The Weight of Empty Palms

The coaxial cable had been lying on the floor of our apartment for three weeks. Mark kept saying he'd call Comcast, but Mark wasn't here anymore. He wasn't anywhere anymore, except maybe in the way I still organized the dishwasher the way he liked, or how I caught myself checking my phone for texts from a number I'd deleted.

I sat on the balcony of my sister's condo in Miami, sweating through my third shirt of the day. Below me, palm trees swayed in a breeze that smelled like salt and exhaust. I'd fled here after the funeral, unable to walk past his study door one more time without wanting to scream until my throat bled.

"You need to bear this," his mother had told me at the reception, gripping my arm so hard I bruised. She meant the grief, the arrangements, the way everyone looked at me like I was a puzzle piece that no longer fit the picture. But what she really meant was: *You need to bear the fact that everyone knows he was going to leave you.*

I picked at an orange I'd grabbed from the kitchen, its bright cheerfulness obscene against everything else. My sister had filled the house with fruit and flowers and cards that said things like "thinking of you" and "he's in a better place" — as if any place could be better than one where he wasn't secretly planning an exit strategy.

The worst part wasn't the accident itself. It was the aftermath: discovering the emails, the apartment application, the fact that our supposed best friend — his college roommate, the man who'd stood next to us at our wedding — had known the whole time. Had helped him plan it.

I squeezed the orange until juice ran down my wrist, sticky and sharp. Some of it dripped onto the concrete between my sandaled feet. Through the railing's slats, I watched a woman walk two dogs below. One of them — a chocolate lab — stopped to sniff at something in the grass, something dead or dying.

"Bear," I whispered, testing the word. A verb. A noun. An animal that hibernates through winters it knows will end.

My phone buzzed on the table. His name again. The friend who wasn't.

I let it ring until it stopped, then peeled the orange with slow, deliberate fingers, wondering how much of a life you have to tear away before you can finally see what's been underneath all along.