The Line Goes Dead

Rain streaked the window like dead veins, and somewhere behind the TV, the cable connection had died again. Sarah sat on the floor with her back against the sofa, watching her iPhone screen pulse with a message she couldn't bring herself to answer.

are you okay?

From Maya. Her oldest friend. The one person Sarah had told about the abortion three weeks ago, back when she still thought words could fix things.

"No," she whispered, and the word dissolved into the room's silence. Her cat, Bast, wound through her legs, purring like a small engine of forgiveness. Sarah had found her as a stray, ribs showing, too trusting for her own good. Some creatures never learned.

She stood up, joints popping, and walked to the kitchen. The sink was dripping. She'd been meaning to call the landlord for weeks, along with everything else she'd been meaning to do. Standing at the counter, she watched water spiral down the drain in perfect, hypnotic loops.

Her phone lit up again. Another notification. She didn't look.

The apartment felt cavernous without Mark's things. The way he'd always left his shoes by the door, turned outward like he might need to leave quickly. The way he'd hummed while making coffee. The way he'd stopped looking at her somewhere around year five, replaced by a performance of intimacy that fooled no one, least of all her.

She should have ended it sooner. That was the thought that kept her up at 3 AM, staring at the ceiling while Bast kneaded her stomach with sharp, persistent claws.

Sarah returned to the living room and sat on the floor again. She picked up her phone, scrolled through photos of them from last New Year's Eve—both smiling, both pretending. Her thumb hovered over delete.

Instead, she typed back to Maya: Not really. But I will be.

The cable box flickered suddenly, and the TV blared to life—some sitcom with a laugh track that felt cruel in the empty room. She found the remote and turned it off. The silence returned, heavier now.

Bast jumped into her lap, and Sarah buried her face in soft gray fur, breathing in the smell of dust and devotion. The rain kept falling against the window. Somewhere deep in the building's walls, the cable connection still hummed with electricity, carrying lives that weren't hers. She stayed like that for a long time, letting herself feel it all—the grief, the relief, the terrible quiet of finally being alone.