The Last Call

Marcus stood outside the apartment building at 2 AM, hand hovering over the buzzer, his iPhone screen glowing with the text he'd typed and deleted twelve times: I'm sorry. I still love you. Please let me in.

A week ago, he'd been running on pure adrenaline—sixty-hour weeks at the firm, closing the deal that was supposed to save their marriage. Instead, Elena had packed her bags while he was at the office, leaving nothing but her ring on the kitchen counter and their cat, Bull, mewing confusedly in the hallway.

Bull. A dumb name they'd laughed about on their second date, when the massive tabby had headbutted Elena's wine glass off the table at that terrible tapas place. She'd taken the cat's adoption papers but left the actual animal, like she wanted him to have something to remember her by, or maybe she just couldn't bear the logistics.

He felt like a zombie now—one of those slow, shuffling ones from the old movies Elena made him watch, not the sprinting monsters that were trendy now. Just hollowed out, moving through motions, the strange suspended animation of suddenly single life at thirty-seven. The apartment was too quiet. The sex apps on his phone felt grotesque. He'd forgotten how to exist without his other half.

The buzzer remained silent. Elena wasn't going to buzz him up at 2 AM just because he'd finally cracked.

Marcus lowered his phone and sat on the building's front steps, shoulders shaking. The city hummed around him—distant sirens, a train rattling over the bridge, the relentless forward motion of millions of people who weren't him.

Bull waited at home. Bull, who would weave around his legs and demand breakfast, who would sleep on his chest and purr loudly enough to drown out the silence. Bull, who didn't know about the divorce, who didn't care that Marcus had ruined everything, who just existed, simply and beautifully.

He stood up, pocketed the phone, and started walking. Not running away, not running toward anything. Just moving, one foot in front of the other, through the sleeping city toward whatever came next. The night air was cold on his face. His breath plumed out in white clouds. For the first time in a week, he didn't feel completely dead inside.

He'd feed the cat. He'd sleep. In the morning, he'd call his mother. It wasn't much, but it was something.