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bobby is frustrated.
rose is nice, they’re keeping a conversation while she wipes tables, but bobby can’t help but wonder where his boys are.
it’s not unlike them to take longer than they should.
before performances, it can take longer to pull alex out of his worried pacing.
reggie has a habit of striking up conversations with the girls in line, handing them a t-shirt and winking.
luke would never be late to a show, but bobby knows him well enough to know alex and reggie can distract him.
ten minutes later, rose is working on something somewhere else, and bobby is worried. really, really worried.
after fifteen minutes have passed, bobby asks rose if she’s seen them anywhere, and she says no.
bobby knows that luke will poke fun at him for worrying, but he doesn’t care. he leaves the orpheum building, out the door that his boys left.
he’s expecting to find luke announcing an impromptu performance. he’s expecting to see alex, slapping along to a beat. he’s expecting to see reggie, singing along to whatever the rest of them decided to perform.
but when bobby opens the door that leads into the alleyway, he hears screams, and his brain is telling him: there is something very wrong about this.
he walks just a bit further, and then bobby knows for sure, his boys are in trouble. someone is screaming that an ambulance has arrived, saying that some teenagers are sick, really sick.
when bobby reaches a black couch, resting against the side of a building, he realizes just how much trouble the boys are in.
they’ve been sick all over it, and paramedics are loading the bodies of three bloody, dying teenage boys into the back of the ambulance.
the bodies of his boys.
he calls out for them, weakly, a sad attempt for one more connection to his best friends. but logically, bobby knows their bodies were too still for them to ever call back.
he notices posters, plastered the the wall of the alley, too many of which bear luke’s face and name. a voice in his head makes a bitter remark about how now, luke will be missing forever.
bobby wonders who will tell emily, and if he’ll have to break the news to her himself.
all of a sudden he’s moving, but it doesn’t feel like he’s moving himself. bobby calls out for them again, screams their names until his voice is raw.
it feels like he’s watching himself grieve, watching the people around him connect the dots. bobby watches himself answer questions.
bobby speaks with a wobbly voice, repeating “i was inside” and “they went to go get hot dogs” and feels so ridiculous when he tells them he stayed behind.
the immediate wish to get to know rose seems so immature now, now that he knows that was his last chance to stay with his boys.
bobby’s being ushered back into the orpheum, to take a seat, drink water, but internally, he’s embarrassed about sending them away so fast.
he was talking to a girl, they were dying, and he wasn’t there to comfort them.
it hits him for real how close they were. bobby had made jokes about it before, all of them had, about their tight knit group.
now he’s the only one left.
the waves of gone wash over him.
no more knocking on his own garage door to find luke, asleep on the couch after a night of painful songwriting.
no more sneaking alex out of his house and meeting reggie on the beach. busking with them on the pier when things are just too much for each of them, creating music for comfort.
the weight of music washes over bobby too. how will he make it again? it was their thing. it was what really brought them together, but with each song 75% empty, is it worth it any more?
somewhere between wishing for a chance to say goodbye and a wave of guilt, rose offers to drive him home. bobby’s best friends’ instruments are loaded into her car, and he watches himself give her a barely coherent answer.
the fact that bobby sent them away echoes in his head, all for a silly chance to talk to someone.
in this moment, bobby thinks he might’ve preferred dying with them. however painful, at least he would’ve been able to give them the goodbye they deserved.
he already misses reggie’s jokes, alex’s security, luke’s atmosphere.
bobby feels himself enter the house, hears himself accept a scrap of paper with rose’s number on it. he watches himself point in the direction of the studio, but he refuses to step in there, not yet.
belatedly, bobby notices he’s in his room, and forces himself to sleep.
in the morning, he accidentally pours two bowls of cereal, prepared with remarks about which piece of furniture luke fell asleep on this time, and doesn’t realize the problem until he’s halfway to the garage.
bobby curls up, leaning on one of the garage’s outside walls, cereal bowls spilled and forgotten. he wonders how he’ll move forward without the three people that had entered his life with force and joked about being stuck with him forever.
eventually, his parents find him, they whisper kind words about coping, moving on, but bobby isn’t sure how he’ll do that. if he wants to.
he stays away for a while, it’s too strong. rose is kind, she’s one of three people bobby even talks to any more.
bobby asks her why, multiple times, and she squeezes his arm, says he needs a friend. he learns that she has a boyfriend, ray, and that they’ve been together forever.
he learns that she plays the piano and writes her own songs, that rose doesn’t care about the fame, she just wants to share her music with people.
months later, he enters the empty, dusty studio. without the noise that had occupied it constantly, it feels wrong, and he knows the noise will never come back.
bobby keeps expecting to hear a guitar, a bass, drums. giggling and singing. but he doesn’t, so bobby moves forward.