us, here—home

Joe stands in front of the door. 

He has a bottle of wine clutched in his right hand and a bag held in another. Despite its large size, there isn’t anything in the bag other than his wallet and cell phone. He’s nervous—he hasn’t seen these men in three years. 

He hears a bout of laughter erupt inside and loud exclamations of joy—he wonders if they’ve ever thought of him. Missed him.

They were once his best friends, house mates, brothers. Struggling in college to make a good living, Joe wasn’t even clear on a major. He was pretty sure he’d already lost his dorm key. He doesn’t know anything about the campus nor the people here and he feels like he’d made a grand mistake.

Until the dorm door opened to reveal three other men inside. With a start, Joe realized that he probably had been standing in front of it for enough time to make him seem suspicious. 

“Hi,” he’d said. “I’m Joe?” 

And from there on out, he had found three new people to go into bars with and talk about the universe with at 3 am in the morning. He’d found three people that were willing to accept him for the disorganized, emotionally unstable mess that he was. And being the disorganized, emotionally unstable mess that he was, he found that more than enough. (Minus all the pranks they played on him. Those always scared the living shit out of him.) 

And then they got their degrees, and—and here they are now. Joe had found a company to work for, one that pays decently but barely allows him to scrape by rent. He’d dated a couple girls, made a few more mistakes. But distance had caused him to lose connection with his friends.

I mean—yeah, sure, they’d tag him in social media posts now and then and drop a comment in his, sometimes—but other than that, their friendship felt like a memory. Jesse is in a serious relationship and lives across the country, Mark is famous, and Austin has a wife now. Hell, Joe even thinks Austin’s wife may be pregnant.

But one day, a notification with a name that he hadn’t seen for a long, long time appeared on his device. It was Austin Aaby.

Hey man, we haven’t seen you in a long time, Austin wrote. The guys are meeting at my house next Friday, and we wondered if you could come.

Plus, we want to see your new beard.

Joe scoffed. Despite the fact that it’d been literal years since he’d held a conversation with Austin, Joe wrote, fuck you that was a one time thing.

After a moment, he’d added: I think I can make it though. 

So here he is, a week later. Standing in front of Austin’s door as if unsure of what to do, just like he had all those years ago with the same sweaty palms and racing heart.

Maybe I should come back later, Joe thinks. This is too early. But it’s ten minutes late. 

“Joe Mitchell? In the flesh?” a voice startles him from behind. 

Joe recognizes it before he even turns around.

“Jesse Ruiz,” Joe says, a smile growing on his face. He looks the same, but Joe can tell it isn’t quite their Jesse anymore.

“What are you doing, standing here at the front door again?” Jesse chuckles, a glint in his eyes. Joe feels himself go back in time. “Afraid of going in?”

Jesse knocks on the door, watching Joe. “How have you been?”

Joe shrugs, grinning stupidly. “It’s been alright.”

The voices inside the apartment suddenly hush, being replaced by the sound of footsteps walking closer to the door. Jesse’s face is scrunched up in anticipation, and Joe feels tense.

The door opens. It’s Mark and Austin. Joe feels dizzy, all of the sudden.

It’s quiet for a second, nobody really knowing what to say. Then Mark opens his arms wide.

“Well, fellas,” he says, exhilaration on his face, “it’s been three years.”

“Fuck, I missed you guys,” Joe laughs as he gets pulled into the apartment. It’s been so long, and he sees two ladies and a fucking baby and thinks it couldn’t get any better.

Mark’s eyes are wide and starry. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Austin has a kid.”

Austin laughs, gesturing to the dinner table. “This is Megan and her friend Samantha. And Melanie. And my dinner table. Please sit.”

“Megan, Samantha, Melanie, and the dinner table,” Joe echoes. “Nice to meet you.”

“Fucking nerd,” laughs Jesse. And it’s like three years had never happened. 

Austin pulls out the same brand wine he used to (“this is the only wine I’ll ever drink, I got it for half off too”), Jesse still rambles when he eats (“it’s not bad manners, y’all eat in complete silence all the time?”), and Mark still steals off Joe’s plate despite there being a whole dish in front of him (“shut up, my arm doesn’t stretch far enough”). Thanksgiving football is still a thing. Arguments of who the superior team is is still a thing.

“Losers. It’s four to two,” declares Mark, but the attention is diverted as one team scores a touchdown, earning them another point, causing two in the group to cry out in anger. 

Joe has never been an avid participant in the conversation. More of a listener, he tends to stay in the background as his introverted inner self comes out and takes control of him. Here, Joe feels like he could make other people laugh. Here, Joe is fun Joe—but not in a fake way.

Later that night, when everything is hazy and the air is stuffy and they’ve caught up on three years’ worth of memories, Austin bangs his first on the table. “Yo. If we were ever a family, Joe’d be the grandma.”

The entire table erupts in good laughter. “And Mark would be his husband,” Jesse howls. Joe scowls, but his lips curve up discreetly. 

“Shut up,” Joe defends. “Austin would be the baby. And Megan and Samantha would be the cool older girls that you’d be too scared to talk to.”

Mark claps his hands, laughing. “No, and Jesse would totally be that annoyingly weird uncle. Which is even worse.”

They all look at Jesse, who doesn’t look like he has anything to say, really. Jesse looks at them with half-lidded eyes. It’s clear that he’s had a good couple shots of alcohol at this point.

“Hm?” he says. Everyone around the table chuckles; Jesse looks thoughtful, mind somewhere else. “Y’know, I think I’m gonna propose to Hannah. Next week.”

The entire table is silent, surprised by the news.

“What an interesting turn of events,” Austin notes, but he’s smiling. “Congrats, dude.”

“How are you doing it?” Joe asks.

Jesse hums. “I’ma take her on a hike. And then we’ll climb on top of a mountain. And give her a phone box, except when she’ll open the box it’ll be a ring and not a phone.”

“That’s… specific,” Joe says. “And why a mountain?”

“Because that’s romantic, man,” says Jesse. 

“Oh,” laughs Mark, letting his arm flop loose to the side.

“When did you ever do that for me,” complains Megan. Austin looks vaguely offended.

“We’re gonna have our wedding after, like, a month of preparation. And you guys can be my best mans and womans.”

Joe’s chest hurts from laughing. “Is that… even allowed,” Samantha says. 

“I don’t care,” responds Jesse, and that’s that. 

And when it’s time to leave, and Joe has to go back to his own town and his own way of living, the way of living in which he felt like something was missing (these people), he feels a tinge of sadness run through his body.

But they’re promising to meet again for Christmas dinner and Easter and Halloween and whatever other holiday they could use as an excuse to go to Austin’s, and Joe thinks—

Family they are.