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The goldfish had outlived them all. Marcus stared into the bowl on the counter, watching the orange comet drift through its murky kingdom, oblivious to the fact that it had been three weeks since Elena left. She'd bought the fish on a whim, during that month they tried to be the kind of couple who kept pets and took vitamins and remembered to water plants. The plants were dead now. The fish, inexplicably, thrived.

Marcus peeled an orange, the spray of citrus sharp in the silent kitchen. He'd always hated oranges — too much work for too little reward — but Elena loved them. Had loved them. Everything was past tense now. He sectioned the fruit and ate it standing up, juice dripping onto his shirt, another small failure in a wardrobe of small failures.

On the counter beside the fishbowl sat the vitamin organizer she'd bought him. A seven-day regime of pills and capsules he'd never taken consistently, even when she was there to remind him. He picked it up, Monday through Sunday compartmentalized in plastic pastels. Wednesday was empty. He'd taken one that morning, trying to convince himself that self-care could be automated, that he could dose his way back to being whole.

The goldfish surfaced, its mouth opening and closing in tiny gasps.

"You're probably lonely," Marcus said. "Fish need friends. That's what they say."

He'd looked it up once: goldfish had memories longer than three seconds, despite the myth. They could recognize faces, learn tricks, experience boredom. This fish had watched Elena pack her boxes. Had watched him cry on the kitchen floor that first night. Was watching him now, in his underwear, eating oranges and considering vitamins he didn't believe in.

"Maybe I'll get you a companion," he said. "Or maybe you like it quiet. Maybe that's the dream — just swimming around, no one asking what you're thinking, no one disappointed you're not something else."

The fish disappeared behind its plastic castle.

Marcus finished the orange, licked the juice from his thumb, and dropped the peel into the trash. Another day he'd take down the fishbowl, find the fish a better home. Another day he'd throw out the vitamins. Another day he'd stop buying oranges just because she'd liked them.

But not today. Today he fed the fish, double-checking the flakes, and watched it eat, and felt something almost like company in the quiet kitchen, almost like enough.