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Riggles had to consciously remind himself to stop tapping his foot. Well, it was less tapping, and more of a constant up and down while he stared at the concrete slab.
"No, really, like. It's kinda stupid, right? I'm genuinely fucking stupid, right? And I'm a bad person. The fact that I'm doing this, saying this to you, when I wasn't even there for you and now I'm basically just using you as an excuse to vent and to - "
He cut off, even if there wasn't any response. What even was there to say? Even now, the passivity was something he was all too painfully aware of. A bystander of his own life up until now, and genuinely too much of a coward to even try to change things.
"... I'm sorry we never watched Encanto properly. I'm sorry I didn't have enough patience for you. I'm sorry I held the prejudice against you when you were...having your episodes. I'm sorry for not being there. I'm sorry for judging you for your decisions. I'm sorry I wasn't a good enough friend."
He gulped. His throat was dry, but he still gulped.
"I'm sorry that - that I got to know you. If we never were friends, maybe it wouldn't've gotten so bad and you wouldn't've met - I - no - I..."
This was when people cried, right? Or rather, when a normal person cried?
Was it that, or was it simply that he didn't actually care? Why couldn't he cry? Why was there only emptiness and numbness and the goddamned passivity and inability to do anything proactive to change anything?
"There are so many things I wanna watch with you. I wanna show you. So many things that I think you'd like." Or was he just a selfish enough corgi that he wanted to impose anything he liked onto people he liked?
"... I'm sorry that...I - I didn't, like." Another bit of skin on his lip bitten off and chewed away. "...I didn't talk to you until, like. You know." As in...for him being shallow enough to not even talk to or acknowledge the deer until he looked cute and pretty.
"I really do miss you, though. Maybe it's like, me placing things where they never were, and I know we were never actually that close. I don't - I don't even know your birthday. All I know is that you were there, you were happy, you seemed okay, then I pulled away and you seemed okay and I got scared because you didn't seem okay anymore and I pulled away more and you - " were gone.
"It's really not, like. I only have bad news, you know. Or like, just only came here to vent. It's just...I always have...a hard time appreciating good things. Every time I seem to find a friend group, it turns to shit or it falls apart and every time I seem to achieve something it just seems like there was always another hill up ahead and more that I needed to stress about and, and - I'm just so bad at being original and creative and authentic and motivated and productive and good, and nice, and, and - like, even here I'm thinking about how I'm emulating shows I've watched and games I've played and it's all a hodgepodge mishmash of ideas and how I'm really just using this here to and you and your memories and your not-even-anniversary to process my own feelings and it's so selfish and I can't even - "
He can't even finish a sentence. It was as if any semblance of coherence fizzled out the moment it even had a hint of finishing; as if he were afraid of concluding, afraid of endings, afraid of moving on, and afraid of accepting things as how they were. Accepting that things ended, accepting that things weren't meant to be, accepting that things weren't always supposed to be bad and that sometimes a hurdle was just that and not punishment for feeling just remotely happy for once. Accepting that sometimes, there just wasn't another shoe waiting to drop on him the moment he let his guard down.
"Fuck you. I miss you."
