Here is Home • The Pack

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

When Mitch is released that night, it's not unusual that they haven't planned any formal celebration. What's surprising is that Jerome has. Originally, he'd wanted to just invite folks over to the house, but when he mentioned it at work, Micheal hadn't hesitated to volunteer the Alibi Room and donate a keg. Jess volunteered to make a cake and Rob asked to be in charge of decorations. Jerome offered him some money to cover it, but Rob turned it down. Then he shoplifted a fuckton of balloons and shit from the dollar store. At first Jess thought  Rob had only volunteered for this duty so he could get revenge at the dollar store manager who'd kicked him out for suspected shoplifting last summer, and she was still pretty certain that was part of it, but Rob made sure to get everything in Mitch's favorite colors (green and orange), so it also felt like maybe a genuine gesture.

As Jess stands in the kitchen, spreading the frosting over the top of Mitch's cake, Rob's at the table, digging through a box of last summer's fireworks he's produced from God knows where, looking for sparklers. He's insistent that Mitch's cake must have sparklers instead of plain old crappy candles.

"Is your boyfriend coming tonight?" Rob asks, setting aside a handful of cherry bombs.

"He's not my boyfriend for twenty-eight more months," Jess replies automatically, adding another blob of frosting and spreading it smooth, "but he has to work tonight."

"Sucks. I might bring my girl."

Jess sets down the knife in outrage. "You have another girlfriend? Where do you keep finding them?"

"Word gets around when you're a badass."

"You're not having sex yet, are you?" Jess demands to know. If he is, the world is truly, truly unfair.

"Depends on what you mean by sex," Rob replies smoothly.

"What do you mean 'what I mean'? Sex is sex."

"I dunno. Whatever."

Jess scowls and returns to frosting the cake. Rob's clearly full of shit and trying to cover it up. He's not having anything close to sex.

"So, are you in love with your not-boyfriend?" Rob asks after a minute.

"I don't know," Jess replies, "I think so."

"If you're gonna wait around two and half years to get your cherry popped, you should know if you're actually in love with him."

Jess doesn't disagree with this sentiment. It's been on her mind a lot lately. Not that she isn't crazy about him, but she doesn't know if she wants to wait a million years for any action at all if she doesn't love him and really just likes him a lot. It's so confusing.

"Do you think Vikk could help me figure it out if I asked him?" she asks.

Rob examines a fistful of bottle rockets then sets them aside. "Vikk's love life is a shitshow. He doesn't know crap."

This is a good point. Jess scrapes the last of the frosting from the bottom of the can.

"Oh, finally!" Rob cheers as he locates a slim package of sparklers at the very bottom of the box, "Sweet!"