The Absence We Carry

The cat - a stray that had shown up three weeks after Sarah left - watched me from the windowsill as I paced the apartment with my morning orange, its acidic scent cutting through the stale air of regrets. My running shoes sat by the door, mocking me. I hadn't used them since the night everything changed.

"You need to take care of yourself," Maria had said over drinks yesterday, sliding a bottle of vitamin D across the table. "Winter's coming. You're pale as hell."

I'd laughed, because what do you say when your best friend tries to fix you with supplements? But I'd taken them home anyway.

Now, cracking the orange peel, I remembered how Sarah used to steal segments from my fruit bowl, never asking, always taking. That had been charming once. The way she moved through my life like she belonged there, never questioning her right to space, to food, to me.

"I think we want different things," she'd said, packed bag by the door. "You're always running toward something, and I'm still figuring out what I even want."

The cat meowed, demanding breakfast. I fed it, watching through the window as the morning light hit the wet pavement. Somewhere out there, Sarah was waking up in her new apartment with someone who perhaps didn't overthink everything, who didn't analyze friendship like a pathology.

I put on my running shoes. The vitamins sat on the counter, their promises of health and vitality seeming suddenly ridiculous. Some things can't be supplemented back.

Outside, the cold air burned my lungs. I ran past our old coffee shop, past the park where we'd argued about commitment, moving faster than I had in months. The orange taste still lingered in my mouth - bright, sharp, uncomplicated.

By the time I returned, the cat was asleep in a patch of sunlight on the couch. I sat beside it, breathing hard, sweat cooling on my skin. Some absences you learn to live with. Some, you just learn to run through.