Maybe it’s wrong. Maybe it’s weird. I know for sure it’s not mentally sound, but whenever things go wrong, I like to come and talk to Tiff.

“Hey, Tiffster.” I drop down on the grass, stretching my legs out in front of me before opening the takeout bag I’ve brought. “Remember when we used to get burritos every Monday?”

I unwrap the top end of the tin foil around my giant burrito and take a bite. Tiff doesn’t answer. She never answers.

“You always said Monday was the least exciting day of the week, and that we should have a reason to look forward to it. You always needed something to be excited about, didn’t you, Tiff?”

I pluck a blade of grass from the ground with my free hand. Last summer you could still see the outline of the grave; the plants didn’t have time to catch up and cover the freshly turned earth before fall came. Now the only things to prove she hasn’t been here long are the fresh flowers her mom still replaces every week—proof that this grave hasn’t been abandoned, forgotten, as so many others seem to be— and the immaculate black marble headstone, still shining as bright as the day they put it here.

Not that I’d know. I didn’t go to the funeral.

“I’m sorry they put you here, Tiff. I know you told me if it ever happened, you wanted your ashes to get sprinkled from a zip line, or launched off a waterfall. Something adventurous for my little daredevil, huh?”

I laugh but it catches in my throat, coming out like more of a sob.

I used to think that’s why she ended up here, in the cemetery. I thought maybe if she’d led a safer life, hadn’t been on that constant quest for the next adrenaline high, she wouldn’t be under the ground now.

Without that thirst for adventure, that need to get the most she possibly could out of life, she wouldn’t have been Tiff, though. I might still have her beside me, but she wouldn’t be the girl I loved, the girl who’d brave rapids for fun, climb in a shark tank to win a bet, or jump off a cliff just to feel the wind in her hair. She was my daredevil, always after the next big thrill, and if I’d tried to change that about her I would have been asking her to be someone else.

“And I wouldn’t have wanted that,” I say to her. “Besides, no one could tell you what to do. I knew that from the first day I met you.”

I still remember it. The day a girl like Tiffany Goodall moves in next door isn’t something you forget.

It was the summer before my junior year. I was an absolute little shit for most of high school, way more of a douchebag than the one I started acting like to shut people out after losing Tiff. Me and my crew of asshole friends roamed the hallways in leather jackets, thinking we were some kind of cross between rock stars and thugs. We gave all our teachers a hard time, cut class to smoke, and broke every heart who fell for the bad boy persona.

Tiff didn’t fall for it. Not one bit. That day her family’s moving van pulled up, I walked over to watch her hauling boxes around in high tops, a tank top, and those teeny tiny denim shorts that could stop a guy’s heart. She saw me standing there with a cigarette between my teeth and told me I looked like a child predator and to please fuck off and take my disgusting habits with me.

I suddenly wanted to quit smoking right then and there.

Living so close meant we saw a lot of each other, whether she wanted to or not, and somehow over the course of that summer we ended up becoming best friends. My own friends thought I was crazy for never making a move on her, but I couldn’t see her the way I saw other girls at the time: as a form of entertainment and the occasional chance to cup a feel. Tiff was different. Even then, she had a boldness to her that left me in awe. She always wanted more out of life and she had the guts to go and get it.

She pushed me to do the same. I’d only discovered photography a few months before meeting her, and when she accidentally found my camera gear, she wouldn’t let it go. I wouldn’t have ended up going to photography school if it wasn’t for her.

She was a year younger than me, and during the times I visited while she was still stuck in high school something between us changed, or maybe something that was already there came to light. We became a long distance couple until she graduated, and then she spent a few weeks every season living with me, and the rest out thrill seeking as a ski instructor in the winter, a rafting guide in the summer—anything extreme enough to keep her entertained while paying the bills.

It wasn’t even that extreme, the thing that did it. She was out water skiing with some friends from her rafting job. They said it was a freak accident, that another boat came by, but I never cared to hear the details. It was supposedly instant and I hope that’s true. I couldn’t handle the thought that she knew she was about to lose the one thing she loved most: life.

I had just been accepted to advertising school and I almost dropped out completely. I kind of lost it for awhile and delayed starting for a whole semester, spending days at a time just staring at my ceiling, wondering what the point of doing anything was.

Tiff was the one who told me I’d be good at advertising, who encouraged me to apply to the college after my corporate photography work got me interested in business. She’d filled me with so much hope, so much belief in myself.

I think deep down I always l knew I’d lose her, but I thought it would be because she chose to leave me, not because she was ripped away before either of us were ready to say goodbye. I could tell that giving up on new adventures to come back and see me was getting to be too hard for her. If she’d asked me to let her go I would have done whatever she needed to be happy, but she never even got the chance to do that.

