A/N: I had a tough time with this chapter and I'm not 100 sure if I'm behind this chapter but I wanted to get it out to all of you guys… this chapter is mostly transitional… after this chapter, there's only 2 more chapters plus an epilogue! As a side note, I have another story currently in the works, so look out for that! Happy reading and don't forget to leave a comment!
Chapter 8 – Ambivalence
Johnny stood in the study, looking at the open door, hoping that she would come back. That was the second time that she had walked out of this study, without looking back… and it was the second time that he did nothing to stop her. He thought that maybe this time it wouldn't hurt as bad since he had lived through a broken heart before but it hurt even worse. He didn't know how many more times he could stand to have Lulu beat his emotions before he would start bleeding. How much could one person stand?
"I don't know…" he said out loud, answering his own question.
He walked over to the bottle of scotch that he had and poured himself a heaping glass. He held the glass in his hand, debating whether to down the entire glass in one gulp or to hurl it across the room. He should've gone after her. He should've grabbed her arm, turned her around and told her that he wasn't going to give up on her and their son that easily. Instead of fighting with her again, he should've just told her the truth: that she and their son belonged with him and he was never going to let them get away again.
But he did let them get away.
No matter how hard he tried to hang on, Lulu just kept slipping through his fingertips like fine sand… and then there was Lucas. This boy that was his but he knew nothing about. He didn't know what his favorite color was, what his favorite pizza topping was, or what he even looked like as a baby. Lucas was no different than any other little kid that Johnny saw walking down the street with his parents. But he was Lucas' father. He still didn't fully wrap his head around this whole concept of being a father. Growing up with Anthony Zacchara made him never want to have a family. Love was just a dolled up word for control in the Zacchara house. Anthony "loved" Johnny's mother so much that he killed her in a jealous rage that was directed at him. As his mother sunk down to the floor after Anthony fired that one fatal shot, Johnny swore that he would never become his father. He would never love someone so much that it destroyed him and he never wanted to have any children of his own because he didn't want what he went through to be passed onto his children. But when he met Lulu, hitchhiking on the side of the road, he wanted to prove himself wrong. He wanted to prove to the world that he could love somebody without losing himself and now there he was, wanting that family that he had desperately tried to avoid.
It's funny how life throws curveballs... he thought to himself as he knocked back the glass of scotch in his hand.
Lulu knocked on the bright red door to Carly's house. Her cheeks were still wet from crying as she drove from Johnny's over to Carly's house. She couldn't believe that she had even gone over there, let alone told Johnny the truth about Lucas being his son. How incredibly stupid could she have been? She knocked again until her knuckles turned as red as the door.
"Are you ok?"
Lulu looked up and saw Michael at the door. She looked him over for a moment. He still had that fiery red hair that he always had and those freckles that he had since he was a little boy but he was taller than her now and of course gone was the bowl cut that Carly had always stuck him in when he was younger and now his hair was cropped and styled like he had just walked out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement. Lulu quickly wiped the tears away from her eyes and smiled.
"Of course I am! Come here you… give me a hug…" Lulu said, embracing Michael. He chuckled and hugged her. He showed her inside and closed the door behind her.
"I'm assuming that you want to talk to mom, right?" he asked.
"Yeah… is she around?" she asked.
"I think she's upstairs… I'll go get her for you…" he said, quickly disappearing upstairs.
Lulu sat down on the coffee colored couch and sighed heavily. Carly had always been her rock, probably more so than her own brothers, maybe because Carly never lectured her or judged her. She just listened and then gave Lulu her honest opinion, even if she didn't want to hear it and that's what she needed right now. She had made a huge mess of this situation with Johnny and she didn't even know where to begin with fixing it.
"Hey! Michael told me you were here, what's up?"
Lulu looked behind her and saw Carly coming downstairs. She smiled warmly at her younger cousin and sat down on the couch right next to her.
"I have a problem and I think you're the only one who can fix it…" Lulu said.
"Does it have to do with a certain person by the name of Johnny Zacchara?" Carly asked, raising her eyebrow and Lulu smiled sheepishly.
