by Hayden Hunt
The rest of my day was about as miserable as I expected. I couldn’t get Jesse off my mind. I switched from anger to yearning all day. I really was furious, but it hadn’t kept me from wanting him. God, I just wanted him so damn badly.
I’d even considered going back to his room at one point, just to hear what he had to say, but when I’d remembered his parents were going to be there, I’d decided that wouldn't be the best idea.
His parents really didn’t like me. And I didn’t much like them.
I’d been used to being disliked by my peers growing up. Being an outcast and everything, I had adjusted to other kids disliking me.
But adults judging me? I hadn’t been used to that. And, god, did his parents ever judge me. Before they’d even gotten to know me, it’d been obvious they’d seen me as a ‘bad kid.’
And I mean, yes, I wasn’t religious. Yes, I’d come from a pretty messed up background. And I wore too much black and had my septum pierced, but, all in all, I hadn’t been a bad kid. I hadn’t done a lot of rebellious things. I’d gotten good grades, stayed away from drugs, and had an after-school job.
You’d think grown adults would have been able to see past all the superficial stuff, but, no, they’d made me feel inferior every time I’d been around them. They hadn’t always been directly mean, but they’d never been nice, and his mom had always made passive, judgmental comments. His father had usually just refused to make conversation with me at all.
It was ironic that they’d believed I’d been such a bad influence on their son, because, if anything, the very few times that Jesse and I had ever snuck out or drunk alcohol, it’d been his idea. I’d always tried very hard to convince him out of it. But he was my best friend, so, for the most part, I’d gone along with whatever he’d wanted to do.
Those memories were still so fresh in my mind. I remembered our sleepovers and our conversations like they were yesterday. I hadn’t had a connection like that with anyone… not since him. Our friendship had run deep. And I just hated that, now, we were nothing to each other. Or, rather, I was nothing to him.
If it had been me that had moved away and was now coming back to our hometown, he’d have been all I could have thought about while I was in town. I wouldn’t have been able to keep myself from getting in contact with him. And he just didn’t care.
When it was time to clock off, I found myself walking by his room although he was already gone. Well, good, I didn’t have to see his parents, and I’d made my feelings very clear, so, now I could go back to my regularly scheduled life. This hell day was over. He could go back to being tucked away in my mind.
Except he didn’t stay tucked away in my mind. He was at the forefront. The entire drive home, every one of our old spots stuck out to me like a sore thumb. Passing the lake on the way home sent a stabbing pain in my stomach that made me breathless.
Just like that, all the feelings that I’d thought had passed and all the emotions I’d thought were over were flooding back to me, and I couldn’t take it. Not again, not when it had been so hard to get over him the first time.
I really hated him for this. Not for ending up in the ER, which was really not his fault. But for the fact that he wouldn’t have wanted to see me otherwise. So, now I had to deal with the experience of seeing him but knowing that it wasn’t what he wanted. And that really, really stung.
You’d think that my home would have been a sanctuary from my memories of him, but it wasn’t. It was full of more of them.
Unlike most people who became adults and got their own place, I still lived in my childhood home. Not with my aunt any longer. She’d decided years ago to move to a retirement home on the beach, but she hadn’t wanted the trouble of selling her place, so she let me live in it, granted that I paid for and handled all the upkeep.
It was really a pretty sweet deal. I pretty much had a house for free. Especially since it would definitely be left for me in her will when the time came. We didn’t have a very strong bond, but we were the only family each other had. And, for that reason alone, I did care about her deeply.
So, generally speaking, I was grateful for the house. But I wasn’t feeling grateful tonight. No, tonight I was just overwhelmed with all the things I’d used to do with Jesse in this house. Most of our time had been spent over at his parents’ place, but he had come over occasionally. And, of course, over the course of many years occasionally meant he had been here a lot. Walking into the kitchen reminded me of that time we’d tried to bake a small cake for my aunt’s birthday but had totally misread the directions. It’d ending up coming out a half-liquid mess.
Going into the bathroom reminded me of when he fell and busted his arm open, but we’d been all out of bandages, so he’d had to sit in the bathtub holding his arm while I’d run to the corner store for him. At the time, he’d been horrified, but, of course, in retrospect it’d been hilarious.
And then there was my bedroom… the bedroom where…
No, I couldn’t think about it. It was way too fucking much.
I didn’t have the energy to cook, so I decided to order a pizza instead. After a quick shower, I collapsed on my living room couch, feeling too depressed to move.
I decided to just watch movies and gorge myself on cheese and pepperoni for the night. I couldn’t think of another decent way to cope. Since, you know, it wasn’t like I had friends or family I could talk to about this.
About twenty minutes after I’d ordered the pizza there was a knock on the door, which was weird because this pizza place was notoriously slow. I always ordered from them anyway, because they were the best in town, and I didn’t like settling for mediocre food even if it was quicker.
But, I was grateful they weren’t slow tonight. I was desperate to start eating.
