Last Summer at the Palm Court

Marcus found the piece of spinach stuck between his molars three hours too late. It was wedged there like a stubborn secret, a remnant of the lunch he'd barely tasted—just like this whole weekend had been something to endure rather than experience.

He stood by the hotel pool, his drink sweating onto his **palm**, watching Elena laugh with someone else. She'd always had that laugh—free and unburdened, like she'd never been hurt before and never expected to be. They hadn't spoken in eight months, since the night she'd told him she was marrying Daniel, and Marcus had pretended it didn't feel like his chest was collapsing.

"You're **swimming** in it," his therapist had said during their last session. "In the what-if, the almost-was, the could-have-been." She was right. He was treading water in a sea of moments he'd never actually lived.

Elena turned then, and their eyes caught across the chlorinated blue. She smiled—a different smile now, measured and polite. He raised his glass and tried to match her energy, feeling hollowed out by the simple mechanics of being ordinary friends with someone you once loved.

Later, in his room, he stared at the bottle of **vitamin** D supplements on the nightstand. Elena had bought them for him two winters ago, back when she still orchestrated his health like it was her personal project. "You're always tired," she'd said, pressing the bottle into his hand. "It's probably a deficiency."

It wasn't the vitamins, of course. It was the way he'd learned to live at half-capacity, saving pieces of himself for a future that never arrived.

His phone lit up. A text from her: *Tomorrow's my last day here. Coffee?*

Marcus typed and deleted three responses before settling on the truth: *I'd like that.*

Some stories don't end. They just change shape—like learning to breathe underwater, or finding that love can soften into something that sustains you instead of consuming you whole. He'd never stop loving her, not exactly. But he was learning to love the version of himself who could watch her be happy without feeling like he was losing something.

The spinach was gone. His hands had stopped sweating. The **friend** he'd made in the ruins of what they'd almost had would have to be enough.