After I threw the rock at his dad, Tate and I were hardly ever separated. And when my mom began drinking, we understood each other in a way that welded that connection into an unbreakable bond. Thinking about him now allows other memories to drift to the surface, earlier ones that move through my head in a warm procession, and I smile. When we were kids, skipping rocks at the fishing cove, making bowls out of the spring mud and filling them with leaves and rocks, pretending to have dinner together in our own apartment. As young teens after a bike ride, sitting on a rock side by side, our thighs barely touching, his finger running down my arm until my fist unfurled, and he slipped his hand into mine. Playing basketball in the school gym, our competition always fierce. The feel of his lips against mine, his body long and lean and a perfect match to my own. The way he hugged me like he’d never let me go. Then come the ones that leave me cold. The blackness of the bruised and swelling skin around his eye on that last morning at the Buckner Building. The salty taste of tears and the lemon tang of the tea Ruth fixed me when he was gone.

And then the last memory I have of him. At my master’s graduation, seven years after he left Whittier. The pinpricks of electricity that coursed through my skin when I saw him—tall, handsome, there. A bubbling of hope that pushed into my heart. He was back! Everything would work out after all. Except this time I was the one who left, hurried, picking up my scattered clothes, wiping the mascara that had bled down my face, because this time I understood the truth. We had nothing in common anymore.

With a sigh, I set the cup down and turn to my work, picking up my notebook for September and laying it open. From a desk drawer I pull out a fresh notebook. On the cover of the new journal, I affix a yellow label, which is the color I’ve assigned to this year, and below that an orange label, which is the color I’ve assigned to the month of October. I have piles of notebooks, color coded by year, then month, then numbered by volume if there are multiple notebooks per month. The pages of September are worn from use, a black ring from where I must have set my coffee cup down on the page. I’m careful as I read over the month, making sure I move forward any information, dates, or notes to myself that seem important into the October notebook.