Jesus Freaks: The Prodigal (Jesus Freaks #2) (30 page)

Matt looks like hell.

Jonah, Matt, and I are granted some completely CU unapproved time in the Wells family guesthouse while the grownups have a meal in the main house. It’s a small cabin-style structure filled with used—but still fairly extravagant—white furniture with yellow accents. We begged for pizza
and
Chinese food, and also to be sans chaperone for the sake of being able to
talk
. I was hoping that Roland heard enough of my talk with Jonah to know that we’ve got issues with Matt’s behavior.

Anyway, as I twist lo mien around my fork, I eye Matt, who is noticeably thinner from waning muscle tone, and has been lax on his facial hair maintenance. While the stubble might look cute under different circumstances, now it just highlights what I know is a surging depression. I’m from the greater NYC area—I know depression when I see it.

“How’s your break been?” I ask of Matt, slurping an oily noodle into my mouth.

He shrugs and gives me a grin. “Pretty good. Yours?”

The thing is, even though he looks like he does—complete crap—he’s also full of it. He’s spent the last day putting on this pleasant show that’s both completely unlike him at all and
far
from how I left him just a couple of weeks ago.

“Roland’s family is really nice. My family, I guess.”

“Eden broke up with me,” Jonah blurts out, which I’m thankful for. Family probably isn’t the best discussion right now.

Matt’s eyes widen as he turns to Jonah. “Dude, are you serious? Are you okay?”

Jonah nods, looking less okay about it than he has all day. Matt looks to me and I twist my lips, nodding along with Jonah.

“When did this happen?” Matt asks.

Jonah stretches his arms across the back of the couch. “This morning.”

“Why?”

Jonah shrugs. “We’re just in different places right now.”

Matt scrunches his eyebrows. “That’s hard for me to understand since you’re both at CU. The same place.”

Despite myself, I chuckle. At least a shimmer of my Matt Wells remains.

Not yours. Never was. Never will be.

Jonah laughs too. “Just spiritually. I mean … you know all the stuff going on with my dad, man … and just … stuff.”

“Yeah,” I snort, “Jonah’s been big on the
stuff
. Quite a vocabulary for someone as smart as he is.”

Matt gives me the courtesy of a grin, but winces as he faces Jonah. “She doesn’t get that you’re struggling?”

“No, she does,” Jonah answers. “But you know how Eden is. She would pray until her hands bled. And that works for her. But if I don’t see results …”

“Yeah,” Matt finishes Jonah’s sentence, obviously avoiding my gaze. “I get it.”

I clap my hands and sit forward. “Before you guys drag me down the
t
unnel of depression, can we talk about something else? Like, tell me what I can expect at this family conference thing that’s a whole thirty-six hours away? Will there be protestors and stuff?”

Matt twists his lips and shrugs. “Probably, but not many. And they’ll mostly be outside. Even though anyone can go to most events like this, this one is invite-only, which cuts down on a lot of the noise inside.”

“Yeah,” Jonah adds. “You’ll see more protesting about it on the news and
I
nternet than you will at the event. It’s kind of a morale booster sort of thing. You know, ignite the troops for battle against the destruction of families.”

My jaw drops and I grin. “Jonah Cross, is that sarcasm I smell?”

He blushes and looks down, making Matt laugh. “We finally got him, Kennedy!” Matt jokes, and for a second my heart breaks. It’s like he’s early-November Matt asking me to rise up against the evil institution of CU and associate
d
entities. Not the Matt who’s avoiding me and pushing me away.

Jonah holds up his hands in defense, though his grin still lights up his face. “Calm down. I just mean … well doesn’t it seem a little shortsighted to do battle that way? I mean, I’m against abortion, but I don’t think holding up pictures of dead babies is the way to get people to change their minds. It’s not their minds I want to change anyway.”

“It’s their hearts,” I cut in. He nods.

Matt lifts his eyebrows. “Sounds like I’m sitting with a couple of future pastors.” His tone boarders on dry.

“Yeah,” I snicker, “these tricky ovaries get in the way though, huh?” One thing I miss about the church I grew up in is the presence of female leadership. Not just on the council or in the background, but delivering the sermon. Women priests. Something seriously lacking in the evangelical world. The only ones I know of, honestly, are on TV—far from local churches.

Jonah shakes his head. “I bet you could do it, Kennedy. You’re good at what you do.”

“What? What do I
do
?”

“You get people to listen to what you have to say without using an air horn. People pay attention to you, you know.”

I shift my eyes back and forth between my two friends. “What
people
?”

Matt nods. “All the people. Everyone. Any time you make a move, people are watching and internalizing it.”

“You’ve all gone insane.” I click my tongue. “No one internalizes jack you-know-what about what I do. No one cares.”

“Ha!” Jonah lets out a sharp laugh. “
Everyone
cares. Especially about your relationship with your dad. It’s like Silas said to you after that service where you kind of
came out
as Roland’s daughter. To a lot of the people at CU and in the evangelical community, it’s like you came
home
, an
d
they’ve been watching how that’s going. How you treat Roland and how he treats you.”

“Came home?” I state, more to myself than anyone else. “Where did I go?”

“Like the prodigal son,” Matt quips sarcastically, but I shake my head.

“I didn’t
go
anywhere, but—“

“What?” Matt asks.

“Oooh. That story. I know that story … I get why people might assign it to me, I guess but … God,” I whisper.

“What?” Jonah adds.

