I talked on and on about Kat and our life together and the Kat in front of me just sat and listened. As I talked my tears subsided and my eyes dried up. I sipped my coffee and kept going on about Kat; her beauty, her laugh, her smile, the way she liked to boss me around, her parents, her affinity for Josh Groban and Elvis Presley, her compulsion to brush her teeth after every meal…And the day she left.

“It should have been goodbye,” I whispered. I looked up at the Kat in front of me to see her eyes glistening with unshed tears. She reached across the table and got my hand.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “She sounds like an amazing woman.”

“She was. Nothing is the same without her. She told me not to keep her stuff too long and so I didn’t. But I kept Moose and that stupid pink feathered boa… I can’t get rid of them, I’ve tried. Sometimes I hurt so much that I feel like I could die…but I still wake up every morning.”

“I don’t think she would have wanted you to live like this.”

“This is life without her.”