I grabbed my wallet, unsure of how much cash I’d need, then opened up the door.
But it wasn’t a pizza delivery boy standing before me…
“Jesse?” I asked.
“Hello,” he said softly.
7
Jesse
Going back to my parents was as miserable as I’d expected it to be.
I mean, there’d been no way it was going to be good, of course. It was humiliating to have to live with them like a teenager again. With no job, no place of my own, and no relationship, I wasn't even really feeling like an adult these days.
But, even beyond that, being back reminded me of all the tension I’d always had with my parents.
After I’d moved out, I’d done my best to limit contact. It was holidays only, some years I didn’t even see them for Christmas. But, when I did see them for a holiday, it was for the day only. I hadn’t spent more than twelve hours with each of them at one time since I’d moved out.
And I wasn’t even twelve hours into being back home, and they were driving me fucking mad.
First, my dad was driving me crazy just by being the person he’d always been. By sitting back and watching television and allowing my mom to cook and clean in circles around him. It was honestly disgusting.
And my mom was annoying the way she had a million questions for me. Was I going to go look for a job today? Was I going to go to church with them on Sunday, and, if so, for what was I going to say I was in town? Did I always wear shirts that were wrinkled?
All questions revolved around one major theme: how I made her look. It must have been so hard on her, having to deal with me being home and feeling embarrassed in front of all her other good Christian mom friends. And I didn’t even have a job or any classy reason to be back home. I was a total disgrace.
Normally, she’d harp on me for saying I wasn’t going to church with her, which I did. But she brushed it off, and I was guessing that was because she’d rather all her friends not know I was here or ask me questions about my life. Couldn’t go making her look badly.
She’d still had to ask about what church I was going to back where I’d lived before, and I’d gotten a fifteen minute long lecture about how I couldn’t los
e touch with our Lord and Savior after I’d told her I hadn’t attended church in years.
I would’ve went on to explain to her that he was not really my lord and savior, but I was tired of talking to her and retreated to my room.
It still looked exactly like it had in high school. This didn’t surprise me, because what the hell else would my parents have done with the room?
Normal people might have cleaned it out and made it an exercise room, office, or craft room… some kind of bonus room for their hobbies. But no, not my parents. They had no hobbies. My dad had nothing outside of work and television, and my mom only cared about being a good homemaker. They were like… shells of what normal people were supposed to be.
So, my room had been untouched, but it was, of course, totally spotless. No doubt my mom had been in here to clean every week like she had in high school.
I’d used to think she just come in to clean every week to go through my things and look for anything she might not like. I’d actually had to stop writing in a journal because I’d caught her reading it once. But I guess she also cared about things being clean, too.
One thing I hadn’t realized my parents’ annoying behavior was doing for me was making me not think about Aaron. But, once I was alone in my room, it all came flooding back to me in full force.
I’d be lying if I said that, while I was away, I hadn’t had thoughts of him from time to time. Okay, time to time was an understatement. I thought of him pretty often. Still, my feelings hadn’t been as strong as they were now. I’d been able to drown out thoughts of him with my current girlfriends or by surrounding myself with people at bars or parties.
But, not only was there nothing here to distract me, I was basically constantly reminded of all our old memories.
Living here was going to be unbearable. I really needed to start looking for a job, like, tomorrow. So, in a month or two I could have some money to move again. I really, really needed to move again.
Man, you’d think after all these years, I would have changed. That my first instinct wouldn’t still be to run away as fast as I could from all my problems. Running away was part of what had gotten me in this situation in the first place.
And what had it done for me? Back when I was eighteen and had had the world at my feet, it’d been easy to tell myself that I was going to start a life more wonderful than the one I’d had. That the world was my oyster, and I just had to find my happiness.
But I’d been out in the world, and I’d never found happiness. I’d never found true intimacy, never had a relationship work out, never had a friend as good as Aaron. The truth was that I hadn’t been as happy as I had been as a teenager in a long, long time. And I couldn’t keep pretending I was going to miraculously find happiness one day. I probably wasn’t. I was dissatisfied with life and had been for a long time.
And I knew why. I just hadn’t been ready to admit it to myself.
Was I ready now?
I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure about anything except that I missed Aaron… and I didn’t want to keep running from him.
Fuck, I was such an idiot for not getting his phone number in the hospital. Because I couldn’t let him slip through my fingers, I couldn’t. I had to at least try to make things right… at least try to tell him that I really did care about him. I had more reasons to want to talk to him than to assuage my guilt.
Maybe I could actually just go to his aunt’s house. I knew he didn’t live there anymore, but I could find out where he did live. Or what his phone number was now.
Okay, that would be totally crazy and stalker-ish. I couldn’t do that. He hadn’t even wanted to talk to me when we’d been face-to-face, so how was he going to feel about me fishing for information at his aunt’s house!?
