The Goldfish Effect

The funeral reception was in full swing when Elena's iPhone began its insistent buzzing against her thigh. She ignored it, just as she'd been ignoring her mother's texts for three days. In the center of the catering hall's buffet table, a lone goldfish swam in its bowl, its mouth opening and closing in silent repetition, oblivious to the woman whose life it was meant to honor.

"You're doing it again," Julian murmured beside her. He'd always moved like a fox—quiet, predatory graceful, devastatingly handsome in that way that made you forgive the occasional cruelty. "That thing you do where you disappear inside your head."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not." Julian's voice softened. "Neither am I."

They'd been something more than friends once, back when grief was still theoretical and Sarah—whose memorial this was—had been alive to roll her eyes at their tension. Now Sarah was gone at thirty-four, and Elena was thirty-two and feeling every year of it.

The goldfish turned lazily in its bowl, catching the fluorescent lights. Elena had read somewhere that goldfish have three-second memories. The kind that let you keep swimming in circles, mistaking the same plastic castle for new territory each time around. What she wouldn't give for that kind of innocence.

"She left me that fish," Elena said.

"I know."

"She made me promise. In the hospital. Said, 'Take care of Gary, he's had a hard life.' Like a fish has life experiences."

Julian laughed—short, startled, breaking through the thick atmosphere. "That sounds like her."

Her iPhone buzzed again. This time she glanced at it: her mother asking if she'd eaten. Sarah's sister posting a photo of them together, twenty years old and invincible, captioned with some cliché about angels.

"Do you ever think," Elena said, "that we're all just swimming in circles? Mistaking the same plastic castle for—"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't get profound. It doesn't suit you." Julian's hand found hers, squeezed once. "We're not friends, Elena. We haven't been friends in years. We're two people who loved the same woman, and now we're both standing in a room full of people who didn't know her at all."

The goldfish surfaced, blew a tiny bubble. Elena felt something crack open in her chest—not clean, not healing, but necessary. Like a wound properly lanced.

"What are we then?"

"I don't know," Julian said. "But we're here."

Her iPhone illuminated: a new message from Julian, standing right beside her. *I never said goodbye to her either.*

She typed back: *Let's start now.*

Outside, the evening had turned that particular shade of violet that only exists in the space between what was and what will be. Gary the goldfish swam another circle, opening and closing his mouth, maybe saying something important, maybe just breathing. Elena couldn't tell the difference anymore.