The Storm We Weathered

The thunder woke me at 3 AM, that familiar roll that used to make me reach for you before I remembered you'd been gone six months. Outside, lightning fractured the sky into electric shards, illuminating the empty half of our bed where the pillow still held the faint impression of your head.

I got up and found Barnaby—your old lab, the dog you rescued from that shelter in Jersey—shivering in the kitchen. His muzzle was white now, his hips stiff, but he still pressed against my leg like nothing had changed. "We're alright, buddy," I whispered, though neither of us believed it.

Tomorrow I'd have to face him. Paul, your best friend, who'd offered me that job when the life insurance money ran out. He'd called it "managing the office," but we both knew what it was: charity wrapped in the bull-headed pragmatism he'd always worn like armor. "You need structure," he'd said, the same way he'd tell you that you were drinking too much, that your hair was getting too long, that you needed to get your shit together. You never listened. You died with your hair wild and your accounts empty and a smile on your face that said you'd done it your way.

The storm broke around dawn. I stood on the porch with coffee that had gone cold, watching the rain wash away the dust of another day without you. Barnaby leaned against my thigh, his warmth the only honest thing left.

Paul would be here at nine with paperwork and pity and the kind of friendship that felt like a cage. But this morning, with the storm finally moving east and the sky bruising pink at the edges, I understood something you'd tried to tell me a thousand times: the only thing that makes us prisoners is believing we have to stay.

I put on my shoes and called the dog. We had nowhere to be, and for the first time in thirty years, that felt like enough.