Cable Cuts and Sunday Afternoons

The cat — Elena's cat, technically — had chosen sides in the divorce. Marcus stood in the doorway of what used to be their apartment, watching Rusty weave through Elena's legs like nothing had changed. Like eighteen years of marriage could be dissolved by paperwork and a moving truck.

"He needs his thyroid medication," Marcus said, his voice sounding foreign in his own throat. "The vet's number is on the cable bill."

Elena didn't look up from the box she was taping. "I'll find it."

Marcus drove to his new place — a one-bedroom with stained carpets and neighbors who played loud music at 2 AM. That first night, he ordered pizza and watched a baseball game alone, something he hadn't done since college. The Yankees were down by three runs in the seventh inning. He found himself shouting at the television, then remembered there was no one to hear him, no one to roll her eyes and say, "It's just a game, Marcus."

The silence was worse than the fighting.

A week later, he joined the gym down the street. The pool reminded him of their honeymoon in Cancun, how Elena had laughed when a wave knocked him over, how they'd spent hours swimming in the ocean at sunset. Now he did laps alone, counting strokes, measuring time in breaths. The water washed away everything, if only for an hour.

The grocery store became a minefield of memories. He found himself standing in the produce aisle, staring at a bag of spinach. Elena had tried to get him to eat healthy for years. "You're not twenty anymore," she'd say, dropping kale into their cart like it was a peace offering. He'd refused, buying frozen pizza instead, and they'd argue about cholesterol and stubbornness and who had changed more.

Now he bought the spinach. He ate it raw in salads, wilted it into eggs, tried to convince himself he liked the taste. It was penance, he supposed. Or perhaps it was just something he could control.

Three months in, his cable stopped working. Some outage in the neighborhood. No internet, no television, no distraction. For the first time in years, Marcus sat with his own thoughts without pressing mute.

He remembered their last anniversary, how they'd gone to a baseball game, how Elena had seemed distant even then. How she'd told him she wasn't happy, not really, hadn't been for a long time. How he'd asked, "Since when?" and she'd said, "Since I started drowning while you were still learning to swim."

The cable technician arrived the next morning.

"Bad connection," the guy said, replacing the coaxial cable. "Sometimes things just come loose. You gotta check the connections regularly."

Marcus nodded, thinking about all the connections he hadn't checked in years. All the loose ends he'd ignored until they unraveled completely.

That night, he made spinach for dinner and watched another baseball game. The Yankees lost again. Marcus turned off the television and sat in the dark, learning finally how to be alone, which was different than being lonely. The two were not the same, he realized. One was circumstance. The other was a choice.

Somewhere in the city, Rusty the cat was probably curled up beside Elena, purring in a home that wasn't his. Marcus picked up his phone, scrolled to her number, then deleted it instead.

The connections were cut. It was time to start making new ones.