The Last Goodbye

The coaxial cable lay tangled across Mark's apartment floor like a dead snake, its copper guts exposed where he'd ripped it from the wall. Three months after Sarah left, he was finally disconnecting the cable she'd insisted on—the premium package with every channel, every escape route from silence.

His cat, Pyramid, regarded him with golden eyes from the windowsill. She'd been Sarah's cat originally, a sphinx-like creature who seemed to know secrets about human frailty. Now Pyramid belonged to Mark, though ownership felt like the wrong word for any relationship built on mutual resentment.

The doorbell rang. It was Elena, his oldest friend, the one who'd warned him about Sarah years ago. She stood in the hallway holding a takeout container, smelling of rain and expensive perfume. "I'm moving to Chicago," she said without preamble. "Got offered a curator position at the Art Institute."

Mark felt the bottom drop out of his stomach—not because she was leaving, but because she was telling him like it meant something. They'd been dancing around each other for years, that particular kind of friendship that's really just unresolved desire wrapped in safety.

"That's great," he said, and meant it. "The sphinx exhibit? The one you've been obsessing over?"

She nodded. "They have an actual sphinx there. Well, a fragment. But still."

They ate Chinese food on his floor, surrounded by boxes Sarah had packed but never collected. Pyramid wound between their legs, purring like a small engine. Outside, the city lights blazed through the window, an inverted constellation.

"You know," Elena said, setting down her carton of rice, "Sarah told me once that you never really listened. That you were always somewhere else."

"She wasn't wrong," Mark admitted. "I was somewhere else. I was here, with you. In my head, at least."

The silence stretched between them, filled with everything they'd never said. Pyramid jumped onto Mark's lap, circled three times, and settled in with a sigh.

"Chicago's far," Mark said quietly.

Elena reached across the cable on the floor and took his hand. "Not if you follow."