"Yeah… Carly, I really screwed up…" Lulu said softly.
"What did you do?" Carly asked, kicking off her shoes and curling up on her couch.
Lulu could barely think of where to start. She had messed up so many times with Johnny that she didn't even know where to begin with telling Carly the situation. She sighed heavily and turned to Carly.
"Johnny came to see me at Wyndamere… the day after Nikolas' wedding." Lulu exhaled.
"Oh that's not good…" Carly muttered.
"He said that he wanted to see me before I went back to LA…" Lulu said.
"Yeah… I'm sure that's why he came to see you…" Carly laughed.
"And then he just started saying the sweetest things to me… he told me that seeing me made him think about how things could've been different between us and how he wished that he had gone after me and…" Lulu started.
"You fell for it, didn't you?" Carly asked.
Lulu thought about Carly's words. It wasn't entirely true because Johnny wasn't playing any games with her. That night was Johnny coming clean to her about how he felt and she knew Johnny better than anyone else and she knew that he wasn't lying.
"We—we slept together…" Lulu exhaled.
"Lulu…" Carly said, shaking her head.
"I know! I know! It was a really bad decision but he was just there and…" Lulu began.
"You missed him…" Carly inserted. Lulu looked up at her cousin and Carly just shook her head.
"How'd—" Lulu started.
"How did I know? Please, this is me you're talking to, Lulu… I've been there before… nothing that you could say would surprise me…" Carly laughed.
"I just couldn't say no… no matter how hard I try, I just can't stay away from him…" Lulu said.
"Ok, what happened after that?" Carly asked.
"He wanted to try again… he wants me to move back to Port Charles and when I told him that it wasn't going to work, he got so upset… he accused me of sleeping with him to punish him…" Lulu sighed.
"Well, obviously since you had just slept with the guy and then told him that you had no intention of getting back together with him… you know that you were giving him false hope by sleeping with him, right?" Carly asked, matter-of-factly.
"I know… which is why I went back this morning to talk to him… I wanted to apologize to him for how things ended…" Lulu started.
"Which I'm guessing blew up in your face…" Carly muttered.
It amazed Lulu how on the mark Carly was. Perhaps it was her dealings with Sonny that made her a seasoned professional in relationships with men like Sonny, Jason, Alcazar, and Johnny. Lulu buried her face in her hands and sighed in frustration.
"The understatement of the year…" Lulu groaned.
"What happened?" Carly asked.
"We got into a huge fight and I—I" she stammered.
"What did you do?" Carly asked.
Lulu almost started to hyperventilate. Her heart was racing and she tried to blink back the tears that were rushing to her eyes. She covered her mouth with her hands and shook her head, almost ashamed to tell Carly what she had done.
"Johnny asked point blank if Lucas was his son and—and I couldn't—I didn't want to lie to him anymore…" Lulu sobbed.
"You told him about Lucas?" Carly asked and Lulu nodded her head.
"And he was furious… I've never seen him so upset…" Lulu said, wiping her eyes.
"Well… to be completely honest with you, Lulu… what did you expect? Did you expect him to understand your reasons for keeping his child away from him despite how good your reasons for doing so?" Carly asked.
"I know… I'm just—I'm just so scared…" Lulu whispered.
"Let me tell you something… this fear that you have… you're not scared of Johnny's lifestyle… you never have been… if you were, you would've never have gotten involved with him in the first place and then you wouldn't have Lucas… you're scared that you're going to get hurt again… and you're using Lucas as a crutch…" Carly stated.
"How can you say that? After everything that you went through with Michael?" Lulu cried.
"What happened to Michael happened because of Sonny's wish to give his children a sense of normalcy after we caught Michael with that gun… Sonny wanted him and Morgan to have a life without bodyguards… if Sonny had kept the guards with him when Michael went to the warehouse that night, my son wouldn't have lost three and a half years of his life… Johnny has the means to protect you and Lucas and he would rather die than see you or your son hurt and you know that…" Carly said.
