Three Second Memory

The goldfish on Marcus's desk had a better life than I did. At least it got to swim in circles without pretending it was going somewhere.

I watched it through the glass of his office door while pretending to review the Q3 projections—documents I'd memorized days ago, back when Marcus still touched my shoulder when he walked past my cubicle. Back when "friend" wasn't a word that tasted like ash in my mouth.

"You're staring again," Jen said from the neighboring desk, not looking up from her spreadsheet. "Fish isn't going to do tricks."

"I'm not staring at the fish."

"No? Could've fooled me. You've been swimming around that man for six months, Elena. Either jump in or get out of the pool."

Jen didn't know about the hotel in Chicago, or the way Marcus whispered my name like it was something he could lose. She didn't know how careful we'd been, how many lunches we'd skipped, how many texts we'd deleted. She didn't know that "friend" was the word Marcus used when his wife called mid-kiss, the way I'd scrambled to compose myself like my dignity depended on it.

The company retreat was at a resort with a pool that glittered like something from a magazine—the kind of place where people like Marcus brought their actual families, not their office friends. His wife was beautiful in that way money made effortless. She laughed at his jokes with genuine warmth. She touched his arm like she had the right.

I spent three days swimming through conversations that felt like holding my breath underwater. Marcus caught my eye across the buffet once, half a second of something that might have been regret, might have been hunger, might have been nothing at all.

"That fish," I told him back in his office, Monday morning, while his door was safely closed and the goldfish watched us with its unblinking eye. "I read somewhere they have three-second memories. Imagine that. Never holding onto anything long enough to let it hurt."

Marcus didn't look at me. He looked at the fish. "They actually remember for months. That's a myth."

"Oh."

"But sometimes I wish it were true." His voice was careful. "Some things. Better if they just... slipped away."

I nodded, because what else was there to do. The fish swam another circle, unaware it was trapped in glass. Unaware it could probably jump out if it wanted to badly enough.

I cleared my desk that afternoon. Marcus's door stayed closed. He didn't say goodbye—friends don't need to, after all. I left my resignation letter under Jen's keyboard with a note that said "find me when you can." She'd understand eventually.

The goldfish was still swimming when I walked past for the last time, making the same endless loop it would make tomorrow and the day after that. Maybe it was trapped. Maybe it was exactly where it was supposed to be. The difference, I supposed, was that the fish would never have to wonder which was worse.