Jesus Freaks: The Prodigal (Jesus Freaks #2) Page 4

  He laughs and leans forward on his elbows. “You can. And, that’s why I find you fascinating.”

  “Why? Just because you didn’t know I was Roland’s daughter? That’s not fascinating so much as a number plucked out of the genetic lottery. Luck for some, I guess.”

  “Not for you?”

  “Seriously? Oh, yeah, the last few days have been the pinnacle of good fortune.”

  It feels so good to be sarcastic with someone who I know without a doubt will get it.

  “Alright, I’ll give you that one. Still, I just wish you woulda told me.” He shakes his head, looking down.

  “Why? That’s the second time you’ve said that. Is it because you would have avoided hiring me?”

  Asher huffs through his nose. “Hardly, but I could have helped you.” He stares at me for a while, and I stare back, trying to read his mind.

  “You would have told me to come out with it myself,” I assert.

  “Don’t you agree that would have been better than this?”

  I growl again. “I don’t even know. What I do know is my mom wasn’t the one who changed the course of Roland’s life, it was Dan.”

  “Neither,” Asher cuts it.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Neither of them changed the course of Roland’s life. God did.”

  I pull my head back. “Wh…What…Yeah, okay, but the catalyst—and, wait…why are you feeding me God talk?” I let my eyes roam his large, muscular figure decorated in tattoos to remind myself of every impression I have of him that he’s probably about to blow out of the water.

  Kind of a theme in my life lately.

  “I’m a Christian, too, Kennedy,” he says as if he’s bored.

  “Too,” I repeat. “Too, as in, also? Like, like them?”

  He grins, standing with a full stretch of his lengthy torso as he paces to the window overlooking the parking lot.

  After a bottomless inhale, he speaks. “Too. Also. Them.”

  “Well, that figures.” The past few days have taught me that surprises are really anything but.

  Asher laughs. “What?”

  “I thought I was the most liberal looking—”

  “Jesus Freak?” he challenges.

  I put up my hands. “Take it easy. I’m not … that.”

  He shrugs. “I am.”

  I tilt my head to the side, certain he’s messing with me. “Come on.”

  He waves his hand. “There will be more time for that discussion later. In the meantime, you should get going, don’t you think?”

  I sigh. “I guess. My phone’s been vibrating since I left Roland’s. Mind if I go out through the front so I can get a jolt of caffeine before returning to my new reality?”

  He nods in the direction of the door. “Be my guest.”

  I turn for the door, stopping for a moment with my hand on the handle. “Does Chelsea know you’re one of them—us? She seems a little anti…all of it, what with the pentagram tattoo I spotted on the back of her shoulder.”

  Asher arches an eyebrow and grins up at me from behind his inventory sheets. “She looks past it.”

  Shaking my head, I offer nothing more before leaving his office. I’m insanely curious about his road to Freakdom, but know that conversation will be put on pause while I get my life together.

  Walking through the door into the cafe, I’m met with a rush of energetic noise from the post-church crowd. Of course I’m never here on Sundays given the strict “guidelines” set by Carter University. But, in general it looks like any other busy day, with a slightly fancier dress code.

  “Hey Chels.” I shimmy past her and another barista—Collin—as I move to the front of the counter. I refuse to be one of those annoying employees that swoops in on their days off and helps themselves, mucking up the flow.

  “Hey sexy,” she calls brightly. “You look better than you did a couple of hours ago. Less pukey.”

  “Ha! Thanks. I don’t feel less pukey.”

  “Pumpkin spice latte?” She waves a 16oz cup in the air.

  I nod, leaning my elbows on the counter. “Please.”

  While she busies herself steaming milk, I passively look over my shoulder, but am stopped dead when I see Matt and his dad conversing in the corner. I try not to stare, but the grim looks on both of their faces only serve to pique my curiosity.

  “He’s a friend of yours, right?” Chelsea brings my attention back to the counter, and my latte.

