A birthday meal.
A power outage.
The night we painted one cabinet yellow inside.
A customer who brought us six pounds of smoked salmon instead of paying on time.
Each memory hurt his head.
I could see the strain building.
“Stop.”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t need to search for more.”
“They’re there.”
“They’ll still be there later.”
“What if they go?”
“They came back once.”
His breathing quickened.
I held his face.
“Noah. Look at me.”
He did.
“I am not going anywhere. The memories do not need to arrive all at once to keep me here.”
His eye closed.
The pressure eased.
“I remember you,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“Not everything.”
“No.”
“But enough.”
“More than enough.”
He rested against me.
After a while, he laughed softly.
“What?”
“I still hate that jacket.”
