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"I thought you'd be relieved more than anything else," Brendon says.
Jon looks at him over the drink in his hand, stunned. He doesn't even recognize him anymore. "Are you serious? What are you, an asshole?" Like this is really the time or the place to rehash arguments.
Brendon shrugs. He's got rings around his eyes, and Jon wonders if he cried the second he'd found out. Jon didn't. He...well, he's still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Spencer is nowhere to be found, not in the sense that he isn't here, but in the sense that Jon has no fucking idea where. That's probably for the best, anyway.
"Now no one has to worry about him," Brendon says, a little breathless.
Jon slides off his bar stool and slinks over to Brendon, shouldering him hard. "If you don't shut the fuck up, you'll be next."
**
Ryan is outside smoking. Jon had thought he'd quit, but desperate times and all that.
"Want one?" he asks, quirking his mouth up at Jon.
"No."
"Do you know what happened? No one really - "
"Car accident, I guess. I heard it wasn't his fault."
Ryan hums, and Jon's fingers sweat around his glass.
**
The catering is shitty, and Jon's in the bathroom throwing up an hour in. The worst part is that he hasn't even eaten anything. He's losing bile and alcohol and the mints he had beforehand. He's alone because he flew out here for this. He feels lonelier than he ever has before.
He thinks about leaving, but really, that'd only prove Brendon's point: that Jon had given up long before this. Not true, he'd tried, but he didn't...no one thinks this will happen, right? There's a spot for him up front, but Jon won't sit there. Not between people he only sort of knows because he doesn't belong next to Spencer and Brendon, and he doesn't know where Ryan is going to sit but he doesn't feel like being there, either.
His stomach quivers and he loses it again, clutching sticky, clean porcelain.
**
"You know those weird questions people sometimes ask like it's trivia?" Tom asks him. Finally, a familiar face that doesn't make him sweat.
"No,” Jon says.
"Like, when someone asks you what the last text message in your phone inbox is," Tom says.
Jon thinks. No, I don't remember the name of the parlor. That was sent to Ryan a few hours ago because he arrived unusually early. He'd been lost, driving a rental around, in a rented suit. Jon had burned his good ones back when he had his quarter-life crisis, and the only one in his closet was the one he wore to his wedding, and that's just...
"What's the point?" Jon asks.
"It's like that," Tom says, humming like he has something he wants to say but isn't sure he should. "Like, what was the last thing you said to him?"
"Are you asking me personally or in general?"
Tom is smoking, too, and it looks out of place. He'll stink with it. Jon won't sit next to him, either. He's still debating running. He shrugs. "Both...I guess."
The conversation flies to the forefront of his mind without him trying. A phone call, too quick. If he had known, he would've...he would've stayed on all night.
"No, I can't this year, I'm sorry. Yeah, okay, happy birthday, anyway, man. Yeah, me, too."
"I don't remember," Jon says. He'd rather accept that tragedy than the true one.
Tom drops his cigarette. "Want to know mine?"
"No," Jon says.
**
The music is all wrong, piano keys flat and loud in the aching silence. He's hovering around the back. The coffin is, well, he has no opinion. It's there, he's there. It's shiny and closed, and Jon never asked why because he didn't want to know, but he's a freak and imagines it any way. Scrapes, cuts, missing pieces of flesh that no one could fix. They'd all rather remember him the way they always did. Jon just remembers sad eyes, a lilting voice that said, "Okay, maybe I'll come see you for your birthday, then."
And Jon hadn't wanted it then, but it's all he wants now.
**
He can't focus at the wake. People talk, Pete, Shane, others that Jon doesn't know. Spencer keeps his head down. Brendon is crying. Jon can't fucking breath. He can't spot Ryan amidst the crush of people. Jon ducks out early because he can't bear to hear people say how much they loved him, can't bear it if people are looking at him expectantly, like he should be up there, too.
He doesn't need to hear about someone he knows...knew. He goes to vomit again before he orders a drink.
Tom rides with him to the cemetery.
"At least the worst part is over," he says. Tom's driving because Jon drank too much cheap funeral whiskey. He wants to throw up all over the floorboard of his rental car, but Tom is giving him looks.
"I guess," he says. He tucks his head between his knees.
He pictures that idiot in his car, carefree, feeling like he'll live forever, the same way Jon felt a few weeks ago before he even knew this happened, then, broken glass, then cuts so bad that your relatives decide to close your casket.
"I'm going to barf, Tom, pull over."
"I can't, dude, we're in a procession..."
Jon finds a paper fast food bag tucked under the seat and vomits into it.
He wants to crawl out of his skin, out of the car, wants cuts so bad no one will even know what he used to look like.
"Maybe," Tom says, "you shouldn't go to this."
**
The cemetery is nice, it's alright, it's...well, fuck, he never asked him what kind of cemetery he wanted to be buried in. He didn't even know if he'd want to be buried or cremated. Why didn't he ever ask? At least for curiosity's sake. He'd protest if only he knew that this isn't what he wanted.
Ryan is talking to Tom, and they both keep looking at him. The pastor gave Spencer and Brendon roses, a third one lying up on top of the closed casket. Jon doesn't know if it's for him or...he doesn't ask. He doesn't want it. He's in the back again. He took off his wedding ring, but he doesn't know why. What the hell does that help at this point?
You know the feeling where you think people wish it had been you instead of the person who died? Jon feels like that, feels an invisible wave from one to the other saying, "Well, why not him? He's clearly the worse of the two." Maybe Jon's just projecting.
**
People clear out and cry and Jon doesn't even say goodbye to Spencer or Brendon. Ryan and Tom are in the car, waiting for him. It's stupid. He's not even alone, but he's as much as he can be with the men waiting around to lower him into the ground. He's got a nice headstone, at least. With most of the people gone, Jon steps up to the tombstone. The rose that he thinks was meant for him is on the ground, petals bruised and dirty. He picks it up and brushes off gentle, white petals.
"You probably would've hated this," Jon wants to say, but he doesn't, because he would've hated that, too.
"I'm sorry, I guess. I should've come for your birthday," Jon does say. He starts plucking petals because he can't figure out what to do with his hands. "So, sorry for that. Sorry for not calling and checking in on you. I...it all seems really fucking stupid now."
He breathes and it hurts, every day hurts, and every day will continue to hurt because it will be one more day where things are different and Jon will look in the mirror and say, "Why wasn't it you?" because at least then he wouldn't feel what he's feeling now.
"You didn't believe in anything," Jon says, and the petals all lay on the ground near the headstone. "So now I don't know where you are. I don't know anything."
He's waiting like he's waiting for an answer, like he'd get one. The men can't bury the casket until Jon leaves. They listen and tap their shovels like they're doing Jon a favor.
"Okay," he says more to himself. "Okay. I guess I'll just talk to you. Not here, but...I don't know. I'll talk and hope somewhere you can listen."
He turns around and carries the stem of the naked rose back to the car where Tom and Ryan are waiting for him. "Hey," Tom says when he's close enough. “Ryan J. and I are hungry. Do you want to come eat with us, or...?"
Tom doesn't look at the rose in his hand. Ryan does.
"No, if you could just...the hotel..."
"Sure," Tom says. Jon crawls in the back because Ryan has taken the front. From here, he can't see the grave or the men or the petals.
He lies, stretched, in the cramped backseat of the rental car. He would've made fun of him for getting this car. He listens to Tom and Ryan talk. He listens to the hum of the wheels against street. Tom was wrong. This isn't easy, and it'll never be over. George Ryan Ross dying isn't the worst part, it's the fact that he'll always be dead. He'll stay that way, and no matter how much Jon wants to change it, he never will.