A Life Worth Living - 1. Chapter 1

BEFORE

SNOW whips around the car, howling and rattling the windows. I can’t see a damn thing. Dad’s got the heat cranked all the way up and yet I feel my toes curling under trying to find any warmth. It’s dark. Completely dark. Every year I’m thrown by how dark it is by five PM. And I always hate it. But here we are.

We’re going to a Christmas party. Me, Mom, Dad. It’s been happening every year for the last few years. Mom is friends with this woman from church. Irene is her name and she has a son my age. James. He’s nice and sweet and一

“How long are we staying?” Dad says, cutting my thoughts off.

Mom sighs. “Not sure, but let’s remember to be nice tonight.”

I bite the inside of my cheeks. They’ve been fighting more recently. Every time I hear it, a pit in my stomach forms and sits like a bad meal. I should have seen it all coming. Dad works late, Mom drinks wine, and I see it all. I’m like a little kid when I sit at the top of the stairs listening to them go back and forth. Just the other night, I swear I heard a glass break. There wasn’t any evidence of that the next morning and Mom wore a shiny smile.

Dad huffs. “Right. Nice. Got it.”

“I’m serious, Marcus.”

“Yes, Tori.”

I decide to break in. The last thing I want right now is to ride in the car with my near-divorced parents before a Christmas party, but at least I get to see James.

“James is gonna be there,” I say. I can see his blue eyes forming in front of me. I can smell him. I stir in my seat.

“Yeah,” Mom says, looking out the window. “Of course he will be. I’m so glad you two have become such good friends.” She cranes her neck back so she can give me a light smile. “See? Getting you to go to youth group all those years ago was worth it, huh?”

Warmth gushes through my body thinking of when I first met James. I was twelve and Mom had literally dragged me to youth group because I still wasn’t making any friends. She thought that going to church would fix that. And it did. Sort of. I met him. The brown-haired boy who wore beat-up sneakers and liked to play with ants in his backyard. He liked dragons and still does. We made plans to conquer the world by fourteen. He was electricity to me. I like to think I was the same to him. And one afternoon after school, we were splashing in the creek that ran through the woods past his backyard.

It was the third week of our freshman year. The sun broke through the trees and gave his skin a golden tone. His hair was wet. He splashed me and I splashed him. His laughter roared around us. At one point, his back was to me. I took a moment to find the exact time before jumping on his back. My hands wrapped around his wet chest and he squirmed around trying to throw me off. He stumbled with me latching on to him. Wet shoes trampled in the creek shoreline and he fell. I toppled down on top of him. My dripping hair fell onto his face, our bodies squashed into the mud. He suddenly stopped laughing. His brown eyes became still. He didn’t blink, he just looked at me. The hammering in my chest seemed to become in sync with his. I remained on top of him, but I took a hand and reached up to touch his face. There was not a single thought about it, my hand just did it. For a moment, I anticipated him to throw me off him, but that never came. Instead, in a flash, he grabbed my head with his hands and brought me to him. Our lips meshed together like water droplets finding each other.

When we parted, he whispered, “You have no idea how long I wanted to do that.” And we did it again all afternoon.

No one knows about this. To our parents, we’re just friends.

My body is on fire as Dad pulls into his street. Cars line the street and it’s lit up with various Christmas decorations. Their neighborhood always does the most. No one does it up where I live since no one would really see it. That’s just what happens when you live up a mountain. Mom immediately gets out of the car as soon as Dad puts it into park.

He lets out a hefty sigh before doing the same. The three of us make our way to the house. Snow falls around us. As cold as it is outside, the thought of James keeps me warm.

Irene opens the door wearing a Santa hat and a red holiday sweater. And from where I’m standing, her face is a bit red too.

“Tori! Marcus! So glad you guys came!” She wraps her arms around my Mom and gives her a tight hug. She gives my Dad a loose one and then when she sees me, she ruffles my hair. “Come, come. Lots of people here.”

It’s hot inside and smells like cookies and various other foods. She has a fairly big home, but it still feels crowded. She must’ve invited the whole church.

“Jonah,” she says, I look at her. “James is upstairs being antisocial, go get him.” She smiles before turning to other guests. I don’t have to be told twice and run upstairs. I swing open his door and he’s sitting on his bed as if waiting for me. And when he sees me, he comes at me, slams the door closed, and presses his lips on mine so hard I go blind for a moment.

