Far From Home - Chapter 25: Chapter 25

Early November
How they had ended up talking about the day they met in detention, Jake didn't know. Ever since he promised Connor he would text him, he had made a habit of interrupting Jake in the most inopportune times. He often found himself throwing his phone in his closet so he could get homework done, checking his notifications every time he heard a buzz in the dining hall, and most annoyingly, engaging in a long winded discussion about why they had ended up in detention in the middle of his statistics lecture.
cheated on a test.
Jake stole a glance back up to the board to write down a couple of numbers and then typed away on his phone.
Really?
nah. some douche grabbed kaylee's ass in the hallway so I told him i'd cut off his fingers and feed them to my cat and miss white overheard and wrote me up.
Connor's boldness made Jake want to break out in laughter, but he bit the inside of his cheek painfully to stop himself, regardless of the wide smile he couldn't stop from spreading.
No. I refuse to believe we have Miss White to thank.
what?
She sent me to detention that day for calling her ma'am.
holy shit no. no i won't accept that miss white was our matchmaker.
After an unsuccessful attempt at biting down another laugh, Jake had to cough awkwardly to cover up the small chuckle that did escape. Beside him, Nat kicked his leg under the table and sent him a warning to pay attention, but he shrugged it off with a smile as she turned back to ferociously taking down notes.
Does she get an invite to the wedding?
fuck no.
Then immediately after:
can we invite taylor swift to our wedding? i'd love to credit her as matchmaker instead.
Getting ahead of ourselves aren't we?
you're the one who said i love you the night of graduation.
Fuck you for remembering that. Jake wanted to shake his head in ridicule thinking back to his pretend phone call with his 'mom' in the diner parking lot, but he elected to keep some sort of composure since he was already texting in class.
I wasn't serious Connor!
i'm just fucking with you chill.
Jake hadn't realized when class had ended, but Nat shuffling her things back into her backpack broke Jake's trance from his phone. He looked down to his notebook at the pitiful half page of notes he took down before Connor had first texted him twenty minutes ago and cringed at the amount of work he was going to be doing tonight to catch up. Flipping the pages over—a little frustrated with himself for losing his focus—he slid the notebook back into his own backpack and zipped it up with a sigh that Nat caught with a curious grin that made her look a little too much like her sister.
"I'll give you the notes if you tell me who's got you blushing in class." She raised an eyebrow to him as she stood up from their table to head out.
"Mmm, tempting." Jake mumbled as he joined her for their walk through the room.
She noted his half-assed answer as a non-willingness to talk about it and instead handed him her Snapple lid of the day as they passed by the last row of tables. It had become a sort of tradition by now that Nat would give him all the funky little facts written on the inside of her tea bottle caps, and however niche it was, it made Jake smile every time knowing there was something shared between them other than stats class and awkward dinner time conversations her housemates dragged him into. He turned this one over in his fingers and read it to himself.
'Scotland has 421 words for snow.'
"Wonder if we'll get snow this year." He motioned it over to her as if she hadn't read it already.
"Who knows? It'll be eight inches every week, or none at all."
True, Jake thought, tilting his head over like he could predict the next month's weather by contemplating it hard enough. The temperatures had already gotten quite cold for November, forcing Jake to wear a jacket to class everyday instead of a simple sweatshirt. He had begun collecting things in his pocket to keep his hands company, which as of that moment included a Snapple lid, an oddly circular rock that seemed to come with the jacket when he took it out of the closet last week, a folded post-it note with today's assignments, and the pocket knife Aaron had given him for his birthday. They were trivial items on their own, but together Jake found them comforting as he fidgeted with any one—or two—of the items as he walked down the hallway with Nat.