Well, it was better than going to his job again, right? I’d made him emotional at work today, and that had really not been cool of me. At least this way, when I called him or dropped by his new place, he wouldn’t be at work and could at least get emotional on his own time.
Okay, no, not drop by his place. That’s just too much. I’d just get his phone number from his aunt and call him. That would be a way more acceptable way of going about this.
I mean, it was also a way that would allow him the ability to reject me. If I wasn’t face-to-face, he could just block my number and not see me ever again. The selfish part of me said that if I saw him face-to-face, at least he’d be forced to talk to me.
But I was not going to be the selfish part of me anymore. I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be so much better than that. I wanted to be a guy who did the selfless thing. I didn’t want to be the same guy he’d once known… I wanted to be better.
I grabbed a sweatshirt and threw it on, using my phone to get a cab over to his house since I’d totaled my car, and I doubted my parents would let me use theirs.
I tried to get out the door without having to talk to my parents again, but, of course, my mom noticed as she always did. Nothing got by her.
“Where are you headed, honey?” she asked.
“Going to grab some dinner,” I lied.
“Oh, but I’ve got a roast in the oven already.”
Ahh, of course she did. How could I forget? Mom had a home-cooked meal every night. And the roast wasn’t for my sake, she just always made a roast on Saturdays because it was my father’s favorite. Along with mashed potatoes and a green bean casserole. Yeah, it was pretty over the top. It was the kind of food you made for a special occasion, not just to please your husband on a weekly basis.
“Right, well… that sounds great, but I’m actually vegetarian now.”
I wasn’t. I just needed a polite reason not to eat her dinner. But, of course, I hadn’t thought this through, as both my parents were now eyeballing me like I was crazy.
“You’re… what?” my dad asked.
Of course this would be the time he chimed in.
“Since when?” she asked. “You ate turkey last Thanksgiving!”
“Since Christmas,” I continued to lie, “and it’s working out really well so far. I feel healthier, more awake and stuff.”
“Oh, dear, no,” my mom said, “that isn’t healthy, you need your protein. No wonder you’ve gotten so skinny.”
“I do get a bunch of protein. I eat eggs and nuts and beans—”
My dad cut me off. “That’s not the same thing as meat protein. It’s not hearty. You need meat protein. It isn't the same.”
I didn’t even know how to address that because it was actually exactly the same. But there was no use in arguing with them about anything, especially my dad.
“Okay well, I’ll… keep that in mind,” I said, as my hand twisted the doorknob and I began to walk out.
“Jesse, wait.” My mom stopped me as she walked through the living room.
“Yes?”
“What time will you be back?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” I said. Why did it even matter?
“Be home by eleven please.”
I caught myself actually laughing. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No… eleven is curfew.”
“Mom, I’m an adult. That was curfew when I was a child, and I’m clearly not a child. You can’t tell me when to go to bed.”
“If you’re living under our roof, she can!” my dad chimed in. He had always been the enforcer. Only giving his opinion when it was to lecture or punish.
“It’s not safe after eleven, especially with no car, Jesse.”
I didn’t even know where to begin to argue. First of all, we lived in a tiny town where there was a minimal amount of crime. Second, did she think when I’d lived on my own I’d just come home at eleven every night? Did she not understand that I’d actually lived in a real city and stayed out late? Why were they always acting like I was a child? You’d think after years and years of me living on my own, they’d have dropped this shit. They’d have realized they couldn’t just control me forever.
Though, I guess for now, they ki
nd of could. Because I was still under their roof. I was not paying rent, and I had nowhere else to go. So, I guess I had no choice but to abide by their rules.
Again, I really needed to look for a job.
“Okay, fine, see you later,” I said, as I walked out the door before they could say anything else.
Because of the delay with my parents, my cab driver was already waiting outside when I made it out the door.
I got to Aaron’s aunt’s house about ten minutes later. A little less than that, I guess. His aunt’s place wasn’t far away. We’d even used to walk to each other when one of us had been sneaking out. But the accident had left me feeling pretty weak and exhausted, so I didn’t think walking was the best idea.
I thanked the driver once I arrived and was stunned by the nostalgia that hit me once I was standing in front of his aunt’s old lawn.
God, the house hadn’t changed a bit. The same overgrown shrub still stood in front of the window to the master bedroom. The garage still had those two little dents from when Aaron had pulled in too close when he’d been learning to drive.
It was going to be so weird to see his aunt. Maybe I hadn’t thought this through, actually. As I stood outside, I was beginning to get a little nervous.
Aaron’s aunt had never had a problem with me. She’d been pretty minimally involved in Aaron’s life. But, still, I was being a total creeper here. So, I didn’t know what her reaction towards me would be.
But, the alternative was never seeing Aaron again. I’d never been able to find his number on any social media; it was not like you could look up someone’s cell in a phone book anymore. I refused to taunt him at his job ever again, so this was my only option. If I really wanted to get in touch with Aaron again, I had to suck it up and do it.
