Let's Get Lost

IX. Johnny

IX. Johnny

     "YOU GOT EVERYTHING?" Ryan asked, coming up behind me while I stood and stared at a photo of me and my dad -- the same one that used to be next to my bed, framed, when I lived at our mom's house. I hadn't gotten everything unpacked, but I had never mistaken where I'd placed the photograph. Shoving it back into my wallet and putting it in my back pocket, I plastered a fake smile on my face before turning around.

"Uh," I cleared my throat, "Yeah, I think so. We'll have to stop for bait but we can do that on the drive to Flathead. You ready?"

"Yeah, man," he chuckled, lightly punching my shoulder, "Of course."

"Right, right," I sighed, before shrugging and heading out of the apartment with him. I locked up while he headed down to the vehicle, causing me to look out after him. While I watched him, memories of when we were young started flooding back to me but I shook them off -- I couldn't keep doing this. It wasn't Ryan's fault he had a better childhood than I did. The only reason he did was because our mother kept lying to protect herself -- it was never his fault.

It was her's.

"Johnny?"

"Coming," I called out, taking the key out of the door after checking the handle to see it was locked. I made it out to the car just a few moments later, hoping up into the driver's seat while Ryan got comfortable in the passenger side.

We drove for a half hour before Ryan turned down the radio and narrowed his eyes in on me. I knew it wasn't because he was angry of suspected anything of me -- the sun was in his eyes, coming through my window as we drove down I-95, the windows down, the fishing gear in the back of the truck.

"Tell me about Dad," he suddenly said, catching me off guard. "I know you don't like to talk about him because he wasn't my dad -- I would never have called him Dad if I had known -- but tell me about him. I barely remember who he was. Hell, I can't remember the guy's face, anymore. It's been too long."

It took a minute, but I gave in, "What do you want to know?"

"Just talk," Ryan suggested.

"Dad never saw my eighth birthday, though I wish he had. He never got to see my fascination with fishing grow. He never got to teach me how to drive, or how to steer a boat in the right direction. He never taught me how to kiss a girl, or how to ask one out. He never had the birds and the bees talk with me, nor did he ever get to yell at me when I stayed out too late and didn't have a girl home on time. He will never see me fall in love, or get married, or meet his first or second or third grandchild. He will never hold his grandsons and granddaughters and he will never have a daughter-in-law. He will only ever have one son by blood and two in total," I swallowed, "because, Ryan, even after he knew, he had called a sitter and kissed both of our heads before leaving to see where Mom had went. He loved you as he loved me, though he hated you weren't really his . . . and I am sorry, you know, that you never got to know him like I did."

We sat for awhile, Ryan digesting all this new information that I'd given him. I would have made a terrible full-blood brother because I never wanted to share my dad -- he was mine -- but if I had been asked, and I had answered honestly, I would say my father had two loving sons who had always doted on him. I would have said he had a family -- a wife and not one boy, but two -- that he loved more than the world and would have done anything for. I would have said there was no greater man to call Dad and fortunately, two sons -- one of the shittiest people in the world and one of the most put together ones -- got the privilege of doing so.

"Those are all the things he won't get to do," Ryan eventually broke the silence, "What about the other stuff? The stuff he did do?"

I smirked, "Sometimes, the what-if's that will never happen are more important than the things that did."