Cable-Deep Friendships

The pool at the Oakwood Apartments was never meant to be beautiful. It was a rectangle of chlorinated water surrounded by cracked concrete, a place where divorced dads in cargo shorts floated on inflatables like abandoned vessels.

Elena hadn't expected to see Jason here—not in her building, not in the city, not after five years of silence. But there he was, kneeling beside the utility box, a coil of cable slung over his shoulder like a dead snake. The cable company uniform didn't fit him right anymore. The last time she'd seen him, he'd been wearing a tuxedo at her wedding, his toast about friendship being the tether that keeps us from drifting into darkness.

That same darkness now lived in his eyes.

"You're working for MetroCable now?" she called from the pool's edge, her legs dangling in the water.

Jason flinched, then turned slowly. The familiarity of his face—the small scar above his left eyebrow from when they'd fallen off the roof at seventeen—made something in her chest fracture all over again.

"Since the layoffs," he said, not meeting her eyes. "Your building's on my route."

"Since when?"

"Three months. I've been skipping your floor."

The water lapped against Elena's calves. She thought about the last time they'd spoken—the shouting match at her anniversary party, his accusation that she'd abandoned everyone who'd helped her survive. She thought about how she'd stopped checking his social media. How friendship, unlike marriage, didn't require paperwork to dissolve.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Jason laughed bitterly. "For what? For getting out? For making something of yourself? Don't apologize for success, Elena. That's worse than whatever you actually did."

"I'm sorry I didn't call when your mother died."

He went still. The cable slipped from his shoulder and coiled on the concrete like a question mark.

"I was at the hospital," he said finally. "For weeks. You could've come. You could've called."

"I didn't know what to say. We weren't—"

"We weren't friends anymore?" His voice cracked. "We're still not. But you're the only person who knew her recipe for lasagna. You're the only person who remembers that time she caught us smoking in her garage and made us eat the whole pack. You're the only person who remembers ME."

Elena slid into the pool, the water closing over her head. When she surfaced, gasping, Jason was standing at the edge, his boots right on the cracked concrete.

"Get in," she said.

"I have three more apartments to—"

"Get in, Jason. The water's fine."

He hesitated, then sat on the edge and removed his boots. When he slipped into the water beside her, fully clothed in his work uniform, the cable floating beside him like an offering, she realized that some friendships don't end. They just get submerged, waiting for someone brave enough to dive down and pull them back into the light.