Sphinx at the Aquarium

You're housesitting for Marcus, three weeks after the breakup, and his cat is judging you.

It's a sphinx cat—hairless, wrinkled, pinkish-gray like something that shouldn't exist outside a medical textbook. It sits on the kitchen counter and watches you with eyes that know too much. You've always hated this cat. Marcus called her "Cleopatra" because he was pretentious like that, but you just called her "the naked one" when he wasn't around.

Now Marcus is in Chicago for a month-long consulting gig and you're the idiot who agreed to watch his apartment, his plants, his pets. You're the one who said "sure, no problem" because part of you hoped this would be different. That you'd come over to feed the cat and change the water and somehow the two of you would finally have that conversation—the one where he explains why he stopped loving you, the one where you explain why you stayed too long.

But Chicago is real and you are here, alone in his apartment at 11 PM on a Tuesday, staring at a goldfish that's probably dying.

The fish lives in a bowl on the windowsill. It was a gift from someone—a coworker, maybe? Marcus has so many coworkers whose names you've forgotten. The fish has a name too but you can't remember it. It just floats there, barely moving, its orange scales dull in the fluorescent light. You tap the glass. Nothing happens.

"Please don't die on my watch," you say to the fish. "I can't bear that conversation."

The word comes out before you can stop it. Bear. You've been trying not to use that word since the night you told him you couldn't bear it anymore—the distance, the emotional unavailability, the way he made you feel like a request instead of a person. He'd looked at you with those weary eyes and said, "No one's asking you to bear anything."

That was when you knew.

The sphinx cat jumps down from the counter and rubs against your leg. It's seeking warmth, because hairless cats are always cold. You pick it up and it feels strange against your chest—all skin and bones, purring like a small engine. You carry it to the couch and sit there, holding this creature that shouldn't be cuddly but somehow is, watching the fish that might already be dead.

You realize you've become a riddle Marcus would never solve: why do you keep showing up? Why do you keep watering his plants and feeding his pets and waiting for something to change?

The cat climbs onto your shoulder and curls there, warm and heavy. Like a burden you choose to carry. Outside, rain begins to fall against the windows, and you think about water—how it shapes everything over time, how it can be gentle or relentless, how it fills whatever space you give it.

You'll stay until the fish dies or Marcus comes back, whichever happens first. You're not proud of this. But you're done pretending you don't know exactly what you're doing.