Yellow and White.

I sat on the passenger side of Todd's, 'vintage', Chrysler. My fingers choked the stems of yellow and white roses as I tried to feel the thorns reaching out to me through the tissue paper I'd wrapped around the bottom. There were nothing but a bunch of limp and broken rods in my hand. I cried as I looked at what I'd done to Ben's flowers.
What a selfish thing to do.
Todd took one hand off the steering-wheel to touch my shoulder. "You gunna be okay?" he asked. I showed him the stems. "We'll fix it when we get there," he promised.
We drove along the highway into the valley as I entered the all too farmiliar middle-of-no-where-land I'd had such a nostalgic longing for since it happened. When the high-school came into view, that's when the reality hit me. This was going to be hard. "Kinda seems like a shabby place to put somebody," Todd said. I tried to pretend that didn't hurt me. "This is where Ben would have wanted to be. Everyone loved him....
"Can you help me fix these?" I asked Todd. "Yes, I can."
He found a small white basket and a pair of scissors in the midst of all the junk, or 'stuff he needs'. For once I was glad that he had all that useless shit in his car. He handed me back a basket carrying the heads of white and yellow roses. I opened the door and got out.
When Ben finally came into view, I tried to be cool. I didn't know what he would think of me, or if he would even recognize me for that matter. He told me our junior year that he hated tattoos, and here I was practically swallowed by them.
He didn't say anything. He just looked at me.
"Hi...Ben..." I said. What an ass I was, talking to my best friend like I was taking to my grandma. I was going to do it, but not like this, so I took a deep breath, and remembered all the times I sat on his coutch and laughed with him, how perfect him and Bethaney looked eveytime they'd kiss, how jelous I was of that blonde slut, how I always went to all his football games and never got to hug him when he won. I remembered everything that happened with me and him. I recalled everything that happened with this place. And when I fell to my knees and sat on the ground with my legs folded to my right side like a little kid, I knew that I was ready to talk to Ben for the last time.
"What happened to you, dude?" I said in my matured tomboy-ish tone. "Steroids? Are you kidding me Ben? You had such a promising future...student of the year, star football player, you had Bethaney, you had me. UCLA. We got in to UCLA for God sakes. Ben, we worked so hard for that. You were gonna be a cardiologist. Yes, you were a gifted football player but that was something on the side. You said that you wanted cardiology to be your life. And look at what choice you made. We know what your life was. I see what was important."
Even though he was silenced forever, something tells me he would have quietly agreed with me.
"Anyway...I'm here to talk to the old Ben. Infact, I'm kind of here to thank that Ben, for being the most patient, loving, protective and compassionate best friend I could eva ask fowa!"
I streched out the words "eva" and "fowar" in a fake and dramatic southern accent. I almost heard him laugh along with me.
"I figured I'd try my hand at comic relief. Although it is true. You were my best friend. And you put up with me all those years...well, you didn't reject me, because you knew...
"you knew I really liked you. But I'm not sure you knew how much. Like, see this, see this hair?" I lifted up a piece of my hair. "It's BROWN. I quit dying it. Yeah, I'll bet you didn't know I even dyed it in the first place. I wanted to look like your girlfriend...Bethaney."
I put my head down for a minuite and laughed at myself.
"How pathetic right. I know. I guess this whole moments pretty pathetic, since I'm sitting here talking to a rock with your name on it.