Cancer

Banner by YourFavoriteMistake. <3

I tried to think about Brendon and Ryan and Panic at the Disco as little as possible. I had reached the point where I felt that I had wrecked things beyond repair, so there was no use in trying to make up with any of them. Brendon and Ryan were both better off without me, anyway. After everything I had put them through, it would be downright cruel of me to try and drag them back into my life.

So, while I waited for Friday (when I could finally leave Vegas, for good this time) to come, I lived in denial. I did whatever I could to keep my mind off of both of them and everything that had happened between the three of us.

I ran through Mom's entire collection of sappy paperback romance novels in two days and filled up half a book of sodokus, all of them unfinished (I was terrible at solving them and usually gave up after two or three hours of zero progress). I ate so much comfort food that I probably wouldn't have been able to fit into my clothes if I had ever worn anything other than pajamas and sweatpants. I used Mom's laptop to watch pointless videos on youtube late into the night until I eventually realized how pathetic my life had become and went to bed. Such was the cycle of my life for the week.

On Thursday, I was up in the hotel room I shared with Mom, watching old reruns of America's Next Top Model alone (Mom was out with friends again and wouldn't be back for another hour or so), when the phone rang and a hotel employee informed me that I had some mail waiting for me down at the front desk. Puzzled, I turned off the TV and walked down to the lobby.

I had no idea who would send me mail here, but I was glad for the distraction. It was hard not to overthink things when I was stuck in a hotel room alone for days at a time, with nothing to do but dwell on the mess I had made of my life.

A too-blond, too-tan girl with bright red lipstick on sat behind the front desk, typing away on her computer with an extremely absorbed look on her face. Clearing my throat hesitantly, I told her I was here to pick up my mail. With a cheerful smile, she retrieved a large, surprisingly heavy envelope from a bin under the desk and handed it to me.

She looked to be about my age, and I was abruptly jealous of her as she said, "Have a nice day." I couldn't remember ever being that happy for no apparent reason.

I guess I was once. I had to be. How could I feel so sad now if I had always been this way?

I turned and started walking back towards my hotel room, examining the envelope in my hands curiously. It was abnormally large and square, and, as I said before, heavy. Across the front of it, my name and the address of the hotel was written in small, neat letters--which was odd. Who would know to send me letters here?

There was no return address.

I fought my burning curiosity until I got back to my hotel room, where I collapsed onto the bed and tore the envelope open. I was not expecting either of the two things that tumbled out across the bedspread then.

The first was a single blank CD. On the front was scrawled in messy Sharpie, bleeding down across the disc:

Kelsey,

I remember when this town belonged to us. Now I don't even know where to find you anymore. I waste my days in all our old favorite haunts, but you're long gone. You have been for a while.

We are not the same anymore. We are shadows of ourselves. We are ghosts.

It's my fault. I'm sorry. I love you.

I have never been more honest with you. And I won't say it anymore. But it's the truth. I swear to God, it's true.

We're leaving town tomorrow. I won't bother you again.

- Brendon

The second thing was a shiny platinum ring, set with a single diamond and two smaller sapphires. I recognized it immediately. It was the same ring Brendon had been holding that night in his apartment, when I found him on the balcony.

Before I could start crying--before I could even consider crying--I got my old beat-up portable CD player (yeah, the one I got for my twelfth birthday) out of my suitcase and put the CD in it and pressed play. There was only one track on it: Johnny Cash's "Hurt."

As the music started and the sound of Johnny Cash's frail, tired voice filled the cramped hotel room that was the only home I had left, I thought about Brendon--really thought about him, all grudges aside, for the first time in a long time. And when I took a step back away from all my feelings and all my fears and looked at the situation objectively, I found that my perspective had been skewed. Sitting there listening to that song, with Brendon's cool ring clutched in one hand, he wasn't the bad guy anymore. I was.

Somewhere along the way, something had shifted inside of me. I had messed everything up.

"You are someone else. I am still right here."

I closed my eyes, and in my head, I saw Brendon, begging me for forgiveness in some dark, abandoned park in Vegas. Brendon, yelling at me about mistakes he hadn't made. Brendon, saying, "Don't cry, it's okay, I understand."

He always understood.

"What have I become? My sweetest friend, everyone I know goes away in the end."

I saw myself walking home from work through the crowded streets of Manhattan, alone. Sitting in my apartment in New York, watching Panic at the Disco on TV, alone. Waking up after another dream about Brendon, alone.

"And you could have it all, my empire of dirt."

