The Mathematics of Loss

The cat—a scrawny, tobacco-colored thing with one ear perpetually folded—paced along the edge of the infinity pool. It had been watching them for three days. David thought it was judging them. Elena thought it was waiting for one of them to crack first, so it could feast on the emotional wreckage.

"You know what this is?" Elena said, gesturing with her martini glass at the resort spreading below them, the guests like ants arranged in some invisible social pyramid. "This is where we come to pretend we're not dying inside."

David speared a piece of spinach from his salad. It tasted like regret and expensive chlorophyll. They'd come to Cabo for their tenth anniversary, same as every year, but this time the air between them was so thin he could barely breathe.

"I signed the papers," he said.

The cat sat. Ears perked.

"When?"

"Yesterday. While you were at the spa."

Elena's laugh was sharp enough to cut glass. "So that's it then. Ten years, dissolved in a lawyer's office while I was getting wrapped in seaweed and told I need to hydrate more."

"I didn't want to ruin the trip."

"You didn't want to ruin the trip." She stood, her shadow stretching across the water. "David, you ruined the trip three years ago when you stopped looking at me like I was the only person in the room. You ruined it when your job became your mistress and your soul became a—I don't know—a hollowed-out pyramid scheme where you kept investing more but getting nothing back."

The cat yawned, unimpressed with their tragedy.

"It's not like that," he said, but it was exactly like that, and they both knew it. The spinach in his mouth had turned to ash.

"What are you going to tell people?" she asked. "That we grew apart? That we wanted different things? That we're both just so busy chasing success up whatever pyramid we've chosen to climb that we forgot how to be human?"

"I'll tell them the truth," he said. "That I loved you, but not enough."

She nodded once, sharply. "Well. That's something, I suppose."

Elena walked back to their room. The cat watched her go, then looked at David, and somehow—impossibly—winked before disappearing into the garden. David finished his spinach and ordered another martini. The pool reflected a sunset that made everything bleed together, all the colors of their beautiful, catastrophic failure.