Home is a Four Letter Word

chapter forty-six

The Fourth of July

It seemed to Jake that each firework crackled across the sky louder than the one before it. Each one was sent up with a boom, outlining patterns in rapid succession that seem to appear from out of nowhere. How the patterns came to be, Jake had no idea. That was something that had boggled him as a little kid; he would never truly understand the science of fireworks. They seemed more like magic sometimes... a really loud form of magic.

From all the rounds fired off, there was a light smoke filling the air that smelt reminiscent of the gunpowder from the shotgun his dad taught him to use in the backyard when he turned thirteen. Jake was glad his father wasn't here to see this. He wouldn't have liked it much anyways. Likely, he would have complained about how expensive the food was and spent the whole night grumbling over how long the drive back home was going to be. Luckily enough, he was hours away, in the northernmost part of the state, where the fireworks reflected over a body of water instead of lighting up a city of people underneath with their colorful glow.

I wonder if my parents actually have ever been down here. Momma would have loved it.

The sky glowed red and a child started laughing from the blanket laid out in the grass in front of them. Jake smiled as his gaze fell down from the sky, looking around at the hundreds of people who were all engaged in watching the same scene playing out before them. Almost every single one of their faces were tilted up towards the sky—some of them pointing out their favorite ones, some of them trying to keep themselves from falling asleep, some of them wrapped up in some seemingly impenetrable emotional state, perhaps patriotism, perhaps melancholy childhood memories. And then there was Connor. Connor sat in the grass beside Jake, his knees pulled up to his chest with his head resting on top, leaned over watching Jake instead of the sky above them. Jake did a double take when he realized Connor was the odd one out.

Jake elbowed him gently with a devious smile. "Am I your favorite firework?"

"Oh, you know it." Connor smiled back, carefully tracing over Jake's face with his tired eyes. "Sunshine yellow. Goes off quietly, explodes like a thousand little stars."

"Quite the poet, aren't you?"

"You want poetry? I got one for you."

"Let's hear it then." Jake nodded, amused.

"Roses are red..." Connor looked away with a dumbass grin. "Violets are blue... I am gay, and this is too."

Typically hearing those words come out of Connor's mouth in a public place would have sent Jake into an anxious frenzy of spinning his head around to see who heard. But not tonight. Tonight it didn't matter who heard. He would likely never see any one of these people again, and none of them cared to begin with. So Jake laughed. He pushed Connor's shoulder away from him and looked up to the sky to avoid the blush on his face.

"You're a dumbass." He mumbled to the sky.

"Oh come on, you loved it, don't lie to me."

Connor leaned his shoulder into Jake, talking directly at him with that grin worn plainly on his face. Jake turned to look at him, their faces inches away from each other.

Have we ever been this close somewhere that wasn't Connor's bedroom?

Will we ever be this close in public again?

It was a troubling thought, but Jake didn't want to dwell on it. Not tonight.

Better to miss it later than to miss out on it now.

"It was shit, but it was beautiful."

"Thank you, thank you. Only my finest talents are reserved for you, Jake Holmes."