The Aquarium in the Bedroom

The goldfish died on a Tuesday, which felt appropriate — Tuesdays were always when things between Marcus and I would fray at the edges. We'd bought the fish together six months ago, during that week we called 'friendship' but both knew was something else. An experiment in proximity, we'd said. A test run.

I found him floating sideways in the bowl when I came over with the vitamins — Marcus's doctor had prescribed them for stress, though we both knew his condition wasn't medical. He'd been unraveling since the promotion, since the late nights at the office became his primary relationship, leaving me as the obligation he couldn't quite shake.

'He's gone,' Marcus said from the doorway, not looking at the bowl. He looked thinner than he had three weeks ago, when I'd last seen him. 'Finnegan. I fed him this morning.'

'Three seconds,' I said, setting the bottle on his counter. 'That's what they say about goldfish memory. Maybe he'd already forgotten he was alive.'

Marcus laughed, but it was a hollow sound. 'Is that better or worse than remembering everything?'

The question hung between us, heavy with all the things we'd never said. The friendship had curdled somewhere between the late-night texts that stopped being friendly and the mornings after that we pretended hadn't happened. He'd wanted casual; I'd wanted to pretend I didn't want more. Now the fish was dead and the vitamins sat on his counter like a testament to everything breaking him from the inside out.

'I'm leaving the city,' I said, and it was the first true thing I'd spoken in months. 'New job. Chicago.'

Marcus's face did something complicated — relief and loss and something that might have been love, if we'd been different people. 'You should,' he said. 'This place... it eats you alive if you let it.' He gestured at the bowl, at his life, at everything.

I flushed Finnegan down the toilet. Marcus cried, quietly, while I watched. The vitamins sat on the counter between us, small yellow pills that couldn't fix what was actually broken. Some things, I realized, don't have cures — only endings and new beginnings, and the terrible, hollow space where friendship used to live.