Realizing how fragile life really is, how little control you actually have over anything, makes it difficult to live your life the same way. I couldn’t be Aaron Penn anymore, not the way I was before, so I became someone else, someone who stayed in the shallow end of life and never went too deep. I kept my distance and played it safe and I thought I could learn to be okay with that.

Then Christina proved me wrong.

“So Tiff, as much as I enjoy visiting you, I have to admit I’m here for a particular reason today. It’s about a girl.” I let out a laugh. “That’s weird, isn’t it? Me telling you about another girl? I guess me telling you anything at all is kind of weird. You’re really not that great at giving advice these days, Tiffster.”

Again, my laughter starts to sound like more of a sob. I give up on my burrito and return it to the bag.

“So, I met this girl at school. Her name’s Christina. You’d like her. She kind of reminds me of you in some ways. She’s a lot more uptight and I can’t really picture her going base jumping or doing any of that other crazy shit like you, but she doesn’t take no for an answer and she’s always pushing herself, always testing her limits. I really admire her.”

I pull up a few more blades of grass and start twisting them together.

“It’s more than admiration, though,” I continue. “I like her. I like like her. I didn’t think I could feel that way about anyone else, not after you. I didn’t let myself feel that way about anyone else, but I couldn’t stop it when it came to her. She makes me feel like there’s a way out of this mess I’m in, a way to really fix things and not just cover them up. I still love you though, Tiff. I don’t want to have to forget you.”

I stare at the letters of her name, carved into the marble. She would have hated this headstone, with its stupid built-in flower vases.

“After I lost you, Tiff, people told me I shouldn’t be locking myself up in my room. They said that’s not what you would have wanted. That’s bullshit, isn’t it? You wouldn’t have wanted to leave in the first place. You wouldn’t have wanted any of this, and you sure as fuck don’t want anything now, because you’re fucking dead.”

I’m shouting now, ripping up clumps of grass at a time as my body shakes from the effort to hold back the sobs. I dig my fingers into the ground until the urge to knock the goddamn slab of marble over subsides.

“You’re dead, Tiff,” I say, as my vision starts to go blurry with tears I can’t fight anymore. “I’m talking to a dead girl.”

It’s too much. I can’t hold this in anymore, can’t keep it locked inside, but letting it out is going to break me. This isn’t the kind of pain I can handle on my own. I need someone to take some of it away, and as I sit here in a cemetery, losing my grip on everything, I finally realize who that someone is.

There’s only one person in the world I know who would take every ache I’ve ever felt and make it her own if she could, and I’ve been trying to stop her from helping me for way too long.

I get my phone out and she answers on the second ring.

“Mom?” I choke out.

“Aaron?”

All I can do is grit my teeth and try to hold myself together enough not to break down on the phone.

“Aaron, baby, what’s wrong?” she asks, panic pitching her voice higher.

“I want to talk. I want to talk about it. About her,” I blurt out in an almost undecipherable rush. I draw in a shaky breath. “I want to talk about Tiff.”

* * *

“You know I loved her too, right? We all loved that girl. Tiffany was part of this family.”

I’m on the couch at my parents’ house. I made the hour and a half drive to get here as soon as I got off the phone. My mom and I are both crying, one of her hands braced on my shoulder as she sits beside me on the crocheted blanket she made.

I did it. I owned up to all my feelings, admitted to how much damage losing Tiff did, how it’s been eating me from the inside and keeping me from letting anyone into my life. It felt like throwing up, finally letting it all out, and it left me just as raw and weak afterward. It’s true what they say, though: better out than in. I’d gotten so used to carrying everything inside me I didn’t realize how heavy it all was.

“You don’t have to be all alone.” My mom’s voice is so soft and gentle it almost makes me start crying again, but I’m done with the tears. I came here to start getting better.

“I know. It was stupid of me.”

“Not stupid, Aaron. You were hurting. You are hurting. Pain isn’t the best at making judgements.”

“I just wanted it all to go away. I didn’t want to have to deal with this.” I gesture at her tear-streaked face, at my own, which I’m sure looks pretty much the same. “But it didn’t go away.”

She pats my arms and then gets up from the couch for a moment, rummaging around a storage unit before returning with a pamphlet.

“I never gave this to you before, because I knew you would have just thrown it out. You probably still won’t be too crazy about the idea, but here.”

I take the folded blue sheet of paper and see it’s an information booklet for grief counselling.

“Mom—” I start to say.

“Listen,” she urges, cutting me off, “I know it seems a little out there, talking to a complete stranger about something like this. I thought so too, but I started going to some sessions a few months after she passed, and it helped, Aaron. It really did.”

I lift my eyes from the booklet to meet hers. They’re a warm brown, nowhere close to the blue ones I share with my father. Hers are filled with hope right now, with longing for me to agree to this.

