What Remains

The goldfish—Arthur, she'd named him—swam his endless circles in the bowl on the nightstand, three years of blurred orange against the glass. Outside, palm fronds rattled against the sliding door, their shadows cutting across the room where Marco lay, face illuminated by the cold blue glow of his iPhone.

"You're missing it," Elena said, not really expecting him to look up. "The sunset."

"Mhm," he murmured, thumb scrolling upward, the light reflecting in his pupils like twin screens. "Just finishing this email."

Always emails. Always work. Always the same gravitational pull of something more urgent than her, than them, than the fact that she'd packed her bags yesterday and still hadn't told him.

She pressed her palm against the glass of Arthur's bowl. The fish nosed toward her warmth, his mouth opening and closing in silent bubbles that rose and popped at the surface. Sometimes she envied him—the way he could live his whole life in circles and never notice he wasn't going anywhere.

"Marco."

"Yeah?" The iPhone screen dimmed, then brