Come Home || Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw

Prologue

5 months and 18 days. That's how much older than me he is. It never made a difference to us, though. Bradley Bradshaw was loved in every sense. Still is. Not that Maverick didn't and still doesn't love me, but Bradley was born into warmth and excitement. Goose and Carole loved their baby boy from the moment they found out he was coming. 

My parents, however, weren't together when they got pregnant and I definitely did not help to bring them any closer. A little while after I was born, my mother dropped me off with Maverick and left without a word. At least, that's what he's always told me. He was 22 years old when he had to switch from worrying about himself to worrying about me. He had barely put any time into the Navy by then, navigating military life and single fatherhood all at once. It's safe to assume that my upbringing was less than ideal.

I ended up going to stay with Carole and Bradley a lot when Mav and Goose were being deployed, which was usually a good time. I missed Mav every time I went, though. It felt like I was losing him and seeing how Bradley not only had a loving father, but a loving and present mother did eat at me a little. When Carole took us to visit Mav and Goose at Top Gun, I watched Goose and Bradley run toward each other. I left my hand in Carole's and moved my eyes toward the ground, wondering why Mav couldn't be more like Goose.

My feet were quickly swept up off the ground and arms wrapped around me tightly.

"Hey, kid!" I couldn't help the toothy grin on my face as I practically choked Mav out with my little arms, just happy that he missed me like I missed him. I didn't know it at the time, but Carole had taken a picture of us in that moment. It's my favorite picture of us.

We stopped into a bar on the airbase where I met Mav's friend, Charlie. She was really pretty and I could tell that he liked her just by the way he smiled at her. I sat on the piano next to Bradley while Goose played and sang Great Balls of Fire.

Bradley had just turned 2 when his dad died, so it wasn't a right-away kind of ache for him. It started to sink in when he turned 5, always asking "where did daddy go?" and "when is daddy coming back for us?" Carole couldn't bear to tell him the truth until he was older, but I think some part of him knew what had happened before she told him.

I did my best to be there for him as much as a little kid could be in a situation like that. When he cried, I sat with him until he was ready to talk or ready for a distraction. When he got angry, I let him yell at me and say everything he needed to say before I interrupted. When he felt alone, I made sure he knew that I was always there, his mom was still there, and Mav would be there for him.

We stayed friends for years while we all lived on the airbase, going through elementary school together and always spending our free time together. Some even said we looked like a mini Goose and Maverick running around Fightertown. Bradley and I talked about joining the Navy together once we were old enough, between the times that Maverick had taken us on joyrides and all of the amazing things we had seen at Top Gun, we knew that's what we wanted to do, and we would do it together.

Then, one day, a few months before my 14th birthday, Carole decided she needed to move away from the base. She couldn't be there anymore without thinking of Goose, she couldn't turn a corner without seeing him standing there. She couldn't look at the old piano in the bar without hearing his voice echoing. She needed to be closer to her family.

I was in school when they packed up and left, so I didn't get to say goodbye. Mav broke the news when I got home and it felt like I lost a piece of myself. Carole didn't leave an address or a phone number, giving me no way to contact Bradley. I lost my best friend, and the funniest part is I was more worried about how he was doing without me than how I was doing.