Midnight Laps

The running was supposed to fix everything. That's what the therapist said, what the articles promised, what Marcus told himself at 2 AM when sleep refused to come. Six months post-divorce, and he'd mastered the art of wearing himself out before the memories could catch up.

The apartment complex pool was always empty at this hour—a glassy rectangle reflecting nothing but the sickly orange glow of streetlights. Marcus approached it on autopilot, his breath forming clouds in the November chill. He'd done this nightly routine since moving into this shithole complex: run until his legs burned, then sit by the pool and stare into the water until something inside him settled.

Tonight, something else waited there.

A cat sat on the edge of the pool, its tail dipped into the water, watching him with eyes that seemed to know things. Not just any cat—a calico with a distinctive patch of orange over its left eye, like a bruise. Sarah's cat. The one she'd taken when she left, along with the furniture and the better half of his dignity.

Marcus froze. How was this possible? Sarah lived three hours away now, in a city where people didn't know his name or his failures.

"Buster?" he whispered, and the cat's ears twitched at the sound.

It padded over to him, winding between his legs, purring like a small engine. Marcus sank onto the concrete edge of the pool, tears suddenly stinging his eyes. It was ridiculous. He was a grown man crying over an ex-wife's cat at some godforsaken hour, but the grief hit him fresh anyway—not just for Sarah, but for the life they'd built, the future they'd planned, the way Buster used to sleep on his head on Sunday mornings while she made coffee.

The cat jumped onto his lap, and Marcus buried his face in its fur, smelling somehow like their old apartment. Lemon cleaner and Sarah's vanilla shampoo. He stayed like that for an hour, until the sky began to lighten and the cold seeped into his bones.

When he finally stood up, Buster didn't follow. The cat simply watched him with those ancient eyes as Marcus turned away, beginning the long run back toward an apartment that still felt temporary, toward a future he still couldn't picture, toward something that might eventually, somehow, resemble a life again.