I’m shocked to hear she was affected by Tiff’s death enough to look into counselling. It was selfish of me, but I never really stopped to consider how she’d feel about losing Tiff at all.

“I’ll think about it,” I say, and it’s not even a lie.

My mom’s right; the idea doesn’t exactly thrill me, but none of my own strategies for dealing with this seemed to have been particularly helpful choices, and I’ve opened up enough to realize I don’t know how to do this on my own.

I already lost Tiff. I don’t want the pain of that to make me lose anyone else.

“Mom, there’s something else I have to tell you” I admit. “The whole reason I’m here, the reason I realized I needed to talk about this, is because I met someone.”

“Met someone?” she repeats, tilting her head to the side.

“A girl,” I clarify, “that I like.”

“Well Aaron,” she says, swatting me on the arm, “that’s wonderful!”

“Yeah.” I break out into a tentative smile as the mood lightens a bit. “She is. Only isn’t it kind of...insulting, to Tiff’s memory, for me to want to be with someone else? It’s only been a year.”

She gives me a stern stare. “Aaron, this isn’t the Victorian era. You’re not expected to dress in black and avoid joy like it’s the plague. If Tiffany were here—”

“Don’t!” I snap, shifting away from her touch. “Don’t say that. I hate when people say that. If she were here, if she could have what she ‘would have wanted,’ we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.”

She looks hurt at the force in my tone and I instantly regret it.

“Sorry.” I force the word out. “I just hate that so much.”

“You’re right,” she replies, shaking her head. “It’s a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry. I guess what I mean is...you can’t go along acting as if your entire future died with Tiffany. You have to realize that your happiness matters, Aaron. Tiffany always wanted the best for you. She was always pushing you to go after the things you dreamed about. Continuing to do that now that she’s gone doesn’t insult her memory; it honors it.”

I sit completely still for a moment, feeling her words sink into me, ringing out with truth as I repeat them in my head. She’s right. I know she’s right. I nod my head and take her hand in mine, squeezing hard before I let go.

“So,” I say, clearing my throat to get rid of the lump that’s sitting there, “did they teach you that at grief counselling? After you held hands and sang ‘Kumbaya’?”

I look at her and see the smirk on my face mirrored in hers. We may not share the same eyes, but I learned the art of sarcasm straight from her.

“It was lesson five,” she says. “And we sang ‘Lean On Me’ not ‘Kumbayah.’”

“God, if it actually involves singing I’m walking out the door.”

She pulls my beanie off my head and tosses it across the room.

“Hey!” I shout in protest.

“You know I hate those things,” she teases, getting up from the couch. “Plus, dinner is almost ready and you also know I don’t allow hats at the table.”

I leave my beanie where it is and follow her into the kitchen, getting the table set up as she checks on the casserole in the oven. My dad will be home from work soon, and I make sure to set out wine glasses for us all, knowing he likes to make dramatic toasts to the ‘return of his prodigal children’ whenever me or my sister comes home.

Sarcasm kind of runs in the whole family.

“So tell me about the girl,” my mom demands, as she pulls on a pair of oven mitts. “Is she from school?”

“Yeah, we worked on a project together for this showcase thing and it did really well. She used to hate me. I mean, I kind of made her hate me.”

I already told my mom about what a douche I let myself turn into. I give her a quick recap of the showcase project and modelling ordeal. She knew I started keeping my photography as secret after Tiff passed away, and I can tell she’s surprised to hear I let Christina in on it.

“We got really close,” I conclude, “but the closer we got the more nervous I became, until I fucked the whole thing up.”

“Language!” chides my mom.

“Messed up,” I correct. “I messed it up. I should have told her about Tiff before I told her how much I liked her, but I didn’t and then she found all these photos of Tiff and I just...I couldn’t talk about it, not on the spot like that, after hiding it from everyone for so long. She assumed Tiff was just some ex I wasn’t over. She doesn’t want to talk to me anymore.”

“Did you tell her the truth yet?”

“I’ve called a few times, but that’s not really something you bring up in a phone message.”

“No,” Mom agrees, “I guess it’s not.”

She sets the casserole dish down on the counter and my mouth waters. I can make about five very basic meals; the only I get to eat decent home-cooked food anymore is when I’m here.

“So what do I do?” I ask. “She clearly doesn’t want to talk, and I don’t even know what to say. I don’t know what words will convince her to at least let me tell her the truth.”

“Maybe words aren’t your best option.”

She gives me a mysterious smile and carries the casserole out to the table.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand.

“There’s something you’re better at, something that’s worth a thousand words.” She winks at me and I catch on.

Pictures. I can say way more with a photo than I can with words.