I let out a growl. “Sorry.”
“Oooh,” she teases, “you’re tired. You’re accent is wicked thick right now.”
“Wicked?” I tease back. “So is yours.”
“Shush.”
“You shush.”
“Anyway,” she continues. “I know it’s about letting Jesus in. But not everyone is there, you know? And sometimes you have to go away from home, even if home is your head, in order to figure out what, exactly, it is you’re missing.”
Something in her voice makes me nervous. “You homesick, K. Sawyer?”
“Yeah,” she chuckles, “but the bitch of it is, I don’t even know what my home is.”
I’m silent, because this is where Kennedy and I have a lot more in common than I think either of us fully realize. We both know how we were raised, but neither of us knows if that’s where our hearts feel at home. The part that turns my stomach in knots is that the place she’s examining and clearly moving closer to is the part I’m praying to get away from.
“Why have you been weird lately?” She finally calls me out. “Hello?” she asks several seconds later when I’ve failed to come up with anything useful to say.
“It’s complicated,” I go with.
She chuckles sarcastically. The only person I’ve met that can weave sarcasm into laughter as effectively as she does. “Welcome to it. Seriously, though. Did I offend you, or something?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, like, I don’t know …”
“You can ask me, Kennedy, we’re several hundred miles apart by now. I’m not going to throw anything at you,” I tease.
“Fine.” She huffs. “Just, like, the past several weeks you’ve always been, like, right by my side. And, I don’t know, the other day you didn’t even, like, hug me right.”
I can tell she’s nervous by her exponential increase of the word “like.”
“Hug you right?”
“Yeah,” she responds quickly. “Like … it wasn’t a Matt hug.”
My chest squeezes around the term I hadn’t even realized she created. Matt hug.
“I …” I start, but she keeps talking.
“I need you to hug me sometimes. I need that warm, overpowering hug to remind me that you’re a real person, and that I’m a real person, too, and that I’m going to be okay. I’m freaked out a lot, you know. But … crap … do you have a girlfriend at home? Jeeeeeeeze, I can’t believe I never asked you. What’s wrong with me?” Her words spill out faster and faster.
“Kennedy … Kennedy. K. Sawyer!” I half-shout through a laugh. The woman across the aisle is thoroughly enjoying my half of the conversation. “Calm down. No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Oh,” she sounds equal parts relieved and disappointed, “I thought you’d developed a guilty conscience about hugging a girl who wasn’t your girlfriend.”
I’m silent because, in part, she’s right.
“Wait,” she starts, as if she can read my brain, “is that it?”
I swallow hard. “Is what it?”
“Is it because of some personal rules about not hugging non-girlfriends? I mean, a couple of the times you hugged me were in pretty emotionally intense situations, so I get that in your mind that might have been getting carried away, or something. And, I know that the CU guidelines are actually less strict for some students than their own personal or home rules … is that you?”
“Again … it’s complicated. I don’t really feel weird about hugging you, but I need to keep that in check.” I decide to be as honest with her as I can be. “Like, I wouldn’t want one of us to get the wrong idea, because then both of us will end up getting hurt. I just …” I trail off, taking a breath to stop myself from telling her I like her like that.
“You just …” she prompts me.
“I’m broken there, Kennedy. I’ve got issues.” Admitting it feels like a ten-ton elephant left my chest, then kicked me in the head.
“Was it a bad breakup? Like, have you been down this road with someone? Sleep with someone and you both, like, regretted it or something?”
“No!” I respond instantly. “There was no bad breakup, and no sex.”
“No sex? Like … ever?”
“No,” I whisper-shout. “I’ve never had sex. What don’t you understand about where I come from?”
Kennedy clicks her tongue. “I understand that people break rules all the time. And, from talk around campus, I realize that I’ve got more in common with Bridgette and Eden than I thought I did in the V-department.”
“You’ve never had sex either?” I try to hide my astonishment, but even the lady across the aisle catches it. She clears her throat in an attempt to hide her laughter, avoiding eye contact with me.
