Tabitha Anastasia Tomko-Rollins.
That horrible name would be plastered on her gravestone when she kicked the bucket . Not Tibs or Tibby. She wouldn't get to have the name that her friends and family lovingly called her. Just nothing short of what was on her birth certificate. With that depressing realization, she forced herself out of her car and walked up to her best friend's grave stone. Well, her best friend outside of the Septembers. This particular best friend had shown Tibby more about herself than anybody else in her life. Without knowing it, Bailey had put her whole life on track. Tibby might not have recorded the "suckumentary" without Bailey's persistence. She never would have given Brian a second glance. Life without having known Bailey would have been very different than the life that she now lived in.
She and her boyfriend of two years stood in front of a simple gray granite stone. It read Bailey Jessica Graffman. BJG. It seemed to fit Bailey somehow, to have all of her initials sound phonetically the same.
Tibby, out of some sort of respect for tradition had put on the same skirt suit she'd worn to Bailey's funeral. It happened to be the suit she wore to Marly's funeral too. She had other clothes that would be fitting for a funeral, but she always chose the same outfit. Maybe because she had enough of her parents in her to despise change. Maybe because she just didn't want to associate any other feeling other than sorrow with one outfit.
They had spent a lot of time on Bailey's tombstone. It was uncharacteristically different. It had a portion of some sort of psalm on it that Brian had explained to her. It had a beautiful meaning of saying that those who brought as much happiness to people as Bailey had, then only good things could come to her. As embarrassing as it was to have Brian explain it to her, she was oddly comforted by it. Bailey deserved heaven. Bailey deserved peace.
She looked around, noticing it was surrounded by the others in random orders that reminded her of desks in her old classroom in a grim sort of way. She missed high school sometimes. She missed Bailey all the time.
"I can't believe it's been this long, Brian." She commented, knowing that she had to try her voice or she might stop breathing.
"Four years." He confirmed. "For a sick kid, she was so lively."
"You have no idea."
Tibby thought for a moment that Septembers should have come out here with her instead of Brian. She wasn't quite sure she could ask her sisters to come to see Bailey's gravestone. They knew how much Tibby had idolized the young girl enough to not let her grieve properly. She thought that she might have felt more comfortable with him since he'd actually known her. Brian had done everything he could to make Bailey feel better when she was sick when it was all Tibby could do to even look at her. Tibby wished she was braver back then. Bailey could have used somebody brave. Somebody more like Brian and less like Tibby.
"I loved her." Tibby commented softly. "I miss her."
Brian wrapped his arms around her from behind and pulled her closer to him. He normally could sense the exact moment that Tibby needed comforting, but he was off a few second today. She pulled out of his grasp and laid down the four red roses for each year that Bailey had been gone. It was a tradition that Bridget had started for Marly, and Tibby had adopted it for Bailey. She'd never felt more awkward than when she had to ask her sister in all but blood if she could borrow the tradition of giving her dead mother flowers. And, as gracious as Bee had always been, she gave it to Tibby like she had asked to borrow the keys to her car.
"Mrs. Graffman came by to see mom yesterday." Brian started. She knew that he was talking about her mother and not his. He never talked about his own mom with the exception of the few times that he casually mentioned her and his step-father. When he did, he started it off "My mother..."
"What'd she say?" Tibby enquired.
"She wanted to know when Kitty-cat's birthday was so that she could send her a present. She and Mr. Graffman were going to be out of town for that whole week."
"She bought me something for my birthday too." Tibby mused sadly, wondering how painful Bailey's birthday had to be for the older woman. "A necklace."
"Me too. It was, uh, a gift card to a video game store." He chuckled. "I tried to turn it down, but she insisted."
"Me too." Tibby interrupted, unable to believe that they had the same conversation with Mrs. Graffman. "She said that I was really important to Bailey, and that she would have wanted to get me something for my birthday." She explained hoping that Brian would catch on and she wouldn't have to look like an idiot.
The corners of his eyes turned up in his whole hearted smile. "Yeah. Me too." He agreed. "I guess it was a little easier after that. Like Bailey bought us something."
"Maybe."
"Remember how much she used to be into the other Septembers?" He asked. He had started calling them that in place of Bridget, Lena and Carmen. For a long time, he got their names mixed up. Tibby wished she had a camera for the many times he called Bridget "Carmen", Lena "Bridget", and Carmen "Lena".
"We were her heroes." Tibby mused. "-and she didn't even get the chance to meet all of us."
Tibby would never forget the day that Carmen had been home from South Carolina and met Bailey. Bailey might as well have met a T.V. star. She invited Carmen to get smoothies with them. When Carmen signed the receipt on Tina's debit card, Bailey watched each loop and curl Carmen made with the pen with genuine fascination.
"I think that she liked the idea that four people could spend the rest of their lives with each other, even if they weren't together." He told her, kissing her cheek softly.
"Yeah. Maybe your right."
"Come on, let's go get Ryan. His soccer game is going to be over soon."
She looked at her watch only see that Brian was right. Her godson's game was going to be over in five minutes, and she had promised him a chocolate milkshake if he won.
"Okay. I'll be there in a minute." She told him.
As she watched Brian leave, she turned back to Bailey's grave. She kissed the tips of her fingers before planting her hand on the tombstone. "Love you, Bales. I'm not ever going to forget you." She promised the granite before she chased after Brian, unwilling to be late for milkshakes with Ryan.