Thursday, she wasn't there.

He sat in the booth for forty minutes. Ordered two coffees. Drank one. Let the other go cold. Dottie came by and looked at the empty seat and looked at him and said nothing, which was probably how Dottie expressed concern, and he said "She's probably just late" and Dottie's face said sure, love and she walked away.

He left the coffee on the table when he went. He didn't know why. It was a stupid thing to do. He did it anyway.

He messaged her from the corner of Duckworth Street with Theodore sitting on his foot, because Theodore had decided that pavement was not acceptable seating when Fayiz stopped moving.

Hey. You weren't there today. Theodore ate the other glove. Just the one. He's making a statement, I think. Anyway. Tuesday.

He put his phone in his pocket. Theodore looked up at him.

"Don't," Fayiz said.

Theodore said nothing. Which was worse.

• • •

He hadn't expected to be angry.

He'd expected worry, or the quiet resignation he'd gotten efficient at since Rifa, or maybe nothing, the useful numbness he'd learned to carry since Queens. What he hadn't expected was the thing that happened on the second Thursday, when he was sitting in the booth again, two coffees again, the jukebox playing something aggressively cheerful, and he thought: she left. Just like that. Here and then gone.

The anger was hot and clean and it surprised him with its shape. It wasn't at her, exactly. It was at the familiarity of it. The particular flavour of being the one who stayed.

His father's voice. Rifa's face. The conviction that lived somewhere in his hands, in the paint he couldn't scrub out, that he was someone people walked away from without looking back. Easy to leave. Forgettable. A man who couldn't make anyone stay. He wondered, briefly, if this was how it would end. Not with April. Not with ceremony. Just with absence. Just with one person deciding the contract no longer applied and the other one left holding a napkin and a dog and a version of himself he'd promised not to become again.

He hated how familiar that felt.

He sat in the booth for fifty minutes that Thursday. Drank both coffees because leaving the second one felt too much like hope and he was trying to be practical about this.

He messaged her again from the street.

Are you alive?

He stared at it. Deleted it. Typed:
Are you...

Deleted that too.

He stood there on the pavement with Theodore tugging at the lead and the fog pressing in and felt the sharp, humiliating urge to demand something he had no right to demand.

He started again.

I'm at the booth. Just so you know. The jukebox is playing something terrible. You would hate it. Tuesday. 8am. I'll be here.

He almost didn't go on Tuesday. He stood in the studio with his jacket half on and his keys in his hand and thought about minding his own business. He thought about the contract, which said nothing about what happened when one person stopped showing up. He thought about how he'd been here before, in a different city, in a different season, waiting for someone who had already decided not to come back.

Theodore was sitting at the door. Tail flat. Eyes on Fayiz. Waiting.

"Fine," Fayiz said.

He went.

He went because the napkin was in his jacket pocket and the ink was still there and her name was still on it in full. Mollie Elizabeth Bates. Three names on a cheap napkin in a diner with a terrible jukebox. He went because Theodore already knew the route and pulled toward Duckworth Street without being told and Fayiz didn't have the heart to explain to a dog why they were turning back.

He went because the contract said neither of us dies alone and that was a promise he intended to keep even when the other person was making it difficult.

The booth was empty on Tuesday. He sat in it anyway. Ordered two coffees. Told her about Theodore's latest crimes in a message he kept deliberately light, the same way you kept your voice level on a ledge.

Theodore says hi. I'm paraphrasing. What he actually did was sit on my sketchbook and then look offended when I moved him. He's doing fine. I'm fine. Booth's here. Tea will be here.

On Wednesday he stood in front of the hook by the door for a long time. The scarf was still there. Still green. Still hers. He'd been walking past it all week without touching it, the way you didn't touch the things that would make everything real. He picked it up. Held it. It smelled like cheap tea and cold air and something he recognised now but still couldn't name, something that belonged to her and not to the room. He sent her a message.

I found your scarf. It's green. I put it on the hook in the studio. It's there when you want it.

He stood in front of the grey canvas for a long time that night. The scarf on the hook behind him. The green of it in his peripheral vision.

He picked up a brush.

Dipped it into ochre.

Stopped.

Changed his mind.

Dipped it into green instead. Not bright. Not hopeful. The deep, wool-soft green of the scarf.

He pressed the brush to the canvas. The mark was off. It was too deliberate... too careful. He dragged it sideways, harder than he meant to. The bristles splayed. The green tore across the grey like something breaking through fog.

He stepped back. The canvas looked wounded. It looked alive. He didn't hate it.

Thursday morning, 6:14, Theodore sat on his face.

He fed him. Made coffee. Stood at the window. Typed the last message slowly, because it was the one he'd been not-writing for a week, the one that said everything the others hadn't.

Theodore is on the good cushion. I'm on the floor. The canvas is still grey. Your scarf is still on the hook. I don't know if you're reading these. That's fine. I'll be at the diner Thursday. Same booth. Same time. Your tea will be there whether you are or not.

He added: If you're done, just say so.

He deleted that part.

He hit send. Put the phone face-down on the table. Across the room, the canvas caught the morning light, the green mark still there, cutting through the grey. Still the only colour in the room, besides the scarf on the hook.

Theodore snored.

One hundred and twenty-two days.

☕︎