Say It While I'm Here

Everybody had something beautiful to say about Anthony Douglas at his funeral.

Gifted.

Funny.

Kind.

A beautiful soul.

Tayla Bennett only has one question:

Why didn't anybody say it while he was alive?

After her childhood best friend dies at twenty-eight, Tayla is given something he left behind-a notebook filled with the names people gave him while he was still here.

Talented. Sweet. Different. Confused. Junkie. Thief. Waste.

The deeper Tayla digs into the years she missed, the harder it becomes to decide who hurt Anthony.

Because Anthony wasn't innocent.

He lied.

He stole.

He broke hearts and betrayed people who loved him.

But they hurt him too.

And somewhere between church pews, addiction, family, friendship, rejection, love, and his own choices, the boy everybody once called gifted started believing the worst things people called him.

Tayla thought she was investigating what destroyed her best friend.

Until she discovers something Anthony wrote about her.

And suddenly, the question isn't just what happened to Ant.

It's how many words we leave inside people long after we've forgotten saying them.

Some people spend the rest of their lives trying to survive a sentence somebody else forgot five minutes after saying.

Say It While I'm Here is a raw urban short story about faith, grief, addiction, accountability, unconditional love, and what it means to love a person without pretending everything they do is right.

Because sometimes we save our most beautiful words for funerals.

And by then, the person who needed to hear them can't.