For Khalil

I was fifteen, sitting in our study, watching Gilmore Girls. Rory was mid-rant about not wanting to go to Chilton after meeting Dean when I heard it — a loud, boisterous voice outside, arguing over a foul in the basketball game.

I peered through the burgundy-louvred windows — thick wood, sun-faded and slightly cracked at the corners — the kind you’d find in almost every Caribbean house built before Independence. Always slightly ajar, creaking in the wind, smelling faintly of varnish and salt air. Those windows held generations of noise — radios, laughter, and the sharp ring of someone calling you inside before dark.

That afternoon, they framed something else entirely: a group of boys on the carport, mid-argument, sweat glistening, voices bouncing off concrete. I remember thinking, who the hell is disturbing my precious TV time?

The game stopped. Our eyes met. He must’ve felt it too, because he came over, took off his heavy silver watch, and asked me to hold it for him.

The rest of the afternoon, I sat there with that watch in my hand — cool metal warming in my palm, the faint scent of Ralph Lauren cologne rising from it.

For a year, our moments looked like that — small, stolen, cinematic things.

A few years later, after my first summer in college, I saw him again at a party in front of a speaker, on rocky ground. Even though he said he would call the next day, I remember thinking I’d never see him again. — but the next day, he pulled up to that same carport at my house, in his dad’s car, unannounced. After that, we were inseparable.

We spent entire summers together. Lazy afternoons by the court, in the studio, or on the couch watching movies and laughing. His laugh was the best — uncontrollably loud, drawn out so long you couldn’t help but join in.

There were heated arguments over whether Jay-Z or Nas was better.

Miami trips with home-cooked meals and too many action movies.

Nights listening to Nigel’s new tracks. We even got robbed together.

We also had the kind of arguments that left bruises on the heart — because kept trying to make puzzle pieces from different puzzles fit.

We hurt each other, but we always came back, certain that friendship could fix what had been broken.

What we had was a friendship trying to find its form, fighting through the noise of youth and ego and expectation.

Our friendship spanned such formative years that there isn’t a person — no matter where I’ve lived or how much time has passed — who didn’t know of him or how much we cared for each other.

People still say, “I only met him the once, but he’s a core memory.” He was that kind of person — the kind who left an imprint in a single encounter. Funny and kind, he cared for people both gently and vigorously, the way you could only describe as full-hearted.

His absence will forever be an ache to those who knew him because a loss like this is even more painful when you loved and were so loved by someone so deeply. He has a core group of friends and family who have loved him and been loved by him even longer than I have — I can’t imagine what this loss feels like for them, knowing how it already feels for me.

Yesterday, a mutual friend called and said, “Leanne — Khalil’s missing.”

And I knew. I knew before anyone said the words.

A few hours later, it was confirmed.

He was gone.

And now the loss sits heavy on my chest as I replay our last argument, the silence that followed, the words I’m sorry echoing louder for not being said enough.

Grief is love with nowhere to go. So I leave it here — in the memory, in the sound, in the air between us — trusting that somehow, he’ll find it.

I hope he knows that I loved him as the funny, generous, patriotic, kind, unapologetically authentic person that he was. We all did.

Because none of us are perfect, but all of us are lovable.

We love you, Homes — then and now, no matter where you are.