The Absence of Touch

The vitamin sat on her tongue, bitter and chalky — another attempt to fix something that might not be broken. Sarah watched her old friend from across the cafe table, really watched him, and realized she couldn't remember the last time they'd touched. Not a hug, not a hand on the shoulder, nothing.

"You're not listening," Marco said, palm pressed against his phone screen, scrolling through something infinitely more important than her confession about the affair. "I told you, she understands. It's different now."

Different. Everything was different. Their friendship had become a series of text messages forwarded at 2 AM, memes instead of vulnerability, reactions measured in digital hearts.

"Marco." She reached across the table, covered his hand with hers. His skin was cold. "I'm scared. I think I'm dying."

He laughed,以为是 joke. His iPhone buzzed against the table — his wife, probably, or maybe another woman who understood.

"We're all dying," he said, eyes flicking back to the screen. "That's why I take those vitamins too. Health optimization, right?"

Sarah pulled her hand back. The distance between them felt geographical, not physical. She remembered college, how he'd held her hair back while she vomited tequila, the way he'd cried when his mother died, how he'd once told her she was the only person who truly saw him. Now he couldn't see her at all.

"I have cancer," she said.

Marco's thumb froze over his glass. He looked up, really looked, and for a second she saw the friend she'd loved for twenty years. Then his phone chimed.

"Fuck," he whispered. "I have to take this."

Sarah watched him walk away, already apologizing to someone else, and swallowed the bitterness of a vitamin that wouldn't save her, of a friendship that already had.