Home is a Four Letter Word

chapter thirty-four

The End of May

Jake woke up with a pounding headache. The light in this room was too bright to be his bedroom—way too bright. As he opened his eyes, his mind was filled with the vision of his living room—uncovered windows and all. He turned over on the couch to grab his phone off the floor, realizing immediately by the pain in his neck that sleeping down here was a mistake.

Everything looked so serene down here, it had to have been too early for anyone to be awake. If it were a reasonable hour, he knew the kitchen would have been erupting with the sound of breakfast pans and his father's heavy footsteps across the hardwood floor. Given that it was a Sunday, he half expected his mother to already have been out the door on her way to church. But then again, maybe she already was and he managed to somehow sleep through all of it.

He brought his phone up to his face and squinted at the numbers 9:04 on his lock screen. She definitely already left. It was a miracle she actually let her kids stay at home and sleep for once.

He wondered where his dad was. Maybe he had been gone all night sleeping on God-only-knows-who's couch, or maybe he had just gone along with her to make her happy. There was no way he was still here and hadn't pestered Jake about being on the couch where he couldn't watch the news in the morning and yell about how the young people were ruining everything, as if he wasn't raising two young people of his own.

He heard the floorboard on the staircase creak and knew it had to have been anyone other than his sister. McKenna would never have been caught making the stairs creak—Jake taught her the importance of light footsteps early on in the sneaking-downstairs-to-get-food-after-dark game. She ended up using that knowledge for other purposes, but the fact of the matter still remained. He bent his head back to stare at the person upside-down, and to his surprise, it was Katherine.

"Mmm... hey." He grumbled through that dark morning voice that worked its way out deeply.

"Hey." She said quietly, trying to be gentle as she walked down the stairs holding on to the rail.

Jake stirred underneath the old blanket his mom bought at someone's aunt's yard-sale and put his phone out on the table in front of him.

"I didn't know you stayed." He managed out between a yawn.

"Yeah. Hunter's truck blocked my car in. I might as well, ya know?"

Jake nodded, realizing he didn't appreciate those first few minutes of being awake where he wasn't reminded of last night's events enough.

Fucking Hunter.

"Mm, right."

"You hungry? Kenna said I could start making breakfast if y'all wanted some."

She hopped off the last stair with a bit of childish fun. Jake smiled the tiniest bit as she looked back up at him.

"Is she up yet?"

"Oh yeah, she's in there scrolling through Instagram making sure nobody tagged her in ugly pictures last night." Katherine rolled her eyes.

Jake had to shake his head because if there was going to be something McKenna was going to stress about, it would be her social media presence. Jake swore no one else in this tiny little school district cared more about social media than his sister did. She ran the church's Facebook page like it was her pride and joy—as if anyone were actually looking at the reminders about brunch that she posted every week.

"Do you think Aaron wants any?"

Katherine looked away, almost with a hint of embarrassment—or maybe apprehension—on her face. Until this moment, Jake had completely forgotten why he was even on the couch. Aaron is in my bed.