  “Thanks,” I reply, taking a long sip. “Yeah he kind of rescued me from the angry mob that thought I was sleeping with Roland.”

  Not kind of. Completely, totally did.

  “He’s good looking. What is it with all those boys up there on The Hill?” Chelsea asks of Carter, using the local diction for the school.

  I laugh, having had the same exact curiosity when I first set foot on campus. “I don’t know. It’s a miracle, I guess.”

  “Cute,” she quips, heading off to deal with another customer.

  And leaving me to deal with deciding to go say hi to Matt, or sneak back out the back door. When I turn around to face the whole cafe, though, it seems the choice has been made for me. Matt is standing about a foot away from me, sweat beading on his forehead.

  “Hi,” I half-whisper, surprised by his towering shadow. I look over his shoulder to spot where his dad is.

  “He’s gone,” Matt answers my silent question. His voice is gruff and far away.

  We stand in an awkward silence the two of us haven’t encountered with each other. At least not since Picturegate, Part One.

  “So …” I start, gesturing toward an open table. “Wanna sit, or …”

  Matt, who’s been staring at the floor for quite some time, blinks several times in a row, seemingly coming to. “Can we take a walk?”

  I shrug. “I guess. Wait. Chaperones …”

  Despite the chaos of the last few days, my earlier hyper focus on the rules of Carter University has remained seared in my brain. Members of the opposite sex can’t go off campus together unless they’re in a group of odd numbers, and/or accompanied by a chaperone.

  “We don’t have a chaperone if we stay here, either—”

  Matt is cut off by someone to my right.

  “You’re Kennedy Sawyer, aren’t you? That pastor’s daughter?”

  Whipping my head around, I find a girl I’ve seen here before, studying with her friends. I’ve gathered from their university-issued shirts and some conversations I’ve heard, that they go to UNC Asheville. It’s a liberal arts school with a very flexible curriculum.

  Kind of the anti-CU.

  “That’s me,” I answer honestly. No point in denying the obvious.

  “That’s so cool. I see you here all the time. I didn’t know you were famous.” Her blonde hair is in a high ponytail and I envy the thick swath of purple eyeliner circling her brown eyes.

  I chuckle. “I’m not. Roland is.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “You are now. You’re all over Facebook.”

  My shoulders sink with my exhale and I look at Matt. “Walk it is.” I turn toward the girl and offer a slight wave before following Matt out the door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gold on the Ceiling

  Matt.

  “That didn’t take long,” Kennedy mumbles as we exit Word and immediately cross the street.

  “What, the girl?” I tilt my head toward the coffee shop. She nods and I shrug.

  There is definitely some awkward tension between the two of us, and the crappy part is it isn’t even about her. I’m too angry to verbalize that, and I’m resting on my assumption that she doesn’t have a weak stomach in the self-esteem department and, therefore, isn’t internalizing my silence. I keep my head down and she follows my lead as we work our way through the retail district.

  “Do you always walk with your head down?” she asks, almost cautiously.

  As if on script, I reply, “It’s kind of a habit they drill into us in high school.”<
br />
  Kennedy zips her denim coat as a cool breeze tears down the sidewalk. “They? Us?”

  I wave my hand in the air. “Yeah, sorry. Us as in guys and they as in everyone in our whole life who wants to teach us to remain sexually pure.” My voice is tense with leftover venom from my conversation with my father

  “Okaaay,” she draws out quietly. “Here,” she says louder. “Let’s turn up here. There’s a trail.”

  I grin, lifting my head. “That’s where I was going.”

  “Good.” She skips ahead of me, running across the street to the head of the trail.

  I get the first good look at her I’ve had since leaving New Life this morning. She’s still in the same clothes, but something looks different. She’s smiling as she waits for me to catch up, but there’s kind of a grey look in her eyes that isn’t normally there. Her eye color is grey, I’m not blind, but it’s different. A grey emotion, maybe. Typically she’s on—eyes pointing in all directions at one time, focusing like a detective on a mission. Right now, though, her eyes are somewhere else.

