On Wednesday she got up and made tea because the kettle was the one thing her hands knew how to work when everything else stopped working. She stood at the counter and drank it and looked at the phone.

Fourteen notifications.

She picked up the phone. Put it down. Picked it up.

She opened Reddit. The messages were all from fmarakkar. She didn't read them. She could see the previews, the first lines stacked on top of each other like sediment, and she read those instead because reading the first line wasn't the same as reading the message. Reading the first line was just looking. Anyone could look.

fmarakkar: Hey. You weren't there today. Theodore ate the...

fmarakkar: Dottie asked about you. I said you were probably...

fmarakkar: I'm at the booth. Just so you know. The jukebox...

fmarakkar: Tuesday. 8am. I'll be here.

fmarakkar: You weren't there again. That's okay. I ordered...

fmarakkar: Theodore says hi. I'm paraphrasing. What he...

fmarakkar: I found your scarf. It's green. I put it on the...

fmarakkar: Dottie says you're a regular now even if you don't...

fmarakkar: I painted something today. It's terrible. Thought...

fmarakkar: I'm not going to ask if you're okay because rule...

fmarakkar: Same booth. Same time. I'll be here Thursday.

fmarakkar: I don't know if you're reading these. That's fine...

fmarakkar: lmao I just thought about a pumpkin joke from...

fmarakkar: Theodore is on the good cushion. I'm on the floor...

Fourteen messages. He was going to the diner. Every Tuesday. Every Thursday. Sitting in the booth. Ordering coffee. Waiting.

For her.

She put the phone down. Pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until she saw colours.

The lino was cold under her socks.

The kettle clicked off.

The plant on the windowsill was yellowing at the edges, the tips crisped into a pale, papery curl. She'd meant to rotate it toward the light weeks ago. Meant to look up how much water it actually needed instead of guessing. The soil was either bone-dry or swamp. No in-between. She'd started calling it him sometime in the last week. She hadn't decided to.

"You're dying," she told him. "Slowly. Which is worse."

The plant said nothing, because he was a plant, but also because this was the most honest conversation she'd had in a week.

She watered him. Too much. The soil went dark immediately, rejecting it, and the saucer overflowed onto the sill. She wiped it up with her sleeve.

"Sorry. I only know how to panic-fix things," she said. "I'm bad at maintenance."

She didn't talk to Charlie often. Only when things were very bad or very quiet and lately those had been the same thing. It wasn't a conversation. It was more like... leaving a voicemail for someone whose phone was disconnected. You knew they wouldn't get it. You called anyway.

"There's this bloke," she said, wiping the windowsill. "Painter. Indian. Has a dog that's obsessed with me, which is, I don't know. He's been messaging me every day and I haven't replied because I'm..." She stopped. Wrung out the sleeve. "Because I'm scared. Which you'd think is funny. You'd say something about how I'm scared of the wrong things. You'd be right."

She looked at the window. Boots on the pavement. The dog-walking woman. 7:15, right on time.

"Help me out here, yeah?"

Charlie didn't answer. Charlie never answered. That was the whole thing about dead people, they stayed exactly where you left them and they never said anything useful and you talked to them anyway because the alternative was talking to no one and she'd been doing that for two years and it hadn't gotten any easier.

If Charlie were here, he'd tell her to stop being dramatic and answer the messages. He'd tell her living people didn't wait forever. But Charlie wasn't here, and the only person who was had been sitting in a booth with two cups of coffee and no guarantee she'd ever walk back through the door.

She picked up the phone. Opened the messages. Read them. All fourteen.

He'd been to every breakfast. Sat in the booth. Ordered two coffees. Told her about Theodore's latest crimes, the jukebox, the weather, a painting that was terrible and another that was less terrible.

And not once... not once, had he asked if she was okay. He was a man who kept his word even when the person he'd made the word to had vanished without telling him why.

The last message was from this morning. 8:47 a.m.

fmarakkar: 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.

Your tea will be there whether you are or not.

She sat on the kitchen floor with her back against the oven door. The same position she'd been in when she wrote the post. The same cold tiles. The same single light.

But something was different now. She had read the messages and they were sitting inside her chest doing something she couldn't control, something warm and terrible she didn't know what to do with. He'd been going. Every morning. Sitting in the booth. Ordering two coffees. One for him. One for the empty seat.

