letter Word

chapter thirteen

Mid-April

Dinner with the Kellers only ever resulted in one of two ways. An all out party, or a fiasco. Throughout their entire childhood, Jake and Aaron had come to expect the worst and been pleasantly surprised when things turned out for the best. Their mothers were quite a pair together, but their fathers either didn't show up, or when they did were too drunk to contribute anything meaningful to conversation besides under-informed political commentary or complaints about the weather. Jake and Aaron may have been as close as twins, but their families were also too identically dysfunctional to tell apart. Just as much as they were similar, they were also fucked beyond repair. The dynamics worked in mysterious ways that Jake had never quite figured out.

Tonight's conversation topic was shopping for graduation outfits, which Jake had tuned out four minutes ago when Aaron dug into his second piece of apple pie. He watched his best friend pick each bite apart methodically, perfecting the crust to fruit ratio before he stuck it on his fork. With this particular bite, a slice of apple fell off the fork before it made it to his mouth and Jake bit back a laugh as he watched Aaron stare at it pathetically with a pained grimace on his face.

The slam of the side door was too familiar for Jake to have thought it could have been anyone else but his father. His mother was halfway through suggesting they should all drive down to the outlet mall the next weekend when she abruptly stopped to stare at the scene her husband was making. He was wasted. There was absolutely no doubt in Jake's mind that he reeked of whiskey even though he was too far away to smell it on him.

"Where on God's green Earth have you been? I told you we were having dinner guests tonight..." Jake's mother said from the table with her arms crossed over her chest in defense.

"Y'all had your dinner and we had ours."

He grumbled around without a care in the world of how much mud he was tracking in through the kitchen. If Jake were in his shoes—quite literally—his mother would have already been tossing him the dust pan while flipping her hand around gesturing at the mess he was making. How his father got the exception, he didn't know. He didn't care enough to ask.

"You were with Chuck?" Aaron's mother covered her mouth with her hand as she tried talking between bites of pie. "He told me he was workin' overtime."

"Ain't my business what a man does with his time."

His voice boomed on its way out of the kitchen, leaving both of the women he was talking to and his trail of dirt behind. Jake had to stop himself from rolling his eyes at his father's drunken disregard for anyone else but himself.

"I can't believe him. He does this every week!" Mrs. Keller exclaimed quietly once he was out of earshot. "What if he's cheatin'?"

"He'd be a damned fool."

While Jake's mother shook her head in judgment, Jake's eyes darted back to Aaron who had rested his fork down on his plate without even finishing. His stare was dark as it settled over the bowl of color coordinated apples on the table, and for a moment there was a somber contemplation in his eyes that Jake wasn't used to seeing. He blinked, but it didn't seem to register. He was lost in thought somewhere else. He failed to even look up at Jake until something inside snapped him out of his trance and registered his spot at the table.

"Kenna says she was havin' trouble with that barn door again."

The look on his face said he needed an escape and Jake acknowledged it with a single slow nod that wasn't out of place for either of them. He wasn't smart enough to pull an excuse out of his ass, but he looked to Jake to find one for them both.

"Actually, yeah. It's back on track, but it won't line up to latch now." Jake sighed, giving in, because it wasn't exactly a lie.

"I'll figure it out. Come hold the flashlight." He nodded, setting his cloth napkin out on the table, sliding his chair out slowly. "Can me and Jake be excused?"

"Sure, honey." Jake's mother waved him on. "Me and your momma got the dishes, don't worry about it."

"Yes ma'am." He mumbled, not looking up to Jake but knowing he'd follow.

And he did. He grabbed the flashlight out of the basket of random essentials and keys on the counter and followed Aaron out the side door without hesitation. They handed the door off quietly to each other, the only sound between them the gravel rocks that crunched underneath their feet as they made their way across the driveway.

"Man, the weather's gettin' nice." Aaron looked up into the sky for a moment as Jake followed behind him.

"Oh, you know it's only a matter of time before we're back to sweating our asses off."

"Probably next week knowin' Ohio."

Aaron's lazy drawl made Ohio sound more like 'ah-hi-yah,' but it surprisingly never bothered Jake the way some of his other shortcuts did.

"No truer words have ever come out of your mouth." Jake mumbled in return.

Everything outside was quiet except for the low chirping of cicadas somewhere in the distance, the rustling of the chickens in their coop, and the shuffling of their boots on the rocks beneath them. The sky was too cloudy to see the stars, but Jake looked up anyway to watch the moon peak out from behind them as they drifted past, illuminating small portions of the world beneath it with the little bit of light it could spare. There was something so serene about the night time in the country that made Jake want to roll a sleeping bag out on the lawn and fall asleep in it. It was peaceful, but unnerving—too perfect to be the same as the life it lived during the day when everything roared back to life to disturb it.

But there was also something so inherently dangerous about the nothingness of it all. As Jake stared into the woods behind the barn, he couldn't help but think about someone popping out of the woods to kill them and that all he would have to defend himself was a stupid flashlight. Whether from the shiver down his spine or by instinct of approaching the barn door, Jake turned the flashlight on and angled it up for Aaron to see.

"Ahh..." Aaron sighed out. "I can see the problem already."

Jake stayed quiet as they reached the door, but Aaron reached out to mess with the door handle to slide it open a little.

"Better to do it this weekend when the sun's out though."

"What?" Jake scanned the door over with the flashlight.

"Yeah, one of the doors's crooked. She said it was still running on the track, but it ain't."

"Well, she's not the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes."

"Ain't no shame in that." Aaron grinned.

Of course you'd find that funny. You're the dullest tool I know.

They stood there a little longer just staring at it like an equation neither of them wanted to even begin to solve. Aaron tried pushing it back and forth a few times, but came to the same conclusion every time. It wasn't going to be tonight's problem. Eventually, he shrugged and turned to walk away, leaving Jake staring at the door with his eyes squinted at their pointless excursion.

Jake knew the only reason Aaron dragged him out here was to get away from whatever that conversation inside was going to turn into. Whatever his mother had said bothered him, but Jake knew he couldn't ask him to elaborate as to why. It was an unspoken agreement between the two of them to never talk about their feelings. They only broke it on occasion—either when they were too drunk to remember it or shit was really hitting the fan. They never had to ask what the other was suffering through, they could pick it up from a mile away and let it linger in silence so neither of them had to crack that fragile construction of 'I'm fine.' They never talked about the things in life that made them uncomfortable or scared. They wallowed in it by themselves with the other's company enough to suffice as comfort.

There was a mutual understanding that 'if you ever saw me having feelings, no you didn't.' It kept them alive. It kept them safe. It was a small thing that Jake had grown to hate just as much as he loved it all the same.