  Following her into the trailhead, I sit next to her on a long flat boulder. It’s amazing how only a few yards of thick trees can block out most of the noise of the shopping district that sits just on the other side. The only noises here are birds and people walking or running the several miles of trail that winds around the outskirts of Asheville, allowing for stops at CU and New Life along the way.

  “Are you doing okay?” I finally manage a polite sentence.

  “Are you okay?” She crosses her legs and leans back on her hands, facing me with a grin. The sadness is still evident in her eyes, but her smile is challenging it.

  I shrug. “I don’t really want to talk about my dad right now, if that’s okay with you.”

  Kennedy pulls her feet up onto the rock and her knees into her chest. “I don’t either.”

  “Easier for me than you, I’d say.”

  She chuckles. “My stepdad’s the one who sent that picture to Roland. The one when I was five.”

  My eyes bulge. “What?”

  “The plot thickens,” she draws out with an eye roll.

  “Are you okay?” I repeat with more intention.

  She shrugs and runs a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. I mean, before I knew about the picture I didn’t have any scenarios in my head. But, once Roland told me that story, I crafted all of this backstory about my mom longing to have him in my life, or feeling eternally bitter about it … I don’t know. It wasn’t true. Now I need a new backstory.”

  “We all need a new backstory,” I mumble. Not soft enough, apparently.

  Kennedy leans forward, and for a minute I’m nervous she’s going to push me on the issues with my dad. “What would yours be? If you could craft your history at this very minute, what would it be?”

  I chuckle. “And it would still have to land me up here at CU?”

  She nods. “Just the backstory. The present is fixed.”

  Puffing out my cheeks while I exhale, I consider the question. What kind of life could I make up for myself that would still have me come to CU? My real one had me going here, then not going here, then … here I am.

  “Come on,” Kennedy encourages with a soft elbow to my ribs. “I’m giving you a chance to change your history!”

  I sigh once more. “I guess I’d give my dad a break and my mom a spine. You know, in case giving my dad a break didn’t pan out.”

  Her eyes widen for a fraction of a second. “Would you still be a Christian?”

  “I’d have to be to end up here, wouldn’t I?”

  With a grin, she bites her lip and looks into the distance. “I don’t know … no, I don’t think so. New question. Backstory aside, would you renounce your faith right now if you could?”

  I pull my head back. Grateful she’s not probing my backstory change, Kennedy’s new question still offends me. “What do you mean if I could? I could walk away from Christianity anytime I wanted to.”

  Sort of. Maybe.

  “Do you want to?” she challenges.

  I grin. “What’s with you?”

  “Look,” she sighs. “I don’t know what’s going on between you and your dad, but I do know he’s a burnt out pastor who caused you and your family a lot of pain. Wouldn’t you want to walk away from that if you could?”

  “Not wanting to be a PK, and not wanting to be a Christian are two different things.” I force myself to say the logical words, even if I don’t believe them most of the time. The two are so entwined in my life, and in those around me, I don’t know if they really are two different things.

  Then it hits me. Despite my encouraging her to embrace her new identity as a PK, I somehow forgot through this conversation that she is just that. “What about you?” I question.

  “I don’t think I have enough information on this whole PK thing to make a proper assessment.”

  I tilt my chin toward her. “Based on what you know, then.”

  She lets out a sharp laugh that startles a group of birds in a nearby bush. As they disappear into another tree, Kennedy looks at me. “Based on what very, very little I know, I’d say it’s amazing that any of you are still Christian. It reminds me of my Catholic friends back home.”

  “How so?” I don’t know a lot about Catholicism, but I do know it has nothing to do with preacher’s kids.

  “The rules. Being under the thumb of your family, church, or God. Rules, rules, and more rules. Ways to pray, who to pray to, a freaking rosary so you don’t forget how long you’ve been praying, or something—I don’t actually know what a rosary is for.” She shakes her head and closes her eyes, seeming to refocus herself. “Anyway. It seems to me that you—and the Catholics—feel like you’re being watched all the time. By others and by a punishing God.”

