What Friends Keep

The iPhone screen lit Marcus's face in blue pulses, his thumb scrolling through something that wasn't there. Sarah watched him across the candlelit table, their dinner cooling between them like the conversation they weren't having.

"You're not here," she said, and his eyes flickered up, guilty as a child caught sneaking candy.

"Work," he lied. She knew he was checking Elena's social media again.

Sarah's hand went to the vintage fedora she'd worn tonight—Marcus's favorite, the one he'd said made her look like a film noir detective. A costume, she thought now. All these years, dressing up for a role he'd written for her: the patient friend, the understanding shoulder, the one who'd wait.

"I started taking vitamins," she said instead. "B-complex. For energy."

Marcus laughed, sharp and surprised. "Since when do you need supplements? You're the healthiest person I know."

"Since I've been tired for three months straight. Since watching you fall in love with someone who isn't me started feeling like work."

The silence that followed was heavy, weighted down by years of unsaid things. Outside, rain streaked the restaurant window like tears they wouldn't cry.

"Sarah..." Marcus reached across the table, but she was already pulling cash from her wallet—exact change, like she'd been planning this exit.

"Don't. Please." She stood, adjusting the hat one last time. "Friendship was supposed to be the safe option. The one that wouldn't break me. But I think it broke me more slowly, that's all."

"You're my best friend," he said, and the tragedy was that he meant it.

Sarah walked out into the rain, iPhone forgotten in her purse. Tomorrow she'd cancel her vitamin subscription—expensive capsules of optimism she didn't need anymore. Tonight she'd just walk until her legs matched the ache in her chest, finally, perfectly alone.