Tabitha Stay With Me _hot_ -

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?

This time, she does.

That was twelve years ago. Twelve years of shared toothbrushes and silent arguments about the thermostat. Twelve years of her singing off-key while chopping onions, of me leaving coffee mugs on the windowsill until they grew a small forest of mold. We built a whole vocabulary of silence: the tightness in her jaw meaning I’m fine when she wasn’t, the way I’d tap my wedding ring against a glass meaning I’m sorry before I could say the words. tabitha stay with me

Now the silence is different. It’s the sound of rain hitting her shoulders. The sound of her not turning around.

“I’m here now,” I say.

She doesn’t turn around. She is ten feet away, her back to me, the hood of her yellow raincoat already dark with water. The suitcase in her hand is the small one, the overnight bag she used to pack for her mother’s house every other weekend. It looks wrong in the rain. Too small for a whole life.

“If I stay, you have to mean it this time. Every single day. Not just on the rainy ones.” I remember the first time I said it

I flinch. She’s not wrong.