She bumped into his shoulder by accident, pulling his attention back up to the crowd in front of him as the bustle of classrooms letting out in front of them slowed the flow of students heading down the stairs. Someone passing in the opposite direction called out to Nat, and just like she had every time they ran into one of the many millions of people she knew, she waved an overly joyous hello to them and carried on with her business. It was an honor—Jake knew—to be one of those few people Nat actually spent her time with. Everyone in the world seemed to know her, but none of them really knew her like the House of Dobovic did. Jake didn't officially consider him part of the group, but that didn't mean that he didn't hear the same stories, and take part in the same banter, and share the same smiles between the girls as they all did when he wasn't around. Some days he felt like he was intruding on something already so well established, but then Rose would ask him about his day, or Camilla would insult him over something stupid, or Nat would invite him to do something as simple as grocery shopping, and he knew he wouldn't be there if they didn't want him to be. They all made an effort to make him feel included, especially Nat. It was only fair for him to include her in his own life too.
"Connor." He mumbled giving in to her original question.
She looked over to him puzzled, but wore an interrogative smile. "Connor...?"
Morgan, Connor Morgan. A name that would mean nothing here like it meant back home. He could say it to anyone he passed by on this campus, and more likely than not, they wouldn't know who the fuck he was talking about. Nat might have, just from having any knowledge of her sister's friends, but other than that she would have had no reason for knowing him either. It was a bit relieving thinking both he and Connor were unknowns at a school of so many people.
At school back home they were two ends of a social spectrum: the school's most beloved, and the school's most detested. Sunshine, as Connor had called him. The radiant golden-boy who fell nothing short of perfect in all the ways the town could define him except one. Then there was Connor himself, a shadow that lingered out of the spotlight and fell comfortably into being equated nothing like it was a sort of home. Connor wasn't nothing, he had never been nothing, but to him being nothing was better than being something worth recognizing even more than he already was. He loved nothing, and Jake wanted so desperately to join him there.
"Um, he was at your party. The one with the crown..."
"Your hot ex?!" She smacked his arm with the back of her hand.
"Not-so ex anymore." He mumbled, feeling his face blush as he tried his best to avoid meeting her eyes.
"Didn't I tell you specifically not to do that?"
"Yeah, at the party," Jake shrugged, "and I didn't."
Nat sighed like she was exhausted from telling all the people around her how to make smart relationship decisions, but she smiled anyway despite it. "Well, was it a good idea?"
Finally someone asking me, not the other way around.
"Yeah, no, I mean it wasn't like he was an asshole or anything. I cut it off back then... for a personal reason. Had nothing to do with him."
Nat wanted to pry, he could see it in her face. Her sister made the same eyes when she was about to ask an invasive question, but where Kris never filtered any of the words that came out of her mouth, Nat somehow managed to keep herself in check. Jake was grateful for it, but he was willing to explain anyway.
"We're from a very conservative rural town. He was out, I was not... Some shit happened, and my parents found out, and I had to break it off."
"Oh." She frowned like it wasn't the answer she was expecting. "That sucks."
Jake nodded as they finally managed to make it down the stairs.
"Did you guys at least talk it out?" Nat glanced back up to him.
"Pretty much. I think he gets it... I mean, he's always gotten it, but I think he gets where my head was at the time. I wasn't in a very good place..."
"But if you think you are now, then that's what matters, right?"
Jake smiled, but something about it felt sadder than it should have. "I hope so. I really want it to work this time. You know?"
"I do." Nat nodded, much to his surprise. "That happened once with me and Blake."
"You guys broke up?"
Jake watched her face to make sure he wasn't charting into dangerous waters, but Nat looked unaffected by recalling her past turmoil as if it were just another conversation topic.
"No, not necessarily... but we ran into a big issue when my parents wouldn't stop deadnaming them."
What's deadnaming?
Jake thought his night of research had made him a tad more well rounded, but apparently not enough because his face was wrinkling with the lines of confusion as he tried to think about what that meant. Nat had learned to read those faces as a sign to explain more and Jake was grateful for it because he was too embarrassed to ask after the last time he did.
"Blake was named something else as a kid, and since we knew each other before college, my parents wouldn't quit using that name. They never had a problem with my sexuality, but pronouns were apparently just too complicated for them."