I saw Brendon again, making promises, singing while he cooked me dinner in his new apartment. Hoping. Swearing. Planning.

"I will let you down. I will make you hurt."

I saw Brendon, saying he was moving out. Leaving Vegas. Making a record. Going on tour. He was busy, he didn't have time to call for a while, he was sorry. Maybe we should think about taking a break...

"If I could start again, a million miles away..."

I saw Brendon, playing Romeo in my yard. Brendon, holding my hand on his bed in his room, whispering something about rings. Brendon, singing in the dark car in his ridiculous Halloween costume, shy and hopeful. Always hopeful.

I looked down at the ring in my hand--the ring he had promised to get me so long ago. So he followed through. Carefully, I slipped it onto my left ring finger. It fit perfectly.

I had a sudden vision of the way things could have played out: Brendon, still hopeful, and a little afraid as the sincerity rang in his voice; that humongous smile spreading across his face as he slid the ring into place on my finger; the settling feeling of my life sliding into place just right--the relief, the joy, the hope, love...

"...I would keep myself. I would find a way."

I didn't want to let go of that again.

-----

That night, Mom and I went out to dinner. I had spent most of the day crying over Brendon, and my eyes were still so red and puffy when she got back to the hotel room that she asked me what was wrong. I told her I was fine, it was just allergies, which was obviously a lie--there's nothing to be allergic to in Vegas, besides maybe latex condoms (if you're allergic to latex), but those don't make your eyes water anyway.

We sat down at a booth near the back of the room, Mom smiling too big as she slid into the seat opposite mine. I guess she was trying to cheer me up. She could tell something was wrong, I was sure.

But by the time our food came, I had decided that something wasn't quite right with Mom, either. Her jokes were too strained, her laughter too forced, her face too pinched even as she tried to smile at me. I couldn't figure out what was going on until she finally told me herself halfway through the meal.

"So," she said, her voice breaking and betraying her fake off-handedness, "tomorrow would be mine and your father's anniversary. You know--if we were still married."

I was so surprised that the forkful of food in my hand slipped out of my grasp, clattering noisily against my plate. "Wha--really?" I stammered.

She nodded. "Yes. Twenty-three years."

I studied her face carefully for some clue to how she was feeling, but she was staring down at her plate with purpose and I couldn't see the look in her eyes. "Mom?" I said softly, reaching across the table to lay my hand over hers.

Her fingers twisted around mine and she looked up at me then: the pain in her face was so suddenly apparent that I felt another jolt of shock sweep through me. "I miss him, Kelsey," she whispered. She slid her hand out from underneath mine, covering her face with it instead as she started to cry.

"Oh, Mom..." I got up and rounded the table in a few quick movements, ducking into her side of the booth and slipping my arm around her hunched, bony shoulders. "It's okay. We all miss him."

She shook her head miserably, her thin, lined hands still clamped against her face. "It's not the same thing. I wish... I wish it had been different."

I rubbed slow circles in her back comfortingly. "You wish what had been different, Mom?"

Mom didn't say anything for so long that I thought she was ignoring me. Finally, after a full minute or two had passed, she dropped her hands from her face and dabbed at her eyes with a napkin, sniffling pathetically.

"Your father and I," she said quietly, and it took me a moment to realize she meant it as a response to my question. "I ruined it."

"Mom," I said chastisingly, holding her hand again, "don't say that. You didn't ruin anything."

"Yes, I did. It was all my fault. I was so paranoid..." She laughed once, bitterly and without humor, her pale blue eyes fixed on empty space. "I couldn't forgive him for things he never did in the first place."

My heartbeat sped up. The look on her face was the same one I had seen many times before--every time I looked in the mirror, to be exact.

"I'm sure it wasn't all your fault," I consoled her half-heartedly.

She just stared blankly at our hands clasped together on the table for a while. After another thirty seconds or so had passed in silence, she took a breath and said, "Where did you get that ring?"

I followed her wide-eyed gaze to my hand, where the ring Brendon had sent me still sparkled on my left ring finger. I had forgotten to take it off earlier.

"Oh," I mumbled sheepishly, pulling my hand away and hiding it under the table. "It's just, um..." I meant to lie, but I just couldn't find the heart to do it under Mom's teary-eyed stare. "Brendon gave it to me," I blurted out.

Startled, she just blinked at me a few times before she spoke again. Then she said, confusedly, "I thought...you two...?"

"It's just--it's old. He mailed it to me." I stared down at the tablecloth, purposely avoiding her gaze. "We're still broken up."

