@retrologists, continued
If it were the other way around, Max was pretty sure Billy wouldn't be here. At least, that was what she kept telling herself. He wouldn't care. In fact, he'd probably be glad to be rid of her. He wouldn't be coming to her grave, yelling at her for being a piece of shit for leaving, or asking her why she did it. He wouldn't come to her grave every day like she did. And honestly, he probably would be pretty pissed that she kept coming here. And yet, here she was, whether Billy would have liked it or not. So, tough shit, Max thought.
Annoying little sister didn't just define itself, after all.
Some days, she talked to him. It was pretty fucking stupid, honestly, but so was this whole thing. Other days, she just sat here in silence, headphones blasting Kate Bush in her ears until she stopped thinking. Today was the latter.
Max was just about to press the rewind button at the end of the song when she caught someone standing next to her in her periphery. Her brows knit together in a hard line, ready to cook up some clapback response, until she saw who it was.
One of Billy's friends.
"It's fine," Max shrugged, hands reaching up to pull her headphones down. So the girl DOES remove her headphones, after all. "Nobody usually is." The last words came out bitter, like she resented that everyone else was just fine with it and moved on like nothing ever happened. But every day, Max woke up and Billy's cigarette smoke wasn't wafting through the house, cluing her in that he was home. Every day, she heard people revving their engines on the street, but never Billy revving his Camaro. Every day, she skateboarded into school by herself instead of riding along in the car with Billy. And the worst part was she spent more time in his car wanting to bail. Now, all she wanted was to sit in his stupid fucking Camaro again with him. She just wanted to tell him--
I'm sorry, too.
"It's Max," she clarified, hearing Billy's voice say her full name (like he always did just to piss her off) instead of Heather's. "But yeah, that's me." She turned her head away from the grave to look up at her for the first time. "You're--- you're Heather, right?" Max remembered her face. "You work with Billy at the pool?"
Her gaze dropped, realizing she used the present tense, but did nothing to change it. Wordlessly, Max scooted over and said something that surprised her.
"You can sit here, too. If you want."
