The Fox in the Mirror

You called me Fox, didn't you? Cunning, sharp, always three steps ahead. We built that vitamin empire together from nothing— wellness gummies and promise jars stocked on shelves at every Whole Foods from here to Portland. You were the face, all serotonin smiles and testimonial warmth. I was the brain, calculating margins and supply chains like some sort of beautiful arithmetic.

The water rises around my ankles now, cold and indifferent. The Pacific doesn't care about dissolved partnerships or unfilled POs. It just keeps coming, relentless as memory.

That last night in your office, when you showed me the incorporation papers with your signature alone— how had I missed it? The way you stopped calling me Fox. The way you started taking credit during investor meetings. Vitamins for the body, but what about the soul? What supplement cures betrayal?

I should have seen it coming. A fox recognizes a trap. But friendship, real friendship— that's the camouflage that disarms you. You don't carry weapons against someone who's held your hair back when you were sick, who knows your mother's maiden name, who once drove six hours through a blizzard just to sit with you when your father died.

The water's at my waist now. Dark and pulling, full of salt and things that drown. I left everything— the business, our shared apartment, the life we'd architects on blueprints of mutual ambition. What's left to build?

Somewhere behind me, footsteps on sand. I don't turn. A fox knows when to run, and when to stand its ground. The choice was always yours, Elena. You made it when you decided I was expendable. That vitamin business, those wellness promises— we were selling hope in gelatin capsules. But the one thing we couldn't manufacture was loyalty.

The tide doesn't ask why. It only takes.