Page 51 of The Pact

“Johnny.” I breathe out before I realize the consequences of bumping into him.

His eyes go from me to Skye in her stroller. “Unless you followed in your sister’s footsteps and decided to become a mom, I assume that’s Skye?” he asks, looking at his daughter.

Fury starts mounting inside me. I don’t even know why. The circumstances in which he walked away from my sister were never clear. “What are you doing here?” I challenge him.

“I’m on PCS (permanent change of station, is an army transfer) leave. I went on a nine month deployment right out of boot camp and once we got back, they let me choose my next duty station. I got stationed at the Army-Navy Joint Operation Base down in Star Cove. I’ve been calling McKayla but she hasn’t been picking up my calls. My parents are having a welcome home party for me this weekend and they’d love to see her and especially Skye.”

Before I can come up with a snide remark about how convenient it is that now his family is interested in the baby he walked away from, Johnny looks at Bode, who’s still standing by my side.

“Oh, hey man. How are you? I saw you guys have been placing great in all the world circuit races all year. Are you going to sail for Bridgeport?”

Bode shakes the hand offered by Johnny and for a moment the two men catch up on things. Even though Johnny was a football player and two years older than us, they were all part of the popular group at school.

“I see you’ve been keeping up with our progress. How’s the army?”

Johnny shrugs. “Eh. It’s got its moments. I just made the base official football team. I went to the tryouts even though technically I’m on leave for another two weeks. Being on the team will get me out of a lot of bullshit duties. You know how it is, being a star athlete always has its advantages.”

I can’t help the words that leave my mouth until they ring out loud. “Right. You know everything about getting out of your duties, don’t you, Johnny?”

The smile fades from his face, replaced by a tick in his jaw. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I clench my fists so tight that my knuckles turn white. “That you left my sister in trouble with a baby that you helped make.”

His eyes harden. “Is that what you think? For your information, I asked Mc to marry me when I found out she was pregnant. She turned me down.”

Right. Maybe it isn’t up to me to call him out on his shit and certainly not in the middle of a store but I can’t bite my tongue. “Really, did you? Or did you just bail when my father tried to force your hand into moving in with my family? You enlisted as soon as you graduated from school and disappeared, leaving my sister alone and broke. She’s still paying the bill for giving birth.”

Johnny runs a hand over his face and when he looks at me again, he looks tired. “Ausra, I don’t know where you got your facts from, but you’ve got it all wrong. I never walked out on McKayla and Skye. I wasn’t ecstatic with your parents condition to move in with them but I accepted. I still don’t understand what happened. Your sister broke up with me out of the blue. She stopped talking to me, she moved out from your parents house and she dropped out of school. She refused to see me and talk to me or my family.”

He doesn’t get away with it that easily. “Yeah, right. Even if that was the truth and you wanted to marry her, you all but disappeared once you graduated—”

“Wrong again.” His tone is hard.

Bode moves one step toward him, taking hold of my hand. “Hey, dude. Watch your tone with her.”

Johnny shakes his head but his brown eyes don’t leave me. “Ausra, I’m sorry but you have your facts completely wrong. I’ve been calling and writing snail mail letters to your sister this entire time, even from deployment. I offered to help her with money and she turned me down. As soon as I started getting paid by the army, I planned on making deposits in her account every month but she closed it. If she doesn’t want to marry me, or be with me, it’s fair enough. But I’m not trying to skirt my responsibilities as a father. I want to provide what I can for Skye and I’d love to be in her life. That’s why I asked to be assigned to Star Cove, so I could be close. But I can’t do any of that if your sister won’t talk to me. She didn’t put me on Skye’s birth certificate. I don’t know what I did to her if she won’t tell me. I still love her. You have to believe me.”

He sounds sincere. McKayla has always refused to talk about Johnny. But I’m not going to get involved until I know more.

I promise Johnny that I’ll ask Mc to reach out to him and the entire time while we finish shopping and pay for our party supplies, I keep wondering what’s going on with my sister and why she’s been shutting Johnny out this whole time.

Bode is quiet too and I’m grateful because my mind is caught up in a whirlwind of worry about my sister’s situation.

“Ausra, the guys all have family engagements tonight but I’m free. Is it ok to drive you back home and hang there? We could order a pizza maybe?”

I absentmindedly agree, nodding my head as he drives back to my apartment through the warm early summer afternoon.

As we get back into my living room, I tell Bode that there’s soda in the fridge and to help himself while I put my niece down for a nap.

Skye has fallen asleep with her new teddy bear clutched in her arms and even though it would be time to feed her, I decide to let her sleep and just give her a jar of veggies and sausage when she wakes up.

I swipe a gentle hand over her forehead and find her quite warm. Her cheeks are still red. Mc told me that this teething thing is being really hard and Skye hasn’t been sleeping much, so sleep right now is probably better than anything else.

I crack the window open to let in a little bit of the sea scented breeze and turn on the ceiling fan at its lowest speed. I enter the living room carrying the baby monitor with me and setting it down on the coffee table as I join Bode on the couch.

“Pizza should be here soon,” he informs me but now that I look at him, I see something in his eyes.

I can’t quite explain it but his normal relaxed demeanor seems to be all but gone and there’s definite tension in his broad shoulders.

---