No one got to say goodbye. No one expected they would ever have to.
Kellie was a barista at the little bicycle shop just east of downtown Austin. A flat roofed, low-slung, single story, rectangle building. Almost like a garage. A brick wall runs two thirds of the way from the back, splitting the building in half length-ways. E-bikes, raised repair benches and racing posters fill up the right side and a coffee bean roaster, pine-coloured communal tables and a cafe counter fill up the left.
The grey and brown interior of iron and concrete is separated from the picnic tables outside on the sidewalk by ceiling-height, glass windows. The owner's uncle had built those picnic tables when they first opened to act as a barrier between shop-front and the gas station next door. The very same gas station of Kellie's horrific end.
Kellie had sharp shoulders and a delicate neck. Her white-blonde hair was cut into a short bob. In Australia. we'd say she had a straight-cut 'fringe' drawing a straight line just above her eyebrows. But in San Francisco - where she was from - they'd say she had 'bangs'. The sharp edge border of white-blonde really popped the two, ice-cold-blue eyes as she looked up from the espresso machine to pass me my coffee the first time.
Sometimes, it doesn't take much when you don't need much. And other times, it takes whole lot when you feel like you need it all.
That first look from her was one of those two things. But, to this day, I'm still not sure which.
She lived with a roommate off South Congress. He had a pet rabbit who ate lettuce and iPhone charger cables. She had an iron bed frame and large plastic bins stacked up in her built-in closet, filled with underwear and socks . The first time I came over was a Sunday afternoon and I didn't head back to mine till Tuesday evening. In between all that fucking, we ordered Uber Eats and took mushrooms and watched TikToks.
On Monday - the middle day - she did a load of washing. She gathered up all the bits of my clothing I had cast down on her floor and threw them in with her own dirties. Kellie offered me her silk, floral-print robe to wear, but I opted for an oversized bath towel instead. Other than my black jeans, my dark blue shirt and my charcoal shorts, the entire load was red. A comic-book-tomato sort of red. Kellie only ever wore red panties. I never did find out why.
That image also really sticks to me. When I think of Kellie now, I think of her naked except for red underwear; I think of the exact blue of her eyes in that first look up at me; and I think of the grey and green of the gas station where she died.
The last conversation we had was about a visit to DC we had planned for after my trip to Denver. She sat up at the bar at Nickle City, leaned over onto the soft and sticky vinyl trimmed edge and told me about the Filipino food and American art she wanted to check out. I couldn't really afford the week away from Austin, but Kellie needed someone to go with and I always felt like I owed her something.
I don't know why. Maybe cause I once did.
We don't have any mutual friends now and I have no one with whom to remember her. But that's ok. Because there is also no one to tell me that I have her remembered all wrong. That she didn't mean to me what she once did. And that she wasn't what I want to see us as.
She is gone and I never got to say goodbye.
But at least I no longer owe her anything.
