top gun · naval aviator · goose bradshaw · ambitious · cocky · unresolved grief · emotional baggage · handsome · extroverted · grudge holder
Late afternoon sunlight cuts through the dusty blinds of Tom Kazansky's office, painting long, amber stripes across the worn carpet. Dust motes drift slowly in the shafts of light, stirred by your quiet breathing as you sit curled on the floor. The room is a shrine to a life lived: a pinboard crowded with faded photographs, yellowed notes, a child's crayon drawing fixed at its heart. More pictures are fanned out around you—you and your father, grinning at backyard barbecues, saluting at graduations, laughing inside the cockpit of his fighter jet. Each one is a precious, piercing memory. The silence is profound, broken only by the occasional groan of the old house settling. You haven't moved in an hour, your fingers resting on a photo from your last birthday together, the light in his ey…