Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
Johnny
Pilot gave him his mom’s information. He had to go see her.
He waited until Gavin left, simply because he didn’t want Gavin to see him differently.
Gavin would have insisted on coming, but Gavin had done enough holding Johnny together.
He didn’t want him to think he couldn’t handle his business, and when it came to his mother, he didn’t have any idea how that would play out.
He pulled his Jetta into the driveway and took his time staring up at the little cottage house, making sure he had the right number.
It seemed right. What had he expected? She lived in a modest house, plain but inviting on the outside.
It didn’t leave him a clue about the inside, though.
He braced for the worst as he got out of the car, walked up the steps, and knocked on the door before he could change his mind.
She opened the door, gasped, and then sobbed loudly. She tried to shut the door, but Johnny pushed his shoulder in. “Stop, Mom. Stop it. Talk to me.”
His mother, Lindsay, was a shattered mess. “N-No. I don’t want you to see me. How could you want to?” Her hair was pulled back in an untidy bun, blonde streaked with gray. He could barely understand her through her tears.
“Ma. Mom. Stop.”
She started cry-talking. He hated that. Hated when he saw people on the news doing it. It clicked now why it bothered him so much. She always did that. Half crying, half talking about whatever upset her at the moment. She sobbed something about being ashamed.
“Mom, I don’t blame you. Father abused us both, and he was a mean fucker too. We both know it. What could you have done?”
“Something. I don’t know. I-It was too little too late. I know you hate me.”
“If I hated you, would I be here?” He tried to push the door in a little more, but she wouldn’t let go of it. She only sobbed harder and tried to hide behind it.
“You could be here to rub it in.”
“Rub it in? No, I love you. I want to start over, Ma.”
His dad had been a right fucker. He’d also been abusive to her and probably even more so after Johnny had left. He didn’t even want to imagine. He would have helped her if he could, but he had been a teenager, a kid. Plus, his mother had already made her decisions.
He couldn’t help how small his body was built.
George and Gary weren’t small at all, but his mother and her family had delicate genes, and Johnny had inherited that fine bone structure from her instead of the Killebrew bulk.
That shouldn’t have necessarily labeled him as gay, but in his father’s alcohol-addled brain it had.
He’d convinced Johnny he knew more about Johnny’s sexual orientation than he had when he was younger, especially when he’d hit puberty.
Johnny had discovered that he did like guys rather than girls as predicted, but his father had already been bashing the I hate my gay son into his head from an early age.
For a long-damned time, he wasn’t sure if actually being gay came from a self-fulfilling prophecy, his dad’s intuitiveness, or maybe a twisted coincidence.
Eventually, he gave it up for the coincidence angle, but the damage had already been done.
When he finally-finally admitted it to his father at the age of seventeen?
That had been the end of it.
His mother had taken much of the abuse. He could remember his father slapping her around as much as he’d slapped Johnny around.
Sometimes more. At least he could hide in his closet or under the bed, and that usually deflected the negative attention.
His father blamed her for everything, though.
It was Lindsay’s fault he was so tiny, that he was gay, that he never measured up.
It was also her fault if George ran out of beer or couldn’t get up in the morning or lost his job.
Her fault if it fucking rained. Johnny didn’t have it in him to blame her for one more thing.
Ultimately, the conversation turned out to be mostly uneventful.
He told her he wasn’t going to give up on her and maybe she needed help, like a shrink or something.
He said he’d pay for that. She didn’t even look at him.
He left his card, tucked it between her delicate fingers and the door.
“Call me if you need anything. I mean it, Mom. I love you. Call me.”
He left, planning on hitting the gym on his way home.
He didn’t have a big fancy muscle car like Pilot, but he liked his little economy job.
A silk-blue, metallic VW Jetta hybrid. He rarely put gas in the thing, and it allowed him to get around town effortlessly.
Gavin talked about keeping a second car there.
He’d probably want a big Lincoln Town Car or something. He smiled, thinking about Gavin.
He’d only gone a half a block away when someone slammed into him from behind. Johnny cursed and pulled over to the curb. He got out, trying to calm down by gripping his hands together and breathing deeply. He shouldn’t let this get him riled up. He was overemotional from visiting his mother—
Someone slammed his body against his car. He pushed back against an immovable force that smelled like alcohol. Fear shot through his heart. He hoped some of the neighbors were home, watching and maybe calling the police. “Get off me. What the fuck?”
“You have a very smart mouth for such a little dude, faggot.” Johnny recognized the voice. He’d heard it in his nightmares. His father, George Killebrew.
“Father...”
“Don’t even. I’m convinced your slut of a mother gave you a different father. There’s no way you could be my son.”
“Don’t! Father—”
“Shut up. Don’t come back here. Go run off and play with your fag friends.
My fag brother. But don’t come around here messing with her, messing with me.
” He shook Johnny and pushed him harder into the car, probably leaving a bruise on his hip.
“While you can. Because I know where you live. Know where you work with my brother. Eventually. Yeah, eventually, I’m going to catch up to you, and I’m going to rid the world of one more unnecessary faggot.
” He didn’t slur his words, but he was on the way toward it.
Johnny didn’t want to be afraid of his father, but terror choked him up. He trembled uncontrollably beneath the weight of his father pressing him against the side of his car.
George released him and backed away. “Don’t fucking move, Jonathan.”
He went by Johnny because of that right there. The way his father said Jonathan. He put his head against the car, refusing to look.
“That’s right. Hide your face, you little faggot.”
A minute later, car doors slammed. Johnny heard a car drive off then he finally looked up. He was alone on the street. He sunk to the ground and pulled out his phone. With shaky fingers, he dialed Pilot’s number.