Page 118 of The Hometown Legend

Maybe this wasn’t glory, sitting in his mom’s living room, but it was meaningful. He would take that over glory now. Any day.

Because it wasn’t just the glory days that were numbered, it was the every days.

The days of his father were gone.

He couldn’t get them back. Any more than he could get back his high school football games.

Right now, he felt glory. Glory in the simple moment.

It reminded him of holding Rory. Just the joy in being present.

Lydia poked her head into the living room. “Dinner is ready.”

He made his way into the dining room with his mother and saw that Rory was already seated.

Their eyes clashed, and he felt his heart give a jump again.

He felt like a high school boy with a crush.

And that was a hell of a thing. To be able to feel like that.

Maybe that was the good thing about not having as much control over himself.

There was something kind of effervescent and wonderful happening that he couldn’t control.

It was better than the feeling of the darkness he couldn’t control. So why not marinate in it? Why not enjoy it? Why not cling to it?

Dinner was a pasta bake that his mother had made when he was a kid, that reminded him of his childhood and made him feel at home in a way that he hadn’t thought possible in a house he hadn’t grown up in.

Rory and Lydia talked about school days, and he found himself joining in and even laughing.

Rory’s gaze would intermittently meet his, and they would share a smile.

And this felt like family. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that. Feeling part of something. Not outside of it. But his memories were here. His foundation was here.

No, he couldn’t go back.

He was going to have to build something new, but he did have his foundation. His mother was right.

His father wasn’t here, but his father had loved him. Had loved all of them.

And that was one of the things he could build this new version of himself on.

He didn’t have to throw out everything.

He had felt like he was an entirely different person for the last few years, but now he didn’t feel like he was.

Just a different version of himself. A version of himself who thought a lot more about everything he did and why.

Maybe that was just the difference between being a person who had never made a mistake and being a person who had.

He’d made mistakes. He hurt somebody. Somebody he had promised to love and stay with.

If that didn’t make you stop and reevaluate, how you’d gotten there, and how you can keep yourself from being there again, well, there was something wrong with you.

So he’d become a deeper thinker. And maybe that was what made him want more quiet.

Because you needed quiet for thoughts like that.

---