Home is a Four Letter Word

chapter nineteen

The Last Week of April

Jake didn't go home that night after they all went out to dinner. He still hadn't decided on what to say, and he didn't feel confident enough to go home without the exact right words to use his irritation constructively instead of as fuel to a much bigger fire that he knew his father would make of it. So instead of going home, he spent the night at Aaron's—playing endless rounds of Rocket League until four in the morning—and then went to school the next day with tired eyes and absolutely no mental progress to show for it.

But, how do you casually bring up the fact that your family hid your college acceptance letter from you without sounding paranoid?

All day long he had carried the letter around in his backpack hoping that maybe one of the times he reached inside to grab a pencil, he would see it and become suddenly inspired with an answer to his problem. His method didn't work. Every time he saw it, he just became more frustrated with it, and at one point after lunch he was ready to just throw his backpack in his locker and ignore it for the rest of the day. He had decided by seventh period that enough was enough and that he needed someone else to tell him what to do or he wouldn't be going home at all this week.

That someone had to be Connor. There was no one else that challenged his thinking like Connor did. If Jake was being irrational, Connor would tell him. He would let him talk and then give him the best answer because Connor seemed to process things the same way Jake did: calculating best bets and margins of error. A life riddled with anxiety led Jake to fear the worst and act as if it were a certainty, but Connor operated the near opposite. He saw which risks were worth the discomfort it took to take them. They both spent their time evaluating options, but Jake's was more keeping himself alive, whereas Connor's was about having something worth living for. Jake needed to acquire a new mindset because right now, he couldn't see either. The line between the pros and the cons seemed blurred to the point where it might not have even existed.

So when seven o'clock rolled around and Connor was getting off of work, Jake sat patiently in the vet clinic parking lot playing with his phone on the curb. His truck sat in the parking spot in front of him, but on the off-chance that Connor wouldn't recognize it, Jake had to sit outside. Exactly at seven, the front door opened and an exhausted Connor came walking out with the vet that Jake had seen inside the week before, taking in the parking lot in front of him out of second nature. A confused scrunch came across his face when he spotted the truck, leading Jake to believe that he really would have recognized it if he had sat inside the whole time instead of where his ass was going numb on the concrete now.

"Hey." His face rounded out as he looked at Jake.

"Hey." Jake started his ascent up. "You just off of work?"

Connor nodded. He knew Jake knew the answer already and that he was only asking to seem casual in front of the other woman. She had snapped her head over towards Jake when Connor had first acknowledged him, but now she wasn't paying attention any the wiser.

"Yeah, uh, you?" Connor played into the conversation that neither of them had rehearsed until now.

"Thought you might've been done soon, so I stuck around. You need a ride back?"

Connor looked between his boss and Jake and then shrugged. "Yeah, sure."

"You the boy with the chickens?" She pointed in question.

"Yes ma'am." Jake smiled.

"Did you figure it out?"

"Yeah, turns out there was nothing wrong. I was just being paranoid." He stuck his hands in his front pockets so they wouldn't start fidgeting with his necklace instead. "My momma was out of town and she usually does all the chicken stuff."