“You sound so surprised,” Kennedy spits out.
“I didn’t have a ton of information to work with, K. Sawyer. Just goin’ with what I know.”
“And that made you think I’d had sex?” She sounds offended, but I’m not about to let her get away with it.
“Don’t give me that,” I challenge her. “You know where I was raised, Kennedy. I’m supposed to save myself for marriage and for a girl who does the same. And everyone who hasn’t come to Jesus has probably stumbled in this area. The teen pregnancy rates are what they are for a reason. Someone is having sex.”
“Did you honestly think I’d had sex before?” she asks. “I mean you know I’m a Christian.”
“Right.” I sigh. “But not born again, so, in some circles, that doesn’t count.”
“Nice,” she cracks.
“Right?” I agree. “What are some things you’ve thought about us?”
“Who? Evangelicals? Or Southerners?”
I grumble. “Both.”
“Okay, as far as Evangelicals go … that you’re all crazy. Too intense. You think you’re all right about Jesus and the Bible is a hundred percent accurate. Oh, and people and dinosaurs walked together and the earth is, like, four-thousand-years-old, or something like that. Which, honestly, leads to the assumption that you’re all a little dumb. Sorry,” she adds in quickly.
“Forgiven?” I ask.
“Forgiven,” she answers. “And me?”
“Yeah, I guess I’ll let you off the hook this time.”
“Oh, come on!” She shouts away from the receiver, so I know she’s not talking to me. “Matt, I gotta go.”
“What’s wrong?” I’d almost forgotten that I’d asked her to talk just so I knew she was okay with that miscreant on the train.
One you’re supposed to love.
Kennedy’s voice is higher pitched than usual. “Our psychedelic baseball fan just spewed his Gatorade all over his seat.” I chuckle at her invisible air-quotes around his beverage of choice. “Good news? We get to move into a new car and he is staying in here. Bad news? I gotta go so I can get my crap together. Then, I’m probably going to try to sleep for a while since I’ll get to Connecticut at the crack of dawn. How much more time do you have on the train?”
I pull my phone away from my ear to check the time. “Just a couple hours.”
“Well, stay out of trouble,” she says with a small laugh. “Text me any excitement, if you should be as lucky as I’ve been today. Oh! Also text me over break, okay?”
“You got it. You text me, too.”
“I will. Oh,” she adds in again. “Matt?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not broken. I don’t know what your story is, and I know you’ll tell me eventually, but you’re definitely not broken.”
I let out a soft sigh. “You’re sweet.”
“So are you. All right, it’s starting to stink in here, gotta go. Bye!”
“Bye,” I say long after the call ends.
Scrolling past my hidden “Heavy Metal” playlist, I settle for some Casting Crowns. I need to get my head on, and I know these guys get it. They get where I am, even if I don’t know how much I jive with their message. It’s not that I’m question
ing my belief in God, or Jesus, or whatever, but seeing what my family has been put through in the past few years leaves me wondering.
Why?
My dad used to be a good guy. A hard working, Bible-loving, family man of a good guy. Then, just like that … gone. Everything I revered in him and believed to be true was washed away. Why would God do that to me? To test my belief? Nearly destroy my whole family just to test my belief? Not to mention my mother’s and sister’s?
“Girlfriend?” The woman across the aisle from me speaks up.
“Excuse me?” I ask politely.
She nods to my phone. “Was that your girlfriend?”
I shake my head. “Just a friend. My best friend,” I say out loud for the first time.
A sweet smile crosses her lips. “Yet,” she says.
“What?”
Shaking her head slightly, she goes back to her book. “Nothing. Sorry for butting in.”
“Not at all, ma’am.” I dial up my accent and southern charm. Her accent sounds about as far north as Kennedy’s does, so I know this could go one of two ways, but I’m counting on Hollywood’s romanticism of Southern boys to take over.
