He would go to Jack's Tavern whenever he was back home, which was increasingly shorter and further apart these days. He used to never understand those people who left town and would never come back after a few years. He vowed he would never do that himself, but it was looking like he was just becoming one of those people.

The sad thing was each visit to Jack's felt less special. Like each time he felt more like an outsider and it'd be a reminder of why he came back less and less. This whole town, he didn't belong to it anymore. He even wondered if he had belonged to it at all in the past. With what he knew now, he didn't think so, but he had just been naive back then and couldn't realize how much he didn't fit in. for that he was glad. Being too aware would've made his childhood and youth too miserable. He felt bad for the kids growing up now who were too aware of how things worked.

He had grown up in an era when you couldn't just look things up online. You sort of had to accept how things were in your small town. It was only once he was at college he could think of other possibilities.