Jeremy Mordue
January 14, 2022 1:04 AM
The future's.... not awful, anyway by Jeremy Mordue
Trunk lids snapped closed. By magic, they would appear on the wagon. Jeremy had only to pick up his personal bag, and to walk out the door, like he’d done every summer. The only difference was he wouldn’t be coming back. There wasn’t much to get sentimental about in stepping out of his room—a room he’d been forced to share, something he had never done in his life before, with two people who were exceptionally hard to get on with.He was glad to be going. The future was uncertain, and he was having to fairly actively quell the voice that said he’d set himself up for adult life with a bunch of bad decisions. He’d find out. He had outgrown this place years ago, and was filled with the reckless confidence with which the young throw themselves into the world, convinced the warnings from their elders about its challenges won’t possibly apply to them.
He would probably be obliged to spend portions of the summer in the unforgiving Mexican heat with his fiancée, but for now he was returning home to his brother. Technically, to the house of their aunt, uncle, and cousins. But home to his brother.
He wasn’t sure Nathaniel was ever going to be a person whose company he enjoyed. He was neurotic, micromanaging and frustrating. But he had made good on the promise not to leave Jeremy. In fact, Jeremy looked to be the one leaving him. In a while. He wondered if there would be time for them to… spend time together first. And what would that look like, now they were adults? Everyone said you got on better with your sibling once you both grew up a bit, but part of that was not being forced to spend every second in the same environment as them. The years at Sonora without Nathaniel had helped Jeremy’s appreciation. Would being stuck together again for a few weeks be the perfect bonding experience, or enough to undo all the good that a spell of relative apart time had done?
He wasn’t sure, but as he aparated back from the wagon stop, and made his way in for his own graduation party, he was glad at least that Nathaniel had never run out on him. That was a start.
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Jeremy Mordue
The future's.... not awful, anyway
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