The Last Goodbye

Maya found the bottle of vitamin D pills on Elena's nightstand, three weeks after the funeral. They were expired by two years. Elena had been obsessed with supplements in those final months—stacking them in precise little towers, convinced each one was a lifeline she'd been too afraid to grasp.

They'd met swimming laps at the university pool, back when Maya was still naive enough to believe friendship could be permanent. Elena moved through water like something underwater-born, elegant and sorrowful, while Maya churned alongside her, desperate for approval.

"Goldfish have three-second memories," Elena had told her once, treading water in the deep end, rain slicking her hair to her skull. "Lucky them. Imagine if every regret dissolved the moment it formed."

Maya should have recognized it as a cry for help. Instead, she'd laughed, surface-level and careless.

The apartment smelled like stale air and unlived life. Maya packed Elena's things into boxes, handling each object like it might shatter. She found the goldfish bowl on the kitchen counter, cloudy and neglected. The fish inside—Elena had named him Sisyphus—swam in endless circles, oblivious to the silence that had swallowed the apartment.

Maya had dropped by the night Elena died. They'd sat on the couch, watched some terrible reality show, eaten takeout that had gone cold. Elena had seemed fine. Better than fine—she'd been sharp, funny, present. They'd made plans to go swimming the following week.

She should have stayed longer. She should have asked the right questions. She should have noticed the vitamin bottle, untouched, on the counter.

Maya dropped the pills into the trash box. Sisyphus swam another lap. Outside, the city carried on, indifferent to the vacancy left behind, to the way some friendships don't end—they just stop swimming forward, suspended in the amber memory of who you used to be together.