Silence fell and lay undisturbed between us for the longest time, a tense note of nervousness that neither of us knew how to dispel quivering in the air. It was probably very uncomfortable, but I was too busy concentrating on not crying to notice.

Finally, Mom's trembling fingertips touched my own once more. "Kelsey..." she said.

My name on her lips then sounded more like a deep breath, and I knew she was about to launch into something big. At first, I thought she was going to scold me for wearing an engagement ring on that finger when I wasn't even dating the poor boy, but I was wrong.

"I couldn't see it for the longest time," she whispered, "but since your father died, I've been able to see a lot of things more clearly now. And...all this time, I've been blaming all my problems on other people when I'm the one who caused them."

I stared up at her in awe, the thrill of fear and something else--hope?--flooding my veins at the validation of what I had known deep down all along. It was like she was reading off the internal monologue that had been tormenting me for days on end.

She smiled fondly at me, her blithe affection muted by the regret in her eyes as she reached up to tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear. "Your father was never the mistake, Kelsey. Vegas was never the mistake. My mistake was in here," said Mom, dropping her hand from my hair to touch her chest, just above her heart.

My own heart was threatening to burst from my chest, it felt like.

"I was the one who made the mistake," she went on earnestly. "I see that now, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry for setting such a bad example for you, because I know I influenced you for the worse."

"Mom--I don't--"

"That boy..." She smiled again, but it was warmer this time, more genuine. "That boy made you happier than I've ever seen you before, and you haven't been happy since you left him. Maybe he made some mistakes, but you can't let that ruin your whole life--ruin both of your lives. There's no sense in it."

I sighed, looking away again. "I know," I mumbled. "I know it doesn't make sense, I just... After everything that happened...I don't know if...if I can..."

"Please, Kelsey," said Mom when I trailed off. She took my chin gently with her fingertips and forced me to meet her gaze. "Please, listen to me. I don't want you to make the same mistake I did."

I frowned, confused. "The same mistake--?"

"Can't you see it? Can't you see it, honey? You're doing the exact same thing to Brendon that I did to your father." The sadness returned to her face as she mentioned Dad. "Brendon did nothing wrong--he made no mistakes other than the ones anyone else would make in his situation. No one's perfect. But you were so paranoid and mistrusting--because of me--that you blew the whole thing out of proportion, and now you can't forgive him for something he didn't do in the first place. Right?"

"Right," I whispered, gaping. How did she know...?

"That's exactly what happened with me and your father," she explained quietly. "He was gone a lot because of the work that he did, and instead of hating the fact that I never got to see him, I hated his job. I hated the city. I hated him. And I made up reasons to justify it, but I was wrong, Kelsey. I was so wrong."

She took a deep breath, looking away long enough to wipe away the tears in her eyes. Then she turned back to me and went on.

"I ran off to California and took you with me. He begged me to come back...to forgive him...when he couldn't even understand what he had done wrong. It's the same thing, sweetheart. You're doing the exact same thing.

"The only difference is..." Mom touched my forearm gently, prompting me to look up at her, and the tenderness in her eyes barely masked the intense sorrow there. "The only difference is that you can make it right again. You still have time. Your father's gone now, and it's too late for me to fix my mistakes, but...Brendon's still here."

The reality of what she was trying to tell me hit me all at once, and I was immediately aware of the urgency of the situation. If I didn't try to fix things now, I would regret this for the rest of my life. I wasn't going to abruptly be okay with it someday--I would always love Brendon, I would always miss him, and I would always wish things had turned out differently. That, at least, I was sure of.

I couldn't push him away again.

"What do I do?" I asked, suddenly frenzied with fear and anxiety. "How do I--what--?"

"Go to him," she told me gravely. "Apologize. Forgive and forget, Kelsey. Trust. Hope. That's what you have to do."

But I barely heard the end of her last sentence because I remembered all at once the note on Brendon's CD: We're leaving town tomorrow. I had no idea where "they" (who? Panic?) were going or when "they" were leaving, so that meant that if I wanted to be sure to see Brendon again any time soon, it would have to be tonight.

"Do you mind if I go right now?" I asked Mom apologetically. "I'm sorry, I just--he's leaving tomorrrow and--"

"Of course not," she insisted, smiling brilliantly when she saw that I was taking her advice. As I slung my purse over my shoulder and got to my feet, she patted my arm and kissed me on the cheek. "Go!" she said. "Fix it before it's too late."

I hurried out of the restaurant, alone and unsure about where I was going or what I would do or say once I got there--but I was painfully aware that too late was just hours away.

It didn't matter. I was determined to make things right again. I would find a way.