She waved her hands out like it was still a sore subject.
"It was pissing us both off and we had to decide whether I was going to cut them off, or if Blake was just never going to go to family events again. And that in itself just created so much drama..."
"What did you decide?"
Jake was curious. He knew family rejection was a familiar sentiment among LGTBQ+ people, but almost every story he heard failed to have a happy ending. Even through the painful reminder that his father—literally—threatened to kill him, and his mother wouldn't acknowledge that her son was actually gay, he still wanted to hold on to some hope that maybe resolution was possible. Maybe if it was for someone else, it could be possible for him. He knew it was unlikely, but the fantasy ideal still lingered.
"Well, I told my parents fair and square to be respectful or I wasn't going to see them again... and they listened."
Jake nodded, impressed by both her strength to stand up to her family and the outcome it warranted. "I don't think I have that option."
"They don't listen to you?"
"Well... no. But they hate Connor even more."
"Why?"
Besides wanting him dead?
No, she doesn't need to know that.
"They think he corrupted me." He settled for one of those half-truths that Connor despised.
Her face looked disgusted, but she still managed to be sympathetic. "Jeez. That's rough."
"I don't think they'll ever take me seriously... Connor was just a mistake to them." He stared off through the windows they passed, imagining how pissed his parents would be to know he ended up right back where they didn't want him to be. "They thought after he was gone I would be fine, but I'm still fucking gay so that plan didn't work."
Nat chortled a small laugh, but tried to hide it. "Well, I'm sure you'll find a very nice girl that'll change your mind."
It was sarcasm, Jake knew that, but the words were so familiar it echoed home.
"What, like your sister?" He retorted.
She wagged her finger out to him as if it were an option. "Still single."
"Over my dead body."
Jake found himself laughing over even considering one of Connor's new friends as a potential love interest. If he was straight... maybe. The one thing he did know was that he was not. If he was going to have feelings for any girl, it would have been Katherine, or perhaps even Rose. If he was going to find any girl attractive—which was even less of a potential—it would have potentially been Kris, or, if she was able to hold a conversation with him that didn't have to do with sex, Camilla. They were snarky just like Connor—which was something he was surprisingly drawn to considering how his entire life had been crafted in polite niceties and Connor never cared much for any of it. Somehow, Jake had managed to find his perfect 'type' in almost everything opposite of himself in Connor. Confident, sarcastic, assertive, calm, controlled... even his dark hair, his pale skin and his choice of a career path. It was the little things about Connor that set them apart that Jake loved the most—a reminder that even when Jake couldn't be any of them for himself, Connor was all of those things and more.
No girl had ever felt that right. No one he'd ever met in general had ever felt that right.
In fact, he'd never felt anything like he'd felt with Connor until he met him. He didn't find his gaze lingering on anyone else across the lunchroom, he didn't crave anyone else's touch in the little subtle ways, or end up weirdly attached to thoughts of a relationship or what a crush on someone like him could mean. No one else demanded so much of him to pay attention. Ever.
The more he thought about it, the more it confused him all the same. He didn't know why Connor had been the one to derail his apathy towards feeling anything for anyone, but he did. As soon as he walked into Jake's life, he started tearing down those barriers between his heart, his mind and his body, and Jake let him... no, he wanted him to. He invited him to. Why had it felt like that to begin with?
He found his thoughts wandering back to the web page he had landed on last week, layers and layers upon identities that he didn't want to try to wrap his head around, but might make more sense if he just opened his mind to it. Demisexuality. The one in particular that stuck out to him that night that he had tried to ignore for sake of not confusing himself any further. Can I be two sexualities? If I'm demisexual, does it mean I'm not gay?
Fuck if I know.
Before launching himself into another crisis, Jake cast away all the little questions that would keep him up at night, focusing only on the feeling of the door as it slipped past his fingertips and the cold brush of November air that parted between he and Nat as they both turned their separate ways with silent goodbyes.