When You Got a Good Thing

[Matt's POV - Nov. 11th, 2010 12:58 A.M.]
I glanced at the time in the lower right-hand corner of my laptop...almost one a.m. I couldn't stop looking at all the posts on Tumblr though. So many tributes to Jimmy. So many people wished him well in the afterlife, and yet still wished he was here on earth.

And to me he still was. To the whole band he was. We were all pretty messed up after the funeral. I didn't talk to anyone for two weeks. Didn't sleep, eat, drink. Nothing but play Call of Duty. It was the only way I could cope. Zacky did nothing but draw. He sat at his kitchen table for weeks, just drawing what he felt and what would come out. Johnny and Brian were the worst though. While they'd maintained (and increased) their drinking and smoking habits, they'd also begun some other unsavory drug addictions. They both did some for a while and then stopped. I'm not sure they've completely stopped though.

We laugh about what he used to do, all the crazy shit, but deep down its all still so hard.

A hand on my shoulder brought me back to reality.

"Stop thinking so hard Matt, I can smell your hair burning." Syn joked, sitting beside me. "What are you up to?"

"Just checkin' out this blogging site...there are so many of our fans on here." I attempted to keep my voice down, as the rest of the guys were asleep.

"There's a lot of stuff about Jimmy too." Syn said, the smile fading from his face quickly. He leaned away, dark chocolate eyes fixed in a hard, unforgiving stare. "You have to stop doing this to yourself Matt."

"I can't, Brian. I just…can't." I set my gaze down at the keyboard, Syn rising and going to the cabinet to take out medicine. I watched him as he opened the bottle, shook out two pills and popped them in his mouth, taking a swig of my water to wash them down.

"Sleeping pills again? You know you don't need them." He glared at my comment.

"I can't sleep. I need them." His voice sounded near desperate. He'd never told me why he was using them, whether it had to do with Jimmy, he actually couldn't sleep, or if it was something else entirely.

"Why Brian?" I didn't expect him to say anything. A single tear rolled down his cheek, and he wiped it away quickly, probably hoping I wouldn't notice.

"I just want to be able to sleep in peace, Matt. Jimmy comes to me in my dreams. Tells me he misses me and recounts all the good times. I need to get back to that. I feel like it's the only thing keeping me sane."

"You can't just lay down and try to sleep?" He shook his head. Setting my gaze upon the screen again, I exed-out the internet, and sighed, staring somewhat contently at the background. My eyes began to well up with tears and Synyster noticed.

"I'm sick of seeing you like this. We're going to find something fun to do tomorrow. I'm going back to bed." Syn sniffled, ambling back to the bunks. I sat there, my head on my arms, staring at the computer screen for a few more minutes.

My background was a banner I'd found somewhere that someone made. It had the band facing the crowd at the end of a show, our arms all linked and then it faded to Jimmy's face, overlain with '1981-2009 R.I.P. Jimmy Sullivan' in a fancy cursive-like font.

"Night, Jimmy." I said, closing the laptop and heading for my bunk. Climbing up to the top one, I curled up in the blankets, and tried to fall asleep, but I just couldn't.

I checked the weather on my phone for our current location. We'd just passed into Massachusetts. It was about forty degrees. It would be a cold one when we got off the bus.