The Last Cable

The coaxial cable lay coiled on the floor like a dead snake, its copper guts exposed where I'd finally cut through the insulation. Three years of HBO, Netflix, the endless drip-feed of other people's lives — severed in a moment of something I told myself was clarity.

Outside, rain hammered against the windows. My cat, Lazarus, watched from his perch atop the bookshelf, yellow eyes unblinking. He knew what I was doing. He'd been there through the swimming pool of grief I'd dissolved into after Maya left.

The package had arrived that morning. A box, forwarded from our old apartment. Inside: a photograph of us in Cancún, both drunk on cheap tequila and the kind of optimism that only thirty-year-olds still possess. Her hair wet from swimming, pressing against my shoulder, that smile that had convinced me friendship was enough.

It wasn't enough.

I remembered the last time we spoke. Six months ago. She'd called to say she was getting married. I'd made the appropriate sounds, felt the appropriate things. But beneath it, something else was swimming — darker, colder. The realization that I'd been swimming beside her for years while she was already on shore, waving at me from a distance I couldn't measure.

The cable box sat dark on the shelf. I'd unplugged it before cutting the cord.

"Smart," I said aloud. Lazarus twitched his tail.

Friends don't send photographs like reminders. They don't reach out through forwarding addresses and rental offices. They call. They show up. They don't leave you drowning in the shallow end while they've moved to the deep.

I picked up the cable. Weighted it in my hand. Then dropped it in the trash.

Tomorrow I'd call the internet company. Cancel everything. Start swimming in water I could actually see through.

Lazarus jumped down, wound around my legs. The first honest thing to touch me in months.