The Last Summer

She lay by the pool at the rental villa, the one they'd booked eight months ago when everything still felt possible. The water glittered, an impossible blue that mocked the gray settling into her life.

Her iphone buzzed against the chaise lounge—Marcus again. She didn't pick up. She'd been running from this conversation for weeks, dodging his calls with the practiced cowardice of someone who knows the end is coming but lacks the courage to meet it headfirst.

Inside the villa, on the kitchen counter in a bowl that was too small, a goldfish swam in endless circles. Marcus had won it at a carnival three years ago, on their first date. "We'll give it a proper name," he'd said, drunk on cotton candy and new love. They never did. They just called it Fish, which struck her now as profoundly stupid—the kind of lazy shorthand that passes for intimacy when you're too busy to actually see each other.

She hadn't fed it this morning. Or yesterday. It was probably fine. Goldfish were resilient, or so people said. But then, people said a lot of things about resilience that turned out to be optimistic lies.

Her phone lit up with a text: *I know you're seeing this. We need to talk about the apartment.*

The reality was, there was nothing left to talk about. They'd been having the same argument in different keys for months. He wanted children. She wasn't sure she wanted anything at all anymore. The gap between them had widened so gradually she'd barely noticed until she woke up one morning unable to remember the last time she'd felt anything resembling warmth.

She stood up and walked inside. The goldfish floated at the top of the bowl, not moving.

"Oh," she said aloud to the empty kitchen. Just that. A single syllable of recognition, of all the small deaths that accumulate before the final one.

Her phone vibrated again. This time she picked up.

"I'm coming home," she told him. "We can figure out the apartment."

She flushed the fish down the toilet. It seemed kinder than leaving it to suffocate in its own accumulation of unspoken things.