“Geoff. Roland’s brother. He was kind of a jerk to me, talking about how it was when Roland came home from college a drunken mess and … that’s
it
. It makes sense. He felt like the older brother in that story who’d stayed faithful to his parents while Roland took advantage of them. But because Nora and Tim are who they are, they were just happy to have Roland back safe and sound, and Geoff felt g
y
pped.”

“Makes sense,” Jonah mumbles.

“He was a jerk to you?” Matt snaps. “How?”

I wave my hand. “He just … it’s a long story and not a big deal.” I have to admit that Matt’s growly chivalry feels kind of nice. At least he still seems to kind of care.

“Anyway,” Matt continues, “that story is kind of bullshit.”

I know Matt has these words on his tongue a lot, but it’s rare they escape his mouth. Especially in front of Jonah. Though, since Jonah alluded to the fact that he and Matt have spent the semester talking a lot, I guess Matt’s probably dropped curse words around him, too. Jonah and I look to each other at the mention of a CU “discouraged” word, but quickly focus back on Matt.

I clear my throat. “Why’s that?”

“Who wouldn’t be ticked? The good kid stands by and does his due diligence while the other one goes off, disobeys and does whatever he feels like and, in the end, they get the same reward from their father? What’s the purpose of doing good at all then if, at least at some point, you make an effort to come back?” Matt’s face has gone red, but his eyes remain hollow as he grinds his back teeth.

He’s not talking about the story of the prodigal son from the Bible. And, he’s not
just
talking about him and his dad. Jonah puts a hand on Matt’s knee. I’d consider that a risky move, but Matt doesn’t react.

“You,” I mumble, setting my plate on the coffee table. Matt huffs, looking down. “You, your dad, and God, right? That’s what this is all about. You’ve talked to me so much about doing the right thing, and being so angry with your father
.
You’re angry with God for his second chance while you can’t erase the pain of what happened during his first chance.”

Jonah turns his head slightly, pressing his mouth into his upper arm and taking a breath. He looks at me and shakes his head, as if he’s asking me not to go any further. But, Matt’s still unresponsive, and if he wants to be friends with me, that’s not going to fly.

“You know how grace works, Matt,” I say quieter, sliding to the edge of the couch I’m on, putting me closer to him.

He produces a muffled growl. “I don’t have to agree with it. Why should he get all the glory of a
comeback
while I suffer the images from the newspaper of him leaving that strip club with that
fucking
prostitute?”

“Come on, man,” Jonah softly encourages. Not for Matt’s use of language, I assume, but his palpable, brewing rage.

“
No.
” He shakes his knee and Jonah moves his hand and Matt rises to his feet, pacing behind the couch. “No, I won’t
come on
. Why? Why does he get to destroy my mom’s heart and get to come through clean? Why does he get to be back on a pastoral track at a new church when he spent half of the last year in beds that weren’t his with women who belonged to
everyone
?
Why do I get to deal with that
shame
when I was the good son? When I defended his reputation to our church when he first screwed up and got burnt out and needed an ally
.
Then,”
Matt pauses and holds out his hands, “then he goes and does it
again?
”

In the span of a few, angry sentences Matt fills in basically everything I thought I knew, but had hoped I was wrong about.

“Matt,” I whisper, standing with tears in my eyes. “You have to know that this isn’t it.
This
isn’t the story. Only part of it
.
”

Jonah stands and follows me around to the back of the couch, where Matt is slumped over with his hands on an end table and his head down.

“What if I hadn’t agreed to meet Roland several years ago? What if my mom kept me from him or, worse, he never wanted to meet with me? I wouldn’t have known all of this. Of him, his family, or you guys. I’d take the Joy Martinez bullshit
every week
for the rest of my life if it meant I got to keep these last few months. I didn’t run away when she tried to push me down. I stood up, Matt.”

“Because it makes you better than us?” he huffs.

“
No.
” I snap, gently pushing his shoulder. “Because
you
asked me to. Remember? Remember when you begged me to see this through? All the national attention and the leery glances from jerk students? What about when
both
of you dragged me into that meeting at Word and told me about your non-plans for the corrupt among us?”

Matt stands and looks through me. “Big mistake listening to a loser like me, K. Sawyer.” He moves past me and to the back door, Jonah following closely behind him.

“Don’t!” I shout after them, freezing them in their spots. “Don’t you dare do that to me, Matt Wells. I trust you. And, you know what? I believe God brought you into my life for a reason. You’re
not
going to push me away and make me feel like a jerk for believing in you.”

Matt turns around with a shockingly straight face. “Maybe this
God
you talk about brought me into your life to show you that he’s really an asshole, since nothing else in your life has painted the picture clear enough.” He swings the door open, holding his hand up behind him. “I want to be alone, Jonah.”

Once outside, Matt slams the door behind him with force enough to rattle my chest. I let out a small sob, needing the pressure to go
somewhere
.

“Kennedy …” Jonah sighs and approaches me with open arms.

I let him hug me. I sink into it and let my tears dry on Jonah’s navy blue Henley. I need a hug so badly right now, and the one person who I want it from literally
can’t
give it to me.

“Go,” I finally say into his shirt. “He shouldn’t be alone right now.”

Jonah steps back, holding me at arms length. “You’re incredible, Kennedy. You know that, right?”

Tilting my head to the side I give him a slight nod. Because, you know what? I am incredible. I hate journeys, paths, quests, scavenger hunts, adventures, and treks. I want no part of them, yet here I am, seeing one through. I’m not backing down, and I certainly won’t let anyone push me. I am pretty
freaking
incredible.

“Thank you, Jonah. I really needed to be reminded of that.” I give him one more long, deep hug before shooing him out the door.