The answer doesn't come quickly. He's too busy spilling all his guts out on the cobblestones first. He can only sit there sobbing, heartbroke and inchoate, laid out for Jon's vivisection.
Words only form when the grief shrinks just enough for Jon's pull to budge it. This part--this part is better. Kinder. "It was Rita who knocked my head on straight. If it hadn't been for her, I don't... honestly, if, if I was gonna start, I don't know--doing... really... really criminal things, I probably would've. By then. But. You know. You just can't shake the feeling. That if I'd just been stuck like that for long enough, then something even bigger in me would've snapped. I've always felt that... urge, to hurt myself, since I was a kid. You know? Happens to people. And I'd gotten into hundreds of bar fights, but the idea of really hurting someone else never crossed my mind, but, hah, the, the word of the day is eventually, right? I'd already convinced myself that nobody else was really real. Sort of like a video game. And people are really thoughtless in video games. But I guess it's different when it's not a controller, it's your hands, and... aha. Ha."
Phil scrubs at his face. He doesn't usually throw that in there when he tells this story.
"But Rita set me straight. I don't know what I did that day to make her act differently, but she pushed me to explain why I was acting so weird all day--ha, all day--and, um, I told her. I had nothing to lose. I recited all the conversations in the diner and named everyone and facts I knew about them to prove it. And she didn't really believe me. So I stormed out. She followed me and demanded to know what kind of trick I was pulling. I told her things about herself, things I shouldn't have known. And I told her about how miserable I was.
"And obviously she still didn't believe me, but she's... so, so nice. She was always way too smart for me, and part of that was that she still decided to humor me. Because she saw that whatever was going on, I was still suffering. So she dragged me around Punx all day, to all these--silly small town festival things and carnival rides, and told me all about the things she'd do if she had the kind of time I had. Things like studying math, and running over hills, and just... pursuing interests. I guess. And. Being nice. You can imagine what kind of guy I was that I'd never thought of that before." He pulls a face.
"I can't say I was all that interested in any of it at the time, but I had nothing else to try. So I tried it. And I wasn't, hah, that good at it, being nice to people and things like that, but I was trying, and the Punx people were... honestly, really receptive of that. You'd be surprised how much grace people give you when they can tell you're trying. Of course, sometimes it's none at all, but sometimes they'll really try to help. I said hi to Johnathan like, uh, like a mostly normal person, and tried not to make snide comments at Mrs. Lancaster or the couple from Cleveland. I got pastries and coffee for Rita and Larry, even. And. Stuff like that. I spent a lot of years like that, being nice and polite and discovering the different ways they'd treat me. And how differently I started to see them.
"It's, uh, kind of... kind of amazing, what little it actually takes for that to happen. Nowadays I look back and I have no idea how I'd never thought of it before. I don't know how I got that far living the way I did. It was fucking miserable in retrospect. Not the loop, before it. I hadn't had a real friend in over 20 years--at some point you have to stop and think, Jesus, how did I waste so much time? Doing and being... nothing?"
cw mention of self harm, mention of murder
Words only form when the grief shrinks just enough for Jon's pull to budge it. This part--this part is better. Kinder. "It was Rita who knocked my head on straight. If it hadn't been for her, I don't... honestly, if, if I was gonna start, I don't know--doing... really... really criminal things, I probably would've. By then. But. You know. You just can't shake the feeling. That if I'd just been stuck like that for long enough, then something even bigger in me would've snapped. I've always felt that... urge, to hurt myself, since I was a kid. You know? Happens to people. And I'd gotten into hundreds of bar fights, but the idea of really hurting someone else never crossed my mind, but, hah, the, the word of the day is eventually, right? I'd already convinced myself that nobody else was really real. Sort of like a video game. And people are really thoughtless in video games. But I guess it's different when it's not a controller, it's your hands, and... aha. Ha."
Phil scrubs at his face. He doesn't usually throw that in there when he tells this story.
"But Rita set me straight. I don't know what I did that day to make her act differently, but she pushed me to explain why I was acting so weird all day--ha, all day--and, um, I told her. I had nothing to lose. I recited all the conversations in the diner and named everyone and facts I knew about them to prove it. And she didn't really believe me. So I stormed out. She followed me and demanded to know what kind of trick I was pulling. I told her things about herself, things I shouldn't have known. And I told her about how miserable I was.
"And obviously she still didn't believe me, but she's... so, so nice. She was always way too smart for me, and part of that was that she still decided to humor me. Because she saw that whatever was going on, I was still suffering. So she dragged me around Punx all day, to all these--silly small town festival things and carnival rides, and told me all about the things she'd do if she had the kind of time I had. Things like studying math, and running over hills, and just... pursuing interests. I guess. And. Being nice. You can imagine what kind of guy I was that I'd never thought of that before." He pulls a face.
"I can't say I was all that interested in any of it at the time, but I had nothing else to try. So I tried it. And I wasn't, hah, that good at it, being nice to people and things like that, but I was trying, and the Punx people were... honestly, really receptive of that. You'd be surprised how much grace people give you when they can tell you're trying. Of course, sometimes it's none at all, but sometimes they'll really try to help. I said hi to Johnathan like, uh, like a mostly normal person, and tried not to make snide comments at Mrs. Lancaster or the couple from Cleveland. I got pastries and coffee for Rita and Larry, even. And. Stuff like that. I spent a lot of years like that, being nice and polite and discovering the different ways they'd treat me. And how differently I started to see them.
"It's, uh, kind of... kind of amazing, what little it actually takes for that to happen. Nowadays I look back and I have no idea how I'd never thought of it before. I don't know how I got that far living the way I did. It was fucking miserable in retrospect. Not the loop, before it. I hadn't had a real friend in over 20 years--at some point you have to stop and think, Jesus, how did I waste so much time? Doing and being... nothing?"