My fingers gripped tighter onto the handlebars as I read the sign: Vilas – 5 miles. I was nervous. It was fucking ridiculous and entirely pathetic, but I was scared of rejection. I had never felt like a bigger * for admitting that fact to myself, but there I was. My heart wouldn’t calm down, not even with every deep, slow breath of fresh mountain air I forced to pump in and out of my lungs. My brain was a jumbled mess of uncertainty, but there was no turning back at that point.
As the road curved slowly down the mountainside, my mind tripped back to where it had all begun.
“Mom?” I climbed onto my mother’s boney knee in the middle of the afternoon. Our front room was blazing hot from the sun pouring in through the sheer curtains.
She helped me get settled into her arms, the ash of her cigarette landing on my shoulder. “What is it, Ryder? Mommy’s watching her soaps.” Even as a five-year-old, I could tell how much she didn't want me just by the tone in her voice.
“Why don’t I have a daddy? All the other kids at school have daddies.”
She put her cigarette inside the empty Old English bottle next to her foot and chugged out of her glass of grain alcohol with ice cubes clanking around. “Your daddy didn't want you so he never came home.”
Sniffling, I tried to wrap my tiny mind around what those words truly meant. “But why? Aren’t daddies supposed to love their kids?”
“Yours doesn't love us. Now piss off. Go play in your room. Mommy’s tired.”
I scampered off to my section of the studio apartment that was my ‘room’. I grabbed my Thomas The Train blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders as I sniffled and cried over a dad that had never been there.
It was a plain as day memory that had plagued me for more than ten years; that’s how long it took me to grow the balls to confront my mother again about my father who had never loved us. That’s when she finally told me the truth: that she had been a few years older than my dad and could have been charged with statutory rape when she was fucking him, so she’d run away, only to send a letter to him years later, once she assumed she couldn't be sent to jail for raping a minor.
What a fucking awful eighteenth birthday present.
My mom swore that she had sent it, but who knew if he had gotten it, read it, or even if she was telling me the truth or not. I wasn’t even entirely sure why I was looking for my old man after eighteen years, but there I was, twisting and curving along an old mountain highway, not knowing if my father would know his own son when he saw him. It was freaking insane. Nothing else had panned out for me in my life so far, so something had to give…right?
What if he doesn't even know I exist?
It was my biggest fear.
My forearms were sore from the four hour ride, but I didn’t give a shit. All I was focused on was finding a place to grab a beer and get my head on straight again.
I pulled off into a parking lot with a few trucks and a handful of bikes near the front.
Seems like my kind of place.
I swung open the heavy wooden door and puffed my chest out while all the guys lining the bar and at the pool tables stopped dead to stare at me making my way to an empty stool. There should have just been a damn sign on the wall: No fucking outsiders welcome; it would have made things way less awkward.
The middle-aged bartender smiled sweetly at me as her long, curled dark hair bounced along while she made her way over to me.
“What are you havin’, sugar?” she asked, wiping the counter.
“Bottle of Bud Light.”
She nodded, dug in the trough, and put the brown bottle in front of me. “My name is Crickett, love. If you need anything, just holler.”
I smirked at her name, but held back. “Thanks,” I muttered.
In two gulps my first beer was gone and another was slammed in front of me. My nerves were coolng…finally. I just had no idea what I was going to do next. I had an address of where my mom had sent that letter years ago, but so much time had passed. It was a complete shot in the dark, but it was better than nothing.
Crickett kept looking over at me, glancing and checking me out. It was unnerving, but nothing that I hadn’t dealt with in the past. Most of my mom’s friends would hit on me during their wine nights in our apartment; they pretty much made a game out of it. Cougars love their cubs after all.
“Not from around here are you?” She finally decided to talk to me instead of just staring.
I shook my head. “Just passing through.”
She laughed a little. “I said that once, sitting in that very seat that you are now. I’m still here.”
“That ain’t gonna be me, lady. I have one mission and then I am getting out of this fucking town.”
“Well, good luck…” She trailed off, fishing for a name.
“I’m Ryder.”