What Goldfish Forget

The goldfish - Marcus's goldfish, technically - had been dying for three weeks. Sarah watched it float sideways in the bowl, its orange scales dulling like a forgotten coin at the bottom of a fountain. She hadn't spoken to Marcus since the funeral, since she'd told him she couldn't be his friend anymore, not the way he needed.

"You're overreacting," he'd said, the same words he used when she found him crying in his office that afternoon, when he confessed he'd been in love with her for years. "We're adults. We can handle this."

They couldn't.

Now she stood in his apartment - he'd given her a key for emergencies, and this apparently counted - performing the hospice care he was too broken to manage. The goldfish, improbably named Nietzsche, swam in tightening spirals. Marcus was at his sister's for the weekend, trying to recover from the antidepressants they'd adjusted twice since the funeral.

The funeral had been for Marcus's wife. Sarah had been her friend too.

She dropped a pinch of fish food into the bowl. Nietzsche ignored it.

Her phone buzzed. Marcus. "You went to my place?"

"Nietzsche's dying, Marcus."

"Oh." A long silence. "I keep thinking he's going to just... recover. Like he's been sick forever and one day he'll be fine again."

"That's not how it works."

"I know. I keep buying spinach, you know? For smoothies. Elena used to make them every morning. I buy it and it rots in the crisper drawer, week after week. I can't stop." His voice cracked. "I can't throw it out either."

Sarah looked at the goldfish, now motionless at the bottom of the bowl. "I'll flush him for you."

"No. Leave him there. Maybe he'll be fine when I get back."

"Marcus."

"Please. Just... please."

She left the key on the counter. At home, she found her own package of spinach in the refrigerator, softening at the edges. She'd been buying it weekly for six months, since Elena died. They'd all been eating it together in those months - Elena, Marcus, Sarah, the four of them before everything fell apart.

The goldfish died that night. Sarah never asked Marcus about it. Some things you let people believe in, even when you know better. Even when you know goldfish don't come back. Even when you know friendship doesn't either.