Three Seconds

Mara sat at the edge of the resort pool, papaya juice staining her fingers sticky-sweet, while David paced back and forth behind her, his iphone pressed to his ear like a lifeline. The conversation had been going on for twenty minutes — "work," he'd said, but Mara knew that particular cadence of his voice, the way he lowered it an octave when he was speaking to someone he needed to impress, or hide things from.

She watched a single goldfish swimming in the pool's shallow end, orange flash against turquoise tiles, completing the same loop again and again. They say goldfish have three-second memories. Maybe that was a gift — to keep circling the same waters and find them new each time.

A long dark hair floated past her in the water. Mara had cropped hers short last month. David had made a comment about it that she'd chosen to ignore then, something about how he'd always loved it long, how it used to tumble over her shoulders when she laughed.

"I have to go," David said abruptly, ending the call. He sat beside her, not touching her. "Emergency at the office. They need me to come in."

On a Sunday. Their tenth anniversary trip. The papaya flesh on her plate had turned brown and soft at the edges, perfect now when it was too late.

"Who were you talking to?" Mara asked, though she already knew. You always know.

David's iphone sat face-up between them. A notification lit the screen: a heart emoji from someone named R.

"Nobody," he said. "Just work."

She looked at the goldfish making its endless circuit, thought about memory and forgetting, about whether three seconds might be long enough to learn to love someone else, or just long enough not to notice when they've already stopped loving you.

"I'll pack," she said.

The papaya was still sweet on her tongue. Some things rot before you have a chance to finish them. Some things never needed to be sweet at all.