As weird as this sounds, I was worried that our thing was going to be a fling. An experiment. A phase. Whatever people say about young boys who like other boys. But after two years of finding our love for one another, every kiss with him felt like the first time we did in that muddy creek. I never wanted to be without him.

“Missed you,” he says with his lips hovering over mine. He places a hand over my chest and another on my stomach over the waistline of my jeans.

“Yeah?” I breathed into him and closed the gap. We kissed and kissed until we were breathing hard and having to adjust our pants.

“We should probably make an appearance,” he says, wiping his forehead and laughing.

I nod. “Absolutely. I agree.” I take off my jacket and toss it onto his bed. “And maybe my mom will drink enough and let me stay over.”

“Let’s hope.” He winks.

The party is loud and I spend a good thirty minutes with James wandering around and greeting some of the older people. Some of the other youth group kids are here and we hang with him. Some of them sing karaoke Christmas songs— badly. We laugh at them. We sneak drinks here and there. A couple of times while we sit on the floor of the den, I feel his hand brush over mine.

Two hours pass, and some people have left. We make it back to his room and he’s snuck some eggnog in a plastic cup to bring with us. He turns on his planet projector and we lay on the floor feeling the pulsing of the party beneath us. The drink is good. I feel it in my blood. My eyes are drooping. He takes me into his hands, lifts me to his bed, and is over me with his gentle lips on mine.

“I love you, Jonah,” he says. He pulls my shirt off. I take his shirt off too. It’s our skin melting into each other.

“I love you, too.” It rolls off my tongue so easily.

My hands travel down and I push on the small of his back. He lets out a soft moan into my mouth. His hands travel down my chest and start unbuttoning my pants.

But his bedroom door swings open.

“James, Jo—”

It’s his mom. And my mom. James springs off me as if I’m boiling water and he stumbles back and falls, slamming his back into his dresser.

“MOM,” he yells.

I’m completely frozen. Half naked and vulnerable.

“What the fuck is happening here?” His mom shrieks. She rushes in, grabs James by the upper arm, and pulls him up. He whimpers, not looking at her. “Huh? Answer me!” She shakes him.

My mom comes in and stares at me with her mouth open. And soon both our dads enter the room. Everything next is blurry. But the last thing I remember for sure is seeing his mom slap him across the face. I’m being grabbed, my shirt being forced back on me. There’s screaming. Someone knocks something off a shelf and it breaks. I’m being pulled down the stairs. Mom is flushed and crying. Dad is yelling at his dad. James screams my name, but I can’t look back. I won’t look back.

I’m back in the car. My head is now throbbing.

We’re driving back home. I’m shaking.

Mom is crying, I can hear it.

Dad is yelling still. “Answer me, Jonah! Answer me!” He slams his hands down on the steering wheel. And then I hear him say in a deep, low voice, “This is all your fucking fault, Tori.”

Mom straightens up. “My fucking fault? How is this my fault?” She yells back, her voice loud and strained.

“You had to drag him to that fucking youth group! And he met that godforsaken boy and look what happened!”

“You cannot be serious!” She scoffs. “Honey—” she looks back at me as best she can “—it’s going to be o—”

“Don’t!” Dad cuts her off. “Do not say it’s going to be okay! Because it’s not! You see what’s gonna happen? Everyone is gonna be talking about us! About how our son is fucking another boy!”

This does it. I felt my heart pounding and pounding and pounding.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP, DAD!” I scream. I scream so loud my throat hurts. The car goes silent. “You sound fucking stupid!” I breathe out and also say, “I love him.”

Dad laughs, but not because he thinks it’s funny. “You don’t know what love is, buddy. And it’s not that.”

“Right.” I roll my eyes, but no one will see. “Like you know love when you can barely look at Mom these days.”

“Fuck you just say?” He looks back at me and I swear the car is going faster. “Jonah, what did you just say?”

I lean forward. “You heard me.”

He reaches back, grabs a fist full of my hair, and yanks me toward him. Mom is shrieking for him to stop. The car swerves and he lets go, I slam into the door. Rage is alive in me, hot and dark. I reach down and take off my shoe.

“Fuck you!” I scream and I throw it at his head. It hits him and he screams, swerving the car.

“Marcus!” Mom gasps.

It’s bright lights in front of us. It’s the car spinning. It’s a car full of three screaming bodies.

That’s it.