Cancer

It was the strangest thing. The strangest moment of my life, maybe. Everything was silent, so silent, and still. Ryan was there and Spencer was there and Mom was there and Mrs. Urie was there, but none of them were really there. Not really.

There was me and there was Brendon and that was all.

It was so strange, staring into his eyes like that--the eyes I hadn't seen outside of my own tormented memory in such a long time. All I could do was stare, try to force my brain into comprehending the fact that he was here, he was here with me, we were together again. All I could do was stare into his eyes and dwell on what I had been missing for so long.

And as I stared, I watched his dark pupils darting back and forth, taking in my face the same way I was taking in his. It was so strange, the two of us sitting there, staring--both shocked to see one another, both struggling to accept our shared presence. Startled, terrified, confused.

Like a ghost seeing a ghost.

-----

In the end, I was the one who broke.

"Excuse me," I choked out. I got up and threw my napkin down onto my plate, stumbling past Brendon in his chair and down the hall to the bathroom. I was already crying when I got there, but luckily I didn't have to think about where I was going; I could navigate the house Brendon used to live in by heart.

I locked myself in the bathroom and immediately sank to the floor, my back pressed against the closed door. I pulled my knees up under my chin and hugged my legs close, forcibly keeping my breathing in check, struggling to steady my racing heart.

I had been in there for less than a minute when someone knocked on the door.

I bit my fist to keep from crying too loudly.

Another knock.

"Yes?" I said in a strangled voice, because it was clear that whoever it was would not leave without a response.

"Kelsey?"

It was Brendon. Of course it was Brendon.

"Are you okay?"

I didn't feel the need to state the obvious.

"...Can I talk to you?" he tried instead.

He looked mildly surprised when I emerged from the bathroom--he had probably been expecting me to hole myself up in there for at least another ten or fifteen minutes. I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand and sniffled, truly wishing, for the second time in my life, that I was dead. (Unsurprisingly, Brendon had been the cause of the first time, too.)

I knew I should still be mad. I knew the sight of him standing there before me should make me see red, should make me want to storm away again--or at least make me start crying, as I had been so pathetically nearly every day for the past two years, alone.

But I couldn't. When I looked at him, I knew how I should feel, but the same old warm affection I had always felt for him started bubbling up inside of me of its own accord, defying reason. I couldn't fight it. I didn't have the guts to try.

Brendon scratched his head awkwardly, shuffled his feet. "So, uh..." He grinned at me, but it was a strained expression, devoid of any warmth or amusement. "Hi."

I let out a humorless laugh. "Hi." I bit my lip and said seriously, "Look, I'm sorry, I just--"

"No, I'm the one who should be sorry," he insisted hurriedly. "I mean, I... I wouldn't have been such a jerk earlier if I had known... Well, I didn't know you were coming."

Despite the circumstances, I gave him a watery smile. "I didn't know you were coming."

We both laughed a little, nervously, sneaking glances at one another when we thought the other wasn't looking.

Brendon looked very different. He had grown his hair out into a long, shaggy mop again (he had cut it short right before...well, right before the last time I saw him), and there were traces of stubble around his mouth and jaw. His eyes didn't seem as bright, somehow, and his glasses were gone.

And he just didn't seem like the enthusiastic, always-smiling Brendon I used to know. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a plain T-shirt, both of which looked rumpled and worn, as if he had slept in them. His eyes were bloodshot and watery, with dark circles underneath. There was a dull, listless aura about him that I didn't recognize--that made me uneasy.

With a sweeping movement of his arm, this unfamiliar new Brendon gestured towards the front porch. "You want to go somewhere more private?" he offered.

"Um...sure," I agreed. He led the way to the front door and held it open for me.

It had been a beautiful day in Vegas. Now, the sun was setting on the horizon and the sky was a deep, cloudless purple-blue; it wasn't very humid at all, and a slight breeze kept the desert air from getting too hot. All up and down the street, couples were cuddling on porch swings together, kids were playing in the yard, and dogs were lounging around lazily, all of them enjoying the nice night. But I was too distracted by much darker thoughts to be pleased with the weather.

