4338.210 · July 29, 2018 AD
Every Sunday, Just in Case
Jerome Smith reads the chapel car park the way he reads any ecosystem — vehicles in their usual positions, families assembling in predictable patterns. He spots Megan Ashworth near the entrance and lets Samuel redirect him toward the side door, grateful for the escape even as the cowardice settles in his stomach. A flicker of eye contact with Nate Baker confirms what neither of them can say aloud. And standing alone in the corridor before the service begins, Jerome asks himself the question he's been circling for months: why does he keep showing up to a faith he's not sure he still carries?
Jerome arrives at the chapel and navigates the car park's social terrain with the observational precision he brings to everything. Megan is near the entrance in her blue-grey dress, and rather than approach, he angles toward Samuel's group by the side door — a small deviation disguised as social pragmatism, which he names honestly to himself as cowardice. Samuel recruits him for next week's basketball and the conversation cycles through the ordinary currency of young adult life while Jerome's attention tracks the wider car park.
The side entrance delivers him into the quiet corridor, and he stops. Alone between the fluorescent hum and the distant murmur of the congregation, he confronts the question directly: why does he keep performing the rituals of faith when the substance has grown so thin? The answer is layered — for Greta, for Noah, for the community that would fracture around his absence — but underneath it all sits a stubborn, irrational hope that one day the performance will stop being performance.
The foyer brings the final reckoning of the morning. Brother Rigby's reliable warmth. The Baker family assembled near the chapel doors. And Nate — standing slightly apart, holding himself with the careful neutrality of someone managing what he can't show. Their eyes meet for less than a second, the invisible thread between them pulled taut, and the moment dissolves without a trace. Jerome watches his family file into the chapel, tells Greta he needs to help with the sacrament, and stands alone in the emptying foyer before stepping through the doors into whatever version of himself this Sunday requires.