She takes the bait and smiles at me. “Keep that up with her, and she’ll be your girlfriend in no time.”
Grinning, I click play and adjust my earbuds before leaning my head against the window. No matter what ends up happening with Kennedy and I in the future, I desperately need a friend right now. More than I ever have.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I’m Letting Go
Kennedy.
Thankfully, the drunken, scorned lover was the most exciting thing that happened on my trip. I was able to sleep several hours straight last night, thanks to my earbuds, neck pillow, and eye mask, and even though we’ll be pulling into the Stamford station in a few minutes, I managed to snag a cup of coffee from the dining car. I need to be awake enough to order at Starbucks, which will be my first stop once I get into my mom’s car.
I grin at the horror that would override Asher’s normally straight-faced facade if I told him I plan to spend a hundred dollars, give or take, at the international coffee chain over the course of the next several days. He asked me once, just after he hired me, if I ever drank there. My lack of response was all he needed. He just shook his head, told me that forgiveness was meant for coffee-drinkers, too, and walked away. I guess I should have picked up that he was a Jesus freak then, but I still thought he was joking around with me about my residence up on The Hill. I resolve to get to know him better once I get back to campus. I’ve avoided talk with him about the prison ministry that I know he has, because he hasn’t told me about it. It’s all been second hand information and I don’t want to seem like a weird stalker. But, I’m curious and, if nothing else, I’ve learned it’s best to go straight to the source when you need actual information.
Once inside the station, I’m grateful to shuffle past the luggage carousel and straight to the main area. This is one of the busiest Amtrak stations in Connecticut—save for New Haven—so business people traveling to and from jobs in New York City, and parts of Connecticut are forced to co-mingle with travel-wary Thanksgiving passengers, such as myself. In an effort to cause as little angst for those on their way to work, I keep my head down and head for the front sidewalk, where I arranged for my mom to pick me up. I’m anxious to see her, but hugging in the middle of a thousand stressed out corporate asshats is not my idea of a happy reunion.
Standing outside, I’m less than enthusiastic to have to dig for the thickest sweater I’d packed for myself when heading to Carter. And, admittedly, it’s not thick at all. A cashmere cardigan, that I’ve only worn once on campus, is doing a crappy job of saving my skin from the icy bite of the wind. And snow.
Snow!
Blinking like I’ve never opened my eyes before, my eyes dart around the parking lot and the surrounding trees. My goose bumped skin is taking a back seat to the fresh, glittering snow resting delicately on the branches and blowing in sparkling circles through the parking lot. It’s a sunny day, made blindingly so by the reflective layer of icy snow.
“Snow!” I raise my arms and jump up and down, forgetting momentarily that it doesn’t typically snow this early.
“From around here?” a guy sporting a UC Berkley sweatshirt asks, standing a few feet away from me.
I nod wildly. “I am, but I haven’t seen snow yet this year. I go to school in North Carolina.”
“Oh yeah?” He tilts his head to the side, interested. “Chapel Hill?” he asks of one of UNC’s campuses.
I shake my head. “No. A smallish school. Carter.” I rub my hands together, blowing on them for extra warmth.
“Carter University?” he questions, and suddenly I find myself wincing, waiting for the look of pity, horror, or grief that is sure to cross his face.
I clear my throat. “You’ve heard of it?” I ask brightly, trying to hide my nerves.
He scrunches his eyebrows as if he’s trying to place it. I take this moment to enjoy his California-kissed sandy blonde hair, shaggy by normal standards—extreme by Carter’s. His eyes are light brown—almost like sand themselves. He’s basically turned into the beach, it seems, during his time at Berkley. His tanned skin mocks the snow blowing between us.
“Christian school, right?” he finally asks.
I can’t tell if he’s messing with me. If you’ve heard of Carter, it’s not usually in passing. There’s usually one divisive reason or another that the name would pass around the dinner table. Especially in Connecticut.
