The Last Supper on 42nd Street

The goldfish was still alive. Three years after the divorce, and somehow that orange carp — a carnival prize we'd won on our second date — kept swimming in its murky bowl, oblivious to the wreckage of our marriage.

"He's resilient," Marcus said, sprinkling fresh spinach into a pan on the stove. "Unlike us."

I stood in the doorway of our — his — apartment, holding a box of my remaining things: old textbooks, a ceramic rooster his mother hated, the cables to a printer I'd thrown against the wall during our last fight.

"Dinner's almost ready." He wouldn't look at me. "Just like old times."

Old times. The words settled in my chest like stones. We used to be friends before anything else — college buddies who shared cigarettes and secrets, who somehow convinced ourselves that friendship plus sex plus a joint lease equaled forever. We were wrong.

The spinach sizzled. I watched his back, the familiar slope of his shoulders, and felt that terrible ache — not missing him, exactly, but missing who we were when love was still possible.

"I'm seeing someone," I said. It came out jagged.

He turned. "Good."

"Her name's Elena. She's a teacher."

"Great."

"She has a goldfish too."

Marcus's laugh cracked through the apartment, sharp and surprised and then just sad. The cable box blinked — our internet had been cut days ago, another loose end in a series of them.

"We couldn't make it work," he said, dishing spinach onto two plates. "But the fish survives."

I took the plate. We ate standing up, no table between us, just silence and the occasional bubble from the fishbowl. And it wasn't forgiveness, exactly, and it wasn't closure, but it was something — the quiet acknowledgment that some things end so other things can begin.

"Be happy, Maya," he said at the door, my box in his hands. "That's all I ever wanted."

I nodded, unable to speak, and walked toward whatever came next. Behind me, the goldfish swam on.