closed for: @tabithaxking
where: funeral home, aurora bay
Keo isn't sure he's where he's supposed to be.
It's both a feeling and a logistical worry as he seats himself in the back row next to the man who had been trying to beckon him over for five minutes. He had intended to stand at the back and quietly pay his respects after shaking Francis' hand and letting him know he was sorry for his loss but Liam Lewis had other ideas.
"You didn't respond to my Patty's Day party invite, did you get it?"
"Yeah, I got it, Liam," Keo confirms, no indication offered that he intended to attend. Before today, he hadn't envisioned being in Aurora Bay for it.
Vegas hadn't been as fun as he wanted it to be so he had re-routed his plans.
Before an unexpected piece of news shared with him while on the phone with his mother the night before, Keo had designs on being behind the wheel of his van drifting towards Arizona by then.
His endless search for something elsewhere suddenly felt small in the scale of what she had told him.
( 'I'm not your secretary, Keo. If you don't want to talk your sister that's your perogative. You're an adult, but I shouldn't have to be the one taking messages and having to track you down. I've got my own life, I'm busy. It's Yelena King's funeral tomorrow and I have no idea what I am going to wear.' )
As he stands on directive of the priest, he can see she had managed to find something as he spots her six rows ahead next to his sister. Funerals were like sustenance for Veronica and he had already warned her before he boarded his flight to be on her best behaviour.
It was the only thing he knew for sure he could do to make a hard day not become any harder for Tab.
He can only see the back of her head for most of the service but he didn't need to see her face to know what she was feeling. He knows what her grandmother meant to her and how close they were. Francis was a good man but he wasn't a young one and Keo can't help but worry about what was to come tomorrow and all of the days after that.
( How many more things could she shoulder before it broke her? )
Keo takes not hearing from her as a staunch indicator that he had ousted himself from the circle of people who had any right to wonder that. Even if that was the case, he wouldn't have felt right not showing up or pretending he didn't know.
He shakes Liam's hand after the service finished, politely declining his invite to get a drink at Four Leaf with a not wholly untrue reason given that he was tired. It had been a long night that had been made longer by an Uber from LAX and a scavenger hunt for the only appropriate thing he had to wear for a funeral that was misplaced among clothes for donation that his mother had yet to get around to actually doing.
He's second guessing himself almost immediately when he spots her leave, assuming it was for either air or a cigarette.
Keo's following the same path to exit the funeral home after her, unsurprised to see Theo with her father and his girlfriend. The same couldn't be said for the dark-haired woman in conversation with her. She wasn't someone he knew himself but as he approaches them, he suspects he knows of her.
"Hey," He says to Tabitha, everything else he wanted to say to her held back when he looks from her to the older woman who she bore a striking resemblance to, unsettled by how the air felt around them.
It isn't his place to draw focus to that or to question it, especially given the day that was in it. A better friend might have been able to let it go, that wasn't in his nature.
"We haven't met," He says to Angelica, "Which isn't much of a surprise. Just took you a death and how many years to remember you're a mom and a daughter?"