I remember the first time I said it. We were twenty-two, in a studio apartment that smelled of burnt toast and her lavender shampoo. She had a fever of 102 and kept trying to walk to the bus stop for a shift she didn’t need to work. I wrapped a quilt around her shoulders and said, Tabitha, stay with me. She laughed, coughed, and leaned her head against my chest. Always, she whispered. Where else would I go?
Now the silence is different. It’s the sound of rain hitting her shoulders. The sound of her not turning around. tabitha stay with me
It lands with a dull thud on the wet grass. She doesn’t pick it up. She walks toward me, slow at first, then faster. Her yellow raincoat is soaked through. When she reaches me, she doesn’t hug me. She puts her cold hands on my face, looks me in the eye, and says: I remember the first time I said it
“Then let me be late,” I say. “Let me be late and awful and whatever else I’ve been. But don’t leave. Don’t get in that car. Because once you do—” My throat closes up. I swallow. “Once you do, you take everything. The good mornings. The burnt toast. The way you hum when you think no one is listening. You take all of it, and I’ll be standing in this doorway for the rest of my life, saying it to no one.” I wrapped a quilt around her shoulders and
“Please,” I say, and my voice cracks on the second syllable. I step onto the porch, the wet wood cold through my socks. I don’t have shoes on. I didn’t think to get shoes. “Tabitha. Just come back inside. We can—we can talk about it. We can talk about anything. Just stay.”
The rain doesn't knock anymore. It just starts—a sudden, heavy curtain that turns the driveway into a river of loose gravel and last autumn’s leaves. I am standing in the open doorway, the screen door whining on its hinge, and I am saying it again.