Home is a Four Letter Word

chapter thirty-five

The Beginning of June

Jake always joked that summertime in Ohio was the closest thing to the feeling of hell this far north of the equator. The sun was brutal, trapped inside of thick humid air that fell like a haze over the roads Jake drove down on his way home from work. It almost never rained consistently. When it did, it poured—flooding many of the backroad creeks onto the narrow little roads that made him thankful that he drove the truck that he did. However, there were many days where just having the windows down while driving just wouldn't cut it. The lack of air conditioning after being out in it for six hours nearly killed him. The humidity was inescapable. Today he almost questioned if he actually had died in the past twenty-four hours and ended up in hell without knowing it.

Please God, just one week of rain. Please. Jake pleaded as he stuck his arm out the window to see if the breeze would flow down his shirt sleeve and offer him any kind of relief.

But Jake didn't exactly feel as if he was in a position to ask favors. It had been three weeks now since he actually went to church—even though he told his mother he was stopping by with the Kellers' for night mass after work almost every week she nagged him about it. The lying itself should have made him feel guilty, but it didn't. He didn't feel bad about lying every once in a while, he didn't feel bad about the curse words he threw around with his friends, he didn't feel bad about the hatred in his heart for Hunter, or the things he felt about Connor. He didn't feel bad... and that in itself, filled him with a tremendous amount of guilt for the things he should feel, but didn't.

He felt like he had betrayed some part of himself or God, when in reality he had just continued doing the same things he always had, just this time without guilt for his actions. He had always told small lies when he needed his parents off his ass. He had always had the mouth of a sailor around the right crowd. He had always felt disdain for the asshole he used to call his friend. And he had always known he would feel this way about boys, it just became real with Connor. Essentially nothing had changed, yet everything changed. However much he tried, Jake couldn't fight the urge to label himself a traitor.

It was days like these where he couldn't help but question what the hell he was doing. He thought he had such a clear path for his life set out for him since he was barely old enough to know what living life was about, and now every step he took felt further and further away from that original course. Some little bell in the back of his mind rang that he would find his way back to it someday—like everyone had always said in those poetic novels and country songs about finding your way back home. But, more and more, Jake didn't give a shit about finding his way back to the path. He just wanted the rain to wash it away and leave no trace behind.

It didn't feel right. It felt immoral, disrespectful, like some great dishonor to want to abandon everything he had left on the path. But in a way, it felt like the path had disrespected him. It didn't make a place for him, it made a place for who he was supposed to be. Jake didn't want to be that person anymore. Connor dared him to question everything, which made Jake love and hate him all the same.

It made him wonder sometimes where he would be if he hadn't met Connor. He would feel a lot more comfortable lying to himself. He would work the same job, and have the same friends, and still wander in too late sometimes hoping his father wasn't awake on the couch, but he wouldn't feel like he was keeping secrets and causing tension just by being in the same room with any one of them. He would certainly be a lot less anxious.

Did I make a mistake?

Was it worth it?

Of course he knew it was all worth it for the feeling of joy and contentment that he felt every time he saw Connor's face, but was it worth abandoning the path and everything on it for something that—just recently—fell into his lap?