The Last Summer

Marco stood at the edge of the empty swimming pool, his reflection fractured across the cracked blue tiles. Three years ago, this place had pulsed with life—late nights, spilled drinks, the kind of laughter that makes your chest ache afterward. Now the pool sat drained, a concrete wound in the backyard of what used to be his best friend's house.

He adjusted the orange construction cone that marked the property line, its color violently bright against the overgrown grass. Sarah had sold the place last month, moved to Portland without saying goodbye. Not really goodbye, anyway. Just a text message: *Can't do this anymore.*

A dog barked somewhere down the street, lonely and insistent. It reminded him of Buster, Sarah's golden retriever who'd destroyed Marco's favorite baseball glove during that last Fourth of July party. She'd promised to replace it. She never did.

The baseball glove itself sat in Marco's apartment closet, chewed leather and frayed laces. He couldn't bring himself to throw it out. Some objects become repositories for things you can't say aloud.

He'd come here thinking he needed closure, whatever that meant. But standing in the overgrown backyard, watching the way the afternoon light caught the dried leaves scattered across the pool's bottom, Marco understood that closure was just something people sold you in self-help books.

Some friendships didn't end with explosions. They just stopped mattering as much as they used to, until one day you realized you hadn't spoken in six months, and that was fine. That was the terrible truth—that you could love someone desperately once, and later, they could become a person you used to know.

The dog barked again. Marco turned away from the pool, toward his car. The orange cone wobbled in a breeze. Some things, you just had to leave behind.