He held the leather coat close to his chest as he poured out his final love song to Angel.
"You don't have to do this," he protested.
"Hush your mouth, it's Christmas," she smiled. Angel sifted through the rack of coats looking for the perfect one. Then she spotted something. A coat missing a sleeve.
"That's my coat!" Collins pointed out.
"We give discounts," the saleswoman cried, scared that the anarchist would do something.
"Let's get a better one," Angel said.
"But she's a thief!" Collins said.
"But she brought us together," Angel argued. She was grateful for this woman. She and the person that stole Collins' coat were the cause that made Angel go down that alley in the first place. And if she never had gone down that alley, she never would have met the love of her life.
"I'll take the leather," Collins decided. Angel handed the lady some cash and the couple went on their way, hand in hand. That coat was Angel's first gift to Collins.
Clutching her drumsticks in his hands, he stood at her grave. It was a painfully sunny day for a funeral.
Her drumsticks were old and wooden, barely strong enough to hold up Angel's powerful rhythms. Angel always kept her drumsticks in her heels, her black stilettos, to be precise. She'd pull them out whenever she went drumming and drop them in her pickle tub, swinging it as she walked to her drumming corner.
"Hey."
Angel looked up, "Collins!" her face brightened. "Why aren't you at work?"
"Because you mean more to me than those bratty kids," he smiled. "I got you something."
She smiled, "What?"
He pulled out two bright red drumsticks from the inside pocket of his coat.
"Collins! Thank you, thank you so much! I'm going to use them right now!" she smiled. He handed her the sticks, and she immediately sat back down and started a new beat.
"Can I see your old ones?" Collins asked. She nodded and handed him the old wooden ones. "I've got to get back to work, but I'll see you later. I love you," he said.
She stood up and gave him a kiss, "I love you." She never found out what Collins did with her old ones. But Angel never used another pair of drumsticks again, the ones Collins gave her was her favorite thing that she owned.
Collins found them in her pickle tub in their apartment after she died. And they've been in the inside pocket of his coat ever since.
After her funeral, Mimi slipped something in his pocket. Angel's blue nail polish.
"Hey Ang?" Collins asked.
"What, honey?"
"Why are your nails always the same color?" he asked.
Angel laughed. "You remember Jessica Noelton?"
"The girl you went to Senior Prom with?" Collins smiled.
"Yep. She painted my nails this shade of blue that night, and she sends me a new bottle of it every Halloween. She knew it was my favorite holiday, sweet thing. And in return I send her a corsage, a light green ribbon with tiny pink flowers," Angel said. "And you know, we send letters. It's how we keep in touch. No matter how distant we are, we'll always be friends."
"How's she doing?" Collins asked.
"Good. She just got engaged, actually, to her college sweetheart. She said I could be a bridesmaid at her wedding, wouldn't that be fun?" Angel's face brightened at the thought.
The day of Angel's funeral, Collins got a pink envelope in the mail. Another bottle of nail polish was in it, along with a wedding invitation.
Collins couldn't bear to get rid of anything. He gave some of her clothes and shoes to Mimi, as Angel had requested, but Mimi never wore any of them. Collins assumed she had them hanging in her closet, just like he did. Angel's shoes were still all over the apartment. Overflowing the bathroom and closet drawers, shoved in every nook possible, and resting on chairs.
"Do you even wear all of these?" he asked, observing the mound of shoes.
"Most of them. They all hold memories," she replied.
"Like what?" he wrapped his arms around her.
"Well, take these," she held up a pair of glitzy pink heels "I wore these the first night I went to a club in drag. I got 10 phone numbers."
"Damn," Collins smiled.
"I know," she giggled. Picking up a pair of simple silver boots, she said, "I was wearing these when I ran away from home, and when I got this apartment." She grabbed some red heels, "I met Mimi when I was wearing these."
"What about these?" Collins asked, holding up a pair of ratty, honey brown shoes that he didn't think he'd ever seen Angel wear.
"Now those," she pointed at them, "I was wearing those when I met the love of my life. He was in an alley, and even though he was all beaten and bruised, I thought he was the most handsome man in the world. And you know what? No matter how ugly and how much I hate these shoes, I will always keep them. Because I was wearing these shoes when my life changed."