Bearing the Weight

The cat watched from the windowsill as Marcus packed his things into a cardboard box. Twelve years at the firm, reduced to a few personal items and a plant that had seen better days. Outside, the November rain streaked the glass like tears on a face that's given up on wiping them away.

"You don't have to do this," Sarah said, leaning against his doorframe. She was the closest thing he had to a friend in this place — they'd shared drinks at office happy hours, vented about their impossible deadlines, once even kissed in the copy room after the Christmas party when they'd both had too much champagne. That was years ago, before she got promoted and the distance between them widened like a slow tear in fabric.

Marcus looked at his cat back home, waiting for him. The thought of those green eyes, the way she'd curl around his ankles when he walked through the door — it was the only thing keeping him from screaming.

"Robert is a bull in a china shop," Marcus said finally. "Yesterday, he threw a coffee mug at an intern. The kid was twenty-two, just trying to learn. I can't keep covering for him. I can't keep bearing the weight of his tantrums."

Sarah nodded slowly. She knew. They all knew. Robert was the firm's rainmaker, the golden goose who could do no wrong in the partners' eyes. Marcus had spent three years cleaning up Robert's messes, smoothing over destroyed careers, taking the fall when projects went south because Robert was too busy being brilliant to bother with details.

"So what will you do?" she asked, and he heard something in her voice — fear? Resignation? The same exhaustion he felt in his own bones?

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe I'll finally use that pool in the backyard. Learn to swim properly instead of just sitting on the edge with a beer, pretending everything's fine."

The cat shifted on the windowsill, as if reminding him that someone was waiting. Someone who loved him not for what he could endure, but simply because he existed.

"Sarah," he said, lifting the box. "You could come too. We could get drunk on cheap wine and figure out why we stayed so long."

For a moment, something flickered across her face — hope, maybe, or the memory of that kiss in the copy room. Then she straightened her jacket, already gone back to being someone else.

"I can't," she said. "Not yet."

Marcus nodded. He understood about bears. About carrying things until your back breaks, until you forget why you started carrying them at all. He walked out without looking back, the cat's imaginary warmth the only light he had left.