Tommy smiled, putting on Nikki's favourite pale blue shirt. He smiled; it had been ten years since he first told Nikki he loved him. He never felt alone after that.
Because of Nikki.
He smiled, adjusting his pants before he looked at his arm, gaze falling on the slight whiskey stain still on the sleeve. It felt like Nikki's hand - the warm, gentle hand he placed on Tommy's upper arm to comfort him, to hold onto him as if to say "I am never going to let you go". The leather pants, the shirt, the hair - all the way Nikki loved, the way that made Nikki smile most. Tommy kept a mental note of all of it, every little thing that made Nikki smile. Vince used to joke that remembering it all would make his head hurt - which never made sense. All this was etched onto Tommy's heart.
Tommy looked at himself in the mirror and smiled. He glanced over at the bouquet, a bottle of Jack with, and he quoted, 'The greenest fucking leaves you can find'. He took that as a signal to hold back on the flowers.
It had been three days since he'd so much as set foot outside the house. Hell, he'd made it a point not to meet anyone he knew since the funeral. Surprisingly, it made him feel a bit better. Each time he looked in the mirror he recognized his own sunken cheeks and forced himself to choke back a sob - he couldn't hurt anyone else. It was his fault Ni-
No, he wasn't going there.
Smile, Lee, he told himself, hands shaking as he took out the bottle of Nikki's cologne, opening the lid and taking in a whiff of it, before hurriedly closing the bottle.
Home sweet home.
He looked up, before looking back at the bouquet and stepping out of the room, to the garden.
The words Nikki said to him after his overdose rang out in his head clear as day - when I do leave, make sure I'm not buried in a stuffy ass cemetery. Keep me close to you.
Tommy stuck to his word. Nikki was buried under the magnolia in his garden, the large granite headstone a foot away from the tree.
*
"I love you, Nikki."
His voice was thick, as if it would shatter at any instant. The novelty of the words struck something within him even now, ten years after the first time he'd exchanged the phrase with the bassist. He leaned against the gravestone, the bottle of Jack wrapped up and placed next to him as he imagined his lover's arms wrapped around him instead of the cold wind that blew. He hung his head, his hair forming a curtain around his face as he stared at the ground. He'd made it a point to ensure nothing grew on Nikki's grave. If something lives, it dies. There was no way he'd cover death with more death. He drew in a shaky breath, putting his fingers into the loose soil above where the remnants of the love of his life now lay.
It was a happy day today - he wouldn't cry. Their tenth anniversary. He forced a smile, "I got you the bouquet you like," He said, unwrapping the bottle and opening it, filling his mouth with the liquid and pouring some onto the soil. "We're celebrating, Sixxy. Ten fucking years of my telling you I love you. Because I do - I always will. I meant what I said the first night I said it, and the second, and every god damn night after that as well. I love you, and I'll always love you, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it," He teased, taking a long drink from the bottle. He imagined Nikki's hand flying through the air to mess up his hair, accompanied by his amused, almost honey-like laugh as he looked Tommy in the eye and shook his head slowly. "You always knew that I loved you. Sure, there were times you felt you didn't deserve it but that's crap. You deserved it all, Nikki."
The bottle was half empty.
"Night we met I was so fucking starstruck - I was still with that awful girlfriend, the one who hated everything I did. Not that I realized at the time. Like you loved to say, I love loving people. But with you it was different, because you loved me just the same, you knew exactly what was on my mind, how I felt about things everything. Hell, I'm still convinced we have - had a Terror-Twin-telepathy thing." He drew in a breath. Have the telepathy thing... It wasn't the first time he'd slipped up. Just last week he'd been out buying groceries. He heard a kid, possibly five or six scream, 'I want the chicken fucking dino nuggets!' He'd looked over his shoulder, expecting to see Nikki smirking at him, before hearing a comment about how Tommy was in two places at once.
He was met by an empty grocery store aisle.
What happened after that was a blur. All he remembered was tearing through the store, into the parking lot, hyperventilating as tears clouded his vision. He'd slid down against the car, balling up on himself. That's when it really set in that Nikki was gone forever - when instead of his lover's warm embrace and comforting words, Tommy felt a gust of cold October wind, and heard the sound of a car honking.
Forcing his mind to remain silent, he took another long gulp of the Jack, pouring some onto the grave as well. He leaned against the headstone, tears falling however hard he tried to stop them.
"It was too damn soon!" He screamed, throwing the bottle as far as he could. “You are fucking gone! And I miss you! Every time I’m happy or sad or angry or bored or calm I think ‘I need Nikki’ but I can’t because you are fucking dead! You can’t do shit to make it better anymore…”
“I thought one day it would hurt less. It’s just hurting more each day that you’re gone; it feels like I’m being stabbed from the inside. I can’t do this anymore, Nikki! I can’t keep smiling, acting like I’m okay. I don’t give a crap about how selfish I should but you fucking took a piece of me with you when you killed yourself – I live that again, and again, and a-again every single day. I promised you I’d find my smile, but I can’t. You were my smile, Nikki, you were my entire life. Fuck all that don’t-let-your-world -revolve-around-one-person crap, you were always that person for me. Now you’re gone, and I don’t feel like myself. I want to be happy, be the person you knew, but I can’t because there is no you. I want to be sad but how I was is the only thing I have left of you…”
He clutched onto the headstone – completely sobbing, his once near-pristine shirt now ripping at the seams because of the rough granite of the stone. He felt wetness on his face. He was unsure if it was sweat, tears or even blood from pressing his face against the stone. But he didn’t care. He couldn’t find it in himself to care, not when his best friend was six feet under him.
“I need you. But it’s true what they say, isn’t it? You can’t put your arm around a memory…”
