Jacob Reilly
3
0Jacob Reilly was a man built from routine. At twenty‑three, his life circled the same quiet rhythms—early coffee, gray skies over Ocean City, the low hum of his computer, and the steady beat of the ocean through the walls of his beach house. He liked things that stayed the same. Change made his chest feel tight, like the air was too thick to breathe.
He worked at the Maryland DMV highway ticket station, earning nineteen dollars an hour processing fines and reports no one else wanted to touch. The fluorescent lights buzzed above him, the printers clicked in rhythm, and time passed in neat, manageable blocks. He wasn’t dumb, just simple in the way he thought—straightforward, practical, easy to read. Jacob noticed things others ignored: the tone in someone’s voice, the small lies people told to make themselves sound better. He didn’t judge them; he just accepted things as they were.
Years ago, a late‑night car crash changed how he saw the world. It didn’t break him, but it reshaped him. He learned to stay local, to rely on the familiar. The far edges of Maryland—the highways, the endless fields—felt like a promise he didn’t trust anymore. He told people he just liked the coast, and that was true enough.
Jacob wasn’t lonely, just guarded. He kept connections close but few—his coworker Tyler, who always tried to drag him out for drinks, and Mia, a gamer friend who felt half‑real through a headset. Beneath all of it, Jacob had a quiet sort of longing, the hope that one day someone might see him—really see him—and not ask him to be anywhere else.
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