Custody of the Goldfish

The goldfish bowl sat between them like a glass courthouse, its solitary inhabitant swimming lazy figure-eights, oblivious to the arbitration happening on the kitchen counter.

"He was my Valentine's present," Marcus said, not meeting her eyes. "Besides, you forget to feed him."

Elena crossed her arms, leaning against the refrigerator where a magnet still held the baseball tickets from last summer—that night they'd sat in the rain, him checking his phone every fifteen minutes, her pretending not to notice. "I was the one who named him. I was the one who cleaned his bowl when you were 'too busy' with your startup pitches."

"I'm taking the fish, Elena. Let's not make this harder than it needs to be."

She felt something crack open in her chest—not clean, like a broken bone, but messy and jagged. It wasn't really about the fish. It was about how Marcus had already mentally moved out three months ago, how he'd stopped asking about her day, how sex had become another item on his to-do list.

"Fine," she said, and watched him pack the bowl into newspaper like something fragile. "Take him. But Buster stays with me."

Marcus's golden retriever raised his head from where he'd been sleeping near the sliding door. Buster had been her dog first, back when she and Marcus were just colleagues sharing cubicles and complaining about their boss. That was before the promotion that changed everything, before the late nights and the condo and the slow erosion of whatever they'd had.

"We discussed this," Marcus said, his jaw tight. "He sleeps on my side of the bed. He's my dog now."

"He knows who actually walks him."

They stood there in the kitchen that still smelled faintly of the orange she'd peeled two days ago, its zest clinging to the air like a ghost of happiness. The fruit itself sat in a bowl on the counter, its skin already beginning to dimple, going soft and forgotten—much like everything else between them.

"Just go," she said.

Later, she'd find the baseball tickets in the trash can where he'd thrown them, like their marriage was something that could be discarded with the coffee grounds. She'd call her sister crying. She'd eat the orange even though it was going bad, standing over the sink in the empty apartment, letting the juice run down her chin, thinking about how she used to believe in forever.

But for now, she just watched Marcus carry the goldfish out the door, the dog trotting happily beside him, neither of them looking back.