She pulled her knees up. Pressed her forehead against them.

"Right," she said. To herself. To Charlie. To the oven. "Right."

☕︎

Thursday, November 30. 122 days left.

She almost didn't go.

She stood in the hallway of her flat for eleven minutes with her coat on and her keys in her hand and her boots half-laced, and for each of those eleven minutes she had a separate, distinct reason to stay.

Reason one: her hair was unwashed.

Reason two: she hadn't eaten in... she actually couldn't remember.

Reason three: he would ask what happened and she didn't have an answer that didn't involve the floor.

Reason four: the bell above the diner door was too loud.

Reason five: the vinyl in the booth would still be cracked where her thigh used to stick in summer.

Reason six: he might have stopped waiting and she would have to see the empty seat.

Reason seven: he might still be waiting.

Reason eight: Dottie's face.

Reason nine: explaining nothing.

Reason ten: explaining everything.

Reason eleven: if she went, it meant she intended to survive the rest of the days.

She went.

The walk to The Classic took six minutes. The fog was lighter today, and Mollie walked with her hands in her pockets and something in her earbuds she'd been playing on repeat all week because the melody had a quality she couldn't name, Laura Marling. After all, Laura Marling was for walking and for being sad and for the specific experience of wanting something you couldn't name. She'd been listening to the same album for three weeks. Semper Femina. Always a woman. It felt like being held at arm's length by someone who wanted to hold you closer. She pulled one earbud out as she reached the door.

The bell rang.

Dottie looked up from behind the counter. Her face did something complicated, three or four expressions in quick succession, none of which she shared, and then she picked up a teapot and said "Back booth" and disappeared into the kitchen.

Mollie looked at the booth.

He was there.

Same seat. Same jacket. A cup of coffee in front of him and, across the table, in her spot, a cup of tea. Steam rising from it. Fresh. Like he'd ordered it two minutes ago. Like he'd been ordering it every Tuesday and Thursday for a week.

He looked up.

His face did nothing. His eyes did everything. But he didn't stand and he didn't smile and he didn't say where were you or I was worried or are you okay. He looked at her the way you look at something you thought you'd lost and then found in the pocket of a coat you'd forgotten you owned.

The coffee in front of him was half-gone, no longer steaming. He'd been here a while.

He slid the tea across the table. One inch. Toward her seat. His fingers stayed on the saucer a second too long before he let go, not enough to be obvious, enough that she saw the faint crescent indent the porcelain left in his skin.

She walked to the booth.

Sat down.

Wrapped both hands around the cup. It was warm. The right amount of warm.

Her fingers trembled once... quick, traitorous, and she tightened her grip until the porcelain knocked lightly against the saucer.

He looked at the cup. Not at her. Gave her that privacy like it was a gift.

She lifted it and drank, and it was exactly right. The milk. The steeping time. All of it.

Her eyes met his.

"You know how I take my tea."

He picked up his coffee. Drank. Set it down.

"I pay attention."

And that was it. That was all. He didn't ask. She didn't explain. Dottie brought toast and pancakes without being asked and said nothing, and the jukebox played something by Fleetwood Mac that was too sad for 8 a.m. but exactly right for two people who had come back to each other without saying so.

They ate. He cut his pancakes into triangles. She pulled her toast into strips. The quiet between them was different now. Heavier. But the way a blanket is heavy.

At 8:47, he said, "Theodore ate my other sock."

She looked at him.

"The pair. He found the pair. I don't know how. I hid it. He's like a detective, Mollie. A sock detective."

She pressed her lips together. Looked left. Looked at her tea. The thing in her chest... the warm, terrible thing that had been there since she read his messages on the kitchen floor... shifted. Settled. Stayed.

"You need better socks," she said.

"I need a better dog."

"No, you don't."

He smiled a smile that started somewhere behind his eyes and worked its way out slow, like he was deciding whether to let it land. She watched it happen and wanted to say something: thank you, or I'm sorry, or you waited, or I read every message and I sat on my kitchen floor and I talked to my dead brother about you, which is the closest thing I have to telling someone they matter, but she didn't say any of that.

She drank her tea.

It was exactly how she took it.

One hundred and twenty-two days.

☕︎