If Phoenix were someone else -- colder, clawed and fanged -- he might not put up with it.
"You don't understand, Nick." The mournful voice wallowed in his dress shirt's folds, moist breath seeping to his skin. "She...I thought she really might be the one!"
He sighed, and pinched his nose with the arm not full of Larry. If wishes were horses, beggars would want saddles, too.
"You say that about all of them." It came out gentler than he meant. Phoenix shifted -- the couch grumbled, and Larry tightened his limpet grip.
"That's 'cause ..."
Quiet for a blessed instant, and then a wail hot and loud against his chest. "Oh, I don't know, I'm done for! Finished! Just hang me out to dry on the cruel wind!"
The wind never did a thing to deserve it. Phoenix smoothed a spike of sandy hair poised to take out his eye, and rubbed sob-jerking shoulder blades like he knew how to comfort the hysterical, and grunted when Larry's grip cinched past comfort around his ribs.
"My life is an tale of romantic tragedy, it's an epic Shakespeare couldn't have written 'cause he'd be bawling his eyes out, I-I just ... it's... I try so hard, man!"
And the next sob was quiet, a ripping of threads. Different than ever before and it shot clean through Phoenix's heart; It didn't matter if Larry deserved, earned and asked for this fate.
"W-what...am I doing wrong? I treated her like a queen, gave her everything, I'm a great guy! What did I do?"
Dropping his head back, staring at the off-whitish ceiling, he lived the old feelings. Accusations rang sharp in his ears; dull weight settled around his heart. Larry snuffled wetly into the last clean shirt to Phoenix's name, and Phoenix couldn't bring himself to mind. No one should have to cry.
"Yeah." He smoothed the hair spike again, and watched it bounce listless. "It's not your fault."
The sobbing dwindled; the memories didn't.
"Why can't women be more like you, Nick?"