Brendon walked across the narrow porch and hauled himself up onto the railing so that he was sitting facing me. I knew it was instinctive to him--he must've been doing it all his life, since he was a kid--but it reminded me of the days we had spent here, in this house, together all those years ago, and it sort of hurt to watch.

Neither of us spoke at first. I leaned against the side of the house, facing him, and he fidgeted with his hands in his laps--it was a natural Brendon sort of thing to do, and that made me feel a little better. At least he hadn't completely changed. Not totally. Not yet.

"So I'm sorry about your dad," said Brendon abruptly, sincerely. "I'm so sorry, Kelsey."

I glanced up and he was staring at me with this horrible intense expression that I wasn't used to from him. I turned away, fighting tears again, and said, "It's okay. It happens." Some small, logical, fact-oriented portion of my brain marveled at how blase I sounded.

"But it shouldn't happen to you," he said quietly. "You're such a good person, Kelsey. You don't deseve that. And neither did he."

I stared at my feet, at the wooden porch I was standing on. "That's life."

Brendon didn't say anything for a while. Then he murmured softly, as if commenting to himself, "Ryan's dad died."

At that, he had my full attention. "What? Ryan's dad--"

"A year and a half ago. The drinking finally caught up with him, I guess."

For a moment, I had no idea what to say. I thought of Ryan--sweet, polite, Ryan, always willing to listen, always ready to lend a helping hand or a guiding light. Ryan, wading patiently through my pain with me on a Sunday morning, offering me an electric blanket in his cold basement--so long ago that it must have happened in another world. Ryan, answering the door, laughing at my Beatles joke, making up for Spencer's tactlessness.

He didn't deserve that, either.

"I'm sorry," I heard myself say. "That's...that's awful."

"Yeah," said Brendon grimly. "He took it pretty hard at first, I think. But he's okay now." He paused, and suddenly he was looking me right in the eyes. "You'll be okay too, Kelsey. You'll recover. You'll get over it, and you'll be fine again."

...What?

"You'll be fine again"? Since when had I been fine?

I went from very sad to very angry in a matter of seconds. Who the hell was he to tell me I was going to be okay? After everything he did to me, he had the fucking audacity to tell me I was going to get over it? That I would be fine? When he had no idea, no fucking clue what the hell I was going through--no, what he had put me through?

It was strange, disorienting, going from one extreme emotion to the next like that. But I was pretty sure I had never hated anyone with as much staggering force as I hated Brendon Urie with in that moment.

"Well, I wasn't doing so hot to begin with, believe it or not," I said bitterly. I bit my tongue--those words were so tame compared to the ones I was dying to unleash on him, but I knew that lashing out wasn't going to get me anywhere, not when all the cards were still stacked in his favor.

Brendon flinched. That one stung a bit, and he hadn't seen it coming. He was quiet for a moment and then he asked, timidly, "How've you been, Kelsey?"

There were a million things I wanted to say to him, a million angry, hurt words I had been composing in my head over the past two years. But he was giving me this awful pleading expression, like he could hardly bear the answer, like the very outcome of his life depended on my response.

"Well it hasn't been all sunshine and daisies, but I made it through." My heart was beating faster and faster as all the pain and suffering of the past two years spilled out of its own accord. I couldn't reign it in. "I guess there's no reason for me to ask you the same, though, is there? I mean, you're driving sports cars, wearing designer clothes, boozing it up with your rockstar buddies, fucking models...oh, and your family loves you again. I'd say you're doing alright, wouldn't you?"

He winced visibly. I had hurt him. I had hurt him badly. But, mercilessly, I kept going.

"Congratulations," I said coldly. "You have everything you ever wanted."

He squeezed his eyes shut, like he couldn't bear to hear the words, and then slowly opened them again. "That's not true," he whispered.

I stared back at him, waiting.

"I don't have you."