  I have to give her credit, for the weight of the things I’ve heard Kennedy say, she manages to do it in the least offensive or caustic way possible. I’d love it if she could grow up to be like Roland in profession and passion, but now isn’t the time to dump that on her. There will likely never be a good time to tell the beautiful Episcopalian girl that she could become as influential as her father.

  “I don’t know about all of that regarding your Catholic friends, but you’re pretty spot on with the PK’s. Though, I should mention I don’t really feel like God is a punishing God. In fact, from what I’ve read, Jesus spends most of the New Testament talking about love and forgiveness. That comes from God and we’re supposed to share with each other.” I eye her cautiously out of the corner of my eye. Despite my assertion that God is love, I’ve got my doubts based on personal experience.

  Anger and doubt don’t have to be the same thing.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to discern the voice in my head. It’s been hard to tell lately if it’s the voice of God or the ingrained, trained voice of my upbringing. The ability to call on quotes or scriptures that help Christians get through the crap in their lives. There’s been lots of radio static lately, though, so I’m going to take this as His voice. And I’ll challenge him on it later.

  Kennedy nods approvingly. “That’s what Episcopalians talk about the most, you know. The love that God has for us, and the amazing things that can happen from that. I’d say maybe we’re not so different after all, but, that’d be a stretch.”

  I laugh and rock my head side to side. “I think everyone probably has it wrong.”

  “Yeah? You’re probably right. Although, I have to admit—parentage aside—I like what Roland says. A lot.”

  “I do, too,” I admit. “He seems to have his act together because he’s actually reading Jesus’ words. Not how those words fit into some political agenda.”

  This isn’t really the conversation I planned on having with Kennedy right now, if at all, but here we are. Steeped in theology.

  “I kind of wish he’d talk about some of those things sometimes, though, don’t you? Like, I don’t know, maybe if he doesn’t change people’s minds
he could at least get them to think a little clearer about the issues.” Kennedy unfolds her legs and plants her feet on the ground, lifting herself up. When she stretches her arms overhead, looking up, the bottom of her shirt rides right to the waist of her skirt.

  I clear my throat. “Like what issues?” Standing, I follow behind her as she makes her way further down the trail.

  She shrugs. “Gay marriage?”

  “You mean homosexuality,” I challenge. “That’s the root issue.”

  “Whatever.” She waves her hand in the air but stops her feet on a dime.

  Turning around, I find her standing with her hands on her hips. “What?” I ask.

  Her eyes are cautious, but fierce. “Where do you stand on homosexuality?”

  I swallow hard. “I don’t stand on it at all. I’m straight.”

  My attempt at humor falls flat on her as her lips tighten. “Matt.”

  Letting out a nervous chuckle, I shove my hands in my pockets. “I’m a football player raised in a pastor’s family from Georgia, Kennedy … I …”

  “I didn’t ask you what everyone around you thinks. I asked what you think. Apart from how you’ve been raised.”

  Taking two steps toward her, I tilt my head in challenge. “That’s not fair. You don’t have an opinion other than the one you were raised with, do you?”

  She opens her mouth, then closes it for a few seconds before opening it again. “That isn’t the same thing. My opinion doesn’t oppress people.”

  I huff through my nose. “Which is how you see it.”

  “So you’re against homosexuality,” she states dismissively, passing me as she walks down the trail further.

  “I didn’t say that,” I call after her, quickening my pace to catch up. “Hey,” I tug lightly at her upper arm when I reach her, stopping us and forcing her to turn to me. “I didn’t say that. All I said was neither of us can be sure which opinions are ours, or from our upbringing. Maybe we’d both learn something if your—if Roland preached on those topics, huh?” I try to be careful not to call Roland her dad unless she does, but sometimes it slips out.