Lulu hated when Carly was right. Yes, Johnny's life was dangerous but she knew that Johnny would never let anything happen to her and now that Johnny knew that Lucas was his son, he would protect Lucas with his own life. Lulu laughed bitterly and wiped her eyes again.
"How is it that you can see right through me?" Lulu asked and Carly laughed.
"All I have to do is look back at my life and tell you the exact opposite of what I did… but in all seriousness… what do you want from Johnny? Do you want him back?" Carly asked and Lulu looked down at her hands and sighed heavily.
"I love him… I—I never stopped loving him… and there's nothing more that I want than for all of us to be a family…" Lulu exhaled.
"But…" Carly started.
"Johnny doesn't want anything to do with me… I wouldn't want anything to do with me if I were him… I've probably messed up any chance to reconcile with him…" Lulu sighed.
"There's really only one way to find out…" Carly said.
Johnny walked along the cobbled pathway of the graveyard of the small church about seven miles away from Crimson Pointe. The sky above him was gray and the large willow trees blocked out what little light was available. He hadn't walked this path in years… because he didn't know how to face her but she was the one person that could love him no matter what and he needed to talk to her even though he knew that she wouldn't talk back. He sighed heavily as he reached his destination. It was a spot in the back of the yard, right next to a row of rose bushes. He knelt down and put his hand on the gray marble plaque, tracing the letters on the name.
Maria Isabella Zacchara
"Hi Mom…" he exhaled.
He often wondered what his mother would think about his life now… if she would be proud of him or be disappointed. Would she even be able to recognize her own son? He was so different than the little boy that she knew. The harsh realities of life had hit him at an early age, slowly destroying him piece by piece.
"I know... I know I haven't been here in a while and I'm sorry but you're the only one that I can talk to right now…" he said softly.
He desperately wanted to hear her voice. He could remember hearing her softly talk to him as he fell asleep when he was little. After hearing his father yell and scream for hours, his mother's hushed words brought him so much comfort.
"I don't know what to do about Lulu… she's—she's just so determined to shut me out of her life and now that I know for sure that Lucas is mine, I don't know if I can walk away from him even if she thinks it's the best thing to do…" he started.
"A part of me died that day when she left and for the first time since you died, mom… I felt like I couldn't breathe… and Claudia tried to help even though she didn't like Lulu that much but even she couldn't help… I just—I felt like I was drowning and no one could pull me back up to the surface…" he said, his voice breaking as he finished his phrase.
Showing emotions was a sign of weakness according to his father. He tried to never show any emotion when in the presence of his father and he just carried that principle until he was older. He wiped his eyes and exhaled shakily as he rose to his feet. He had lost so much and now that he finally had a family, how could he not want to hold onto that instead of choosing to remain isolated for the rest of his life?
"I should be angry… I am angry… I'm angry at her for not telling me that she was pregnant but I'm angrier at myself for not doing anything about it… I just stood there and let her walk out of my life when I knew that it wasn't what I wanted and it wasn't what she wanted…" he said, pacing in front of his mother's grave.
His heart was beating wildly against his chest. He really could use his mother's soothing words right now because his mind was in a million different places. He felt suspended in midair, not knowing which way was up.
"But I can't blame her for wanting to keep Lucas safe… there really are no guarantees with the business and I could never forgive myself if anything happened to him because of me… I just—I just don't know what to do, mom… am I being selfish for wanting my family even though it'll be dangerous for them? How can I say that I love Lulu and not want to keep her safe?" he cried.
His eyes were glassy full of tears. This was killing him. Doing the right thing by his family by keeping them safe would be to walk away and he didn't know if he could do that. He couldn't walk away from his own son and the woman that he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with. He buried his face in his hands and exhaled sharply. If he fought for them, however, he could be doing more damage than good. He hadn't established himself as a real power like his father so rival organizations wouldn't even think about touching his family and he didn't know if he even wanted that power. He could do his best to keep them safe but he didn't know if that would be enough.
"What do I do, mom?" he whispered.
