The Ghosts We Were

Chapter Two - Jason

I knew better than to stop by Dads on my way home. I'd been working since before daylight and it was well past supper when I finally called it a day. When you don't have a boss, you also don't have anyone to tell you the day is done. There were still plenty of service calls to make, invoices to settle, and paperwork to get in order to last well into next week without stopping.

The last thing I wanted to do was fix his damn washer. But it was my dad. The one who taught me how to fix things. The one who'd stayed up well into the night fixing things I'd broken as a rambunctious kid. I owed him the same.

And he was helping. After all, he'd only asked if I gave him a hand with it. Still too proud to admit his kid had surpassed his handyman skills. But the drum was off track and it was mostly a one man job.

I guess I was that man.

So he was left to stand there twiddling his thumbs.

"You need anything to drink?" He asks from the doorway to the laundry room to make himself feel useful. "I just made some tea."

"I'm good. I've got to pick up a bite on the way home anyway."

"What you need is a good woman to have supper ready for you when you get home."

My hands still on the screw I'm tightening and I look up to glare at him. There were so many things wrong with that statement. Least of which was that it was dangerously close to leading into a lecture about settling down.

He shrugs it off as if he's seen that look a thousand times before, which he probably has. Every time he started in on this. "Don't give me that look boy. I'm just saying."

"I'm good, dad. Wendy's takes care of me just fine."

First off, I wouldn't expect supper out of anyone. It was my responsibility to take care of myself. Second, any girl who'd stick around with the amount of hours I work would probably run the other direction the moment she realized I wasn't worth it.

Dad walks back the few steps into the kitchen and I hear a beer can pop open before he comes back. I momentarily assume he's brought it for me, but then I hear him gulp half of it down before he even steps foot back in the room. Should have known better there too.

"I talked to Donna this morning."

My mouth makes a "hm?" sound but I've lost grip on the screwdriver and my knees feel a bit wonky below me.

He doesn't speak for a while, just watches me as the screwdriver falls from my hand. When I try to pick it up off the ground, my head slams into the open door of the washer. I stifle a curse word that my mother would have murdered me for using in her house if she was still alive and dad can't help but chuckle before asking me if I'm okay.

"I'm fine," I say with more grit in my voice than I mean to use.

"Damn, I say her momma's name and you forget your God-given good senses. Ain't nothing to lose your mind over. Not like I said I went on a date with her."

It's not the romantic possibility between the widower and the widow I'm worried about, as awkward as that would be. But he doesn't know it. And I ain't gonna be the one to tell him. Tori is gone. She isn't coming back. She's happy in the big city with her big city husband and probably their big city snot-nosed kids by now for all I know.

It's a mantra I've played in my head every time I run into someone from high school at a bar, or a grocery store, or even once as the dentist had me pried open like a bass on a carving table. Every person in this town knew where you found Jason Cyrus, you found Tori Chase. As if our names were carved next to each other in their minds as well as the cement at the new ball field they built when we were 14.