“Yep.” I nod, tightening my sweater around me and wondering where in God’s name my mother is.
“You live around here?”
I nod.
He looks down to the sidewalk for a minute, then sets his hands on his hips before looking up at me. “You look familiar.”
“No I don’t,” I spit out.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Wait. Are you that televangelist’s daughter?”
Headdesk.
His eyes widen during my silence. “No way.”
I shrug. “Yes way. How did you even …?”
“Kennedy Sawyer?” He needs more confirmation, apparently.
“That’s me.”
He points to his chest. “I’m Brock Kratz.”
Brock. Naturally …
“Hi Brock.” I stick out my hand. “I’d introduce myself, but that would seem a bit contrived. Wait,” most of the air leaves my lungs, “did you say Kratz? Are you related to …?”
My ex-boyfriend?
“Trent?” he asks, smiling from ear to sun-kissed ear.
Yep, that’s him.
“Yeah. How do you … what?”
“I’m his cousin. His dad’s brother’s son. We live out in San Dimas.” He becomes more animated by the second. “Yeah, man, Trent called me a couple of weeks ago and told me what was going down with you. Said you’d be on the Today Show. How weird is this?”
I sigh. “It’s uncanny …”
“Will I see you on Friday at Trent’s party?”
I shrug. “Stranger things have happened.”
Stranger than showing up at my ex-boyfriend’s house nearly two years after we last kissed.
“Dude, well,” he reaches out his hand, not to shake mine, but to high-five it, “I hope to see you. That’s some crazy shit there, right? That school? Jesus Christ.” His eyes widen. “Shit, sorry. I mean …”
I hold up my hand. “Take it easy,” I dryly assure him. “You’re forgiven.”
“You’re an awesome chick,” he says, moving toward a taxi that’s idling at the curb. “I hope to see you Friday.”
I wave frantically. “Doubtful,” I mumble through my full-toothed smile.
He doesn’t seem to hear me, which is little consolation given he’s probably going to tell Trent while he’s in the car that he’s had a run-in with me. I thought it was odd that I hadn’t heard from Trent during the whole Roland fiasco. Eve
n though we’d broken up before he went to college, we always kept loose tabs on each other. I’d get a text from him if I had a good basketball game, and he sent me flowers when he found out I’d nabbed the valedictorian spot in my graduating class. So, it was just … weird when there was silence on his end during my small time in the national spotlight.
Even weirder was he’d called his cousin about it without so much as a text asking me if, oh, I don’t know, I was okay having my family tree rearranged on national TV.
Whatever.
Despite being on the fence about going to his party as it was, given that I’m still expected to play by CU rules despite being seven hundred miles from campus, now there’s no way I’m going.
Maybe.
It would be nice, after all, to have some breathing room around normal people for a few hours. I that know my friends at CU are normal, sort of, but I mean my kind of normal. And, if I’m being completely honest with myself, I need reassurance that I can still fit in. That one foot in my old life and one in my new is still a safe path to travel.
Before I can give it much more thought, I hear my name from across the parking lot. Squinting, I shield my eyes and crane my neck to the side, where I see arms waving and someone racing toward me.
“Mollie?” I shout as her petite figure bounds toward me.
“Damn straight, fool! Who else would come out here at the crack of dawn to pick your ass up?” We crash into a squealing hug.
“I’m freezing!” I admit when we separate. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Starbucks?” She winks.
“I love you.”
Once inside Mollie’s warm Jetta, I text my mom and let her know Mollie’s retrieved me, and we’d be making a coffee run before heading home. Then, I thumb over to Trent’s contact information, still in my phone for reasons I don’t fully understand, or want to admit. I ignore the fact that Trent isn’t likely to be up for another three or four hours.
Me: Met Brock at the Stamford station. He’s … interesting.
Trent: He’s an ass. Glad to hear you’re back on Yankee soil in one piece.
Jesus Freaks: The Prodigal (Jesus Freaks #2) Page 13