Love's Home

Prologue Packing up his duffel and backpack—T-shirts, jeans, a couple of nice button-downs—he told himself over and over again that he was not running away. Anyway, at eighteen you couldn’t really call it running away, could you? He was practically an adult now. He had had enough of his mother. He’d tolerated it for years—doing what she wanted him to do, saying what she wanted him to say, never having his own mind. He hated himself for being the spineless d**k that he was. Yes, he’d had enough of being the sweet little boy his mother had always wanted him to be, her sweet Jessie. His mother had always wanted a daughter as her second-born, his aunt had once told him, so much so that his parents were at a loss on what to name him when he was born, so certain they were going to have a girl. Huh. At least his mother didn’t dress him up as one and for that he was forever thankful. He looked girly enough as it was. Sometimes he wished he could be like his big brother, Josh, who was the real son, the monkey in the family. Josh could do whatever he wanted, getting into all sorts of pranks, coming back home all dirty and muddy, yet somehow always managed to get into their parents’, their mother’s, good books, whereas Jesse could never get away with anything like that. He was the one who always ended up playing with the girl cousins, entertaining them, singing, telling stories, playing the piano. He tried to get into sports while in high school, was in the baseball club for a while, but somehow ended up becoming one of the bell guards in the cheerleading squad instead. He was in the drama club as well and he loved that. He loved acting and he wanted, dreamed of, pursued a career in it but his mother wouldn’t hear of it, saying that real men didn’t do acting. Acting was for girls and sissies. Hello? Newsflash, Momma, I am your sweet little Jessie, remember? Things had become unbearable in the past few months. His mother hardly spoke to him, Dad and Josh were not taking sides, and Jesse felt so stifled by it all, so alone. He had no best friends to speak of, well, except for Charlie of course, his special friend that his mother knew nothing about, but even Charlie had left him for a career in music. There really was no one to talk to and Jesse was afraid he was going to have a breakdown if he stayed on. They’d had another huge fight last night when his mother had brought home application papers for UT. She wanted him to apply for courses that he had absolutely zero interest in and things had come to a head when she said that she wanted him to live at home and travel daily to school since UT wasn’t that far. She looked stunned when Jesse had simply left the room, slamming the door shut behind him. He had to leave, there was no other way. Looking at his childhood room for the last time, he felt warmth prickling at the back of his eyes. In spite of everything, he still loved his mother. But he had to do this for his own sanity and self-respect; he had to live his own dreams and prove to his mother that he could be his own person. Forgive me, Momma.