Stray

The vitamin bottle sat on her nightstand, a cheerful orange container that mocked her with its promise of wellness. She'd started taking them after Marcus left — as if D3 and B12 could fill the hollow space where a seven-year relationship used to be. Three months in, she still wasn't sure if they were helping, but the ritual of swallowing two capsules with lukewarm coffee gave her something to do at 6 AM besides stare at the empty side of the bed.

That's when she found it: a long, dark hair tangled in the zippers of her favorite leather jacket. She held it up to the morning light, her stomach doing that familiar sick lurch. Not hers. Not Marcus's either — his had been sandy, thinning at the crown. This was thick, black, impossibly foreign.

The cat Marcus had brought home two years ago — a surly Russian Blue named Boris who tolerated only him — wound around her ankles, purring like a broken engine. She'd hated this cat. Had secretly hoped Marcus would take him when he moved out. Instead, Marcus left Boris behind, along with his half of the rent and most of his dignity.

"You're the only one who stayed," she whispered to the cat, something she'd caught herself doing more often lately. Boris blinked his amber eyes and leaped onto the bed, immediately claiming Marcus's spot.

The hair in her fingers wasn't evidence of infidelity. She knew that with sudden, terrifying clarity. It was evidence that Marcus had been gone from their relationship long before he'd physically moved out. He'd been someone else with someone else — maybe months ago, maybe longer. The hair was just a artifact of the life he'd been living separately, pieces of another world trailing into hers.

She dropped the hair into the trash can with the vitamin bottle. Both were lies, really — the supplements promising wholeness they couldn't deliver, the relationship pretending to be something it hadn't been in years.

Boris stretched and began to groom himself, indifferent to her epiphany. She watched him and realized, with a pang that felt almost like hope, that she'd been given something unexpected: a fresh start she hadn't asked for but might actually need. The cat purred louder, and she reached for her phone, her thumb hovering over her sister's number. It was time.