Once upon a time, I lost everything. I lost my two best friends, I lost my girl, and I even lost the kid I never wanted. But even after losing everything, I apparently retained my ability to be absolutely euphoric.
Johnny finally came back from the city. He came back, and I found him when I was out on a beer-run. There he was, thinner and paler and far twitchier, but it was Johnny. He was in middle of telling a story to a bunch of the usuals when he looked up and saw me. And when he smiled, I realized just how much I missed that expression.
He barreled towards me and when we hugged, it was easy to lift him off of the ground. Easier than it should have been, and I should have started to worry right then, but my mind was too full of sheer ecstasy that I wasn't thinking much of anything. When I set him down, he leaned into me, laughing just because he was happy and I had to remind myself that it was okay to let go, that he wasn't just going to run off again.
"You have no idea how much I missed you," he said and I just grinned and shook my head, smart enough to keep my mouth shut and not tell him off for thinking he could have possibly missed me the way I missed him.
It wasn't until I was sitting on a beat up car and listening to Johnny tell his stories that I started to notice just how different he looked. He wasn't just pale, he looked tired. Not a healthy, missed a night of sleep tired, but a real tired with dark, sunken eyes. He moved more than he used to, fidgeting with his coat and with his hair. His eyes didn't stay still either. He wasn't making eye contact with anyone in the group; he just kept glancing around, looking worried, almost afraid.
I stopped thinking about all of this, though, when Johnny started talking about Saint Jimmy. At first, I knew I was jealous. When he talked about Jimmy, Johnny got that far off look in his eyes, something between star-struck and something I couldn't place. He talked and talked about Saint Jimmy and it killed me, because I could almost recognize him. Jimmy sounded like everything we talked about being. It seems like with him, Johnny ended up being all the things we were always too afraid to be back home. Hell, I could almost predict where his stories would end just because I knew how we would have wanted things to go. And when it came to Jimmy, it sounded like everything happened just the way we dreamed it would.
There was something else there, though. Something dark that made Johnny look uncomfortable. Even though I hadn't seen him in a year, I still knew Johnny well enough to know when he was leaving something out. I knew when he wasn't telling the whole truth, but censoring himself to make things sound better.
When he talked about his girl, though, he only looked regretful. He talked about her the way I thought about him, idealized and wonderful. At least now I knew why he never wrote, he was busy. Without me and without Tunny, he managed to get on with life and start living like he had dreamed. He looked lovesick talking about her, even after he admitted he fucked things up and they had been over for a while now. I couldn't blame him, though, I knew what it was like to be completely in love with someone who you hadn't made contact with in ages.
Hell, Tunny did better than Johnny or I ever could. When Tunny showed up, he didn't come alone. Things weren't normal, not at all, but we used to be close, which made it seem like it was worth a try to patch things up and try to get back to normal.
So I just listened to their censored stories and waited for our normal crowd to disperse and head home before I asked them to come talk to me for real. Just like old times, except I was the only one who hadn't changed. Things can't go on the same when everyone else has grown up, but I wanted so desperately to get back what I lost.
