The Last Call

The notification lit up your iPhone at 2:17 AM, that ghostly blue illuminating the ceiling of your apartment like a digital aurora. You should have ignored it. You should have rolled over and pretended this wasn't happening. But you didn't. You reached for the phone with those practiced fingers, muscle memory from three years of checking his messages first thing, last thing, every stolen moment in between.

'I can't do this anymore,' it read. Simple. Clean. Final.

You thought you'd feel more. You'd imagined this moment a hundred times—weeping, screaming, throwing something expensive against a wall. Instead, you just lay there in the dark, your heart beating that same steady rhythm, your lungs filling and emptying like they always had. You'd been a zombie for months anyway, hadn't you? Going through the motions: the coffee in the morning, the Metro ride, the spreadsheet you'd stopped updating in October, the dinners where you both stared at your phones instead of each other. He'd just been the first to acknowledge what you'd both known since the summer. The relationship had died while you were still living in it.

Outside, the city was strangely quiet for a Tuesday. You got up and walked to the window, and that's when you saw the bear.

You did a double take. A black bear, large and impossibly calm, ambling down 42nd Street like he owned the sidewalk, like he was late for a meeting. You watched him pass the bodega on the corner, the row of brownstones, the woman walking her tiny dog who'd frozen in disbelief. The bear didn't seem to care about any of it. He just kept moving, that rhythmic lope, possessed of some destination you couldn't fathom.

Your phone buzzed again—him again, already regretting the message, already trying to walk it back. Already trying to put you back in the zoo.

You watched the bear turn the corner and disappear into the Manhattan night, wild and impossible and utterly free. You typed three words back, then powered off your phone and walked to the kitchen to make coffee. The sun would be up soon.