He curled up on the office floor and sobbed into my shoulder… I just asked if he’d eaten, walked him home, and cried alone on my kitchen floor once the door was closed.
PART 5
The coat smelled like him. That was the first thing I noticed when I sat down — not on the couch, on the floor, the kitchen floor, the same level Brian had chosen this morning on that hard gritty carpet. I hadn’t taken the coat off yet.
It smelled warm and foreign and faintly of someone else’s grief, and I thought: I am still holding him. Even now. Even here.
Then I cried.
Not the polite kind. Not the kind you do with a tissue and a plan to stop. The kind Brian had cried on the floor of the office, the hitching wet collapsing kind, the kind that comes when something you’ve been carrying all day finally understands that you’ve set it down and it’s allowed to be heavy now.
I toughed it out the whole time, and now I was at home and bawling my eyes out, and there was nobody to be solid for, so I wasn’t. I just sat on the kitchen floor in my coat and let the day come down.
I thought about what Brian had said. Not the repeated phrases — those I’d carry for a while, those were going to come back in quiet moments — but the other thing, the simple thing at the door. Thank you for staying. Like staying was a specific act. Like it was a choice someone could have made differently.
At some point I picked up my phone and looked at Danny’s photo again.
Brian asleep. One hand curled under his chin. The Pokémon credits rolling slow and blue behind him. And in his other hand, still held, the phone with Kitty’s image faint on the dimming screen — not gone, not put away. Just… kept.
The way he’d kept her all those years in a small life that had room for one person and one cat and not much else. The way keeping something, just the act of keeping it, is its own form of devotion.
I told myself I wasn’t doing anything special. I still believe that. I believe Danny wasn’t doing anything special either. We just did what anyone would do.
The thing is: anyone didn’t.
We did.
I set my phone face-up on the kitchen floor. The screen stayed lit for a little while — Brian’s sleeping face, Kitty’s faint glow in his hand — and then it dimmed, the way things do when they’ve been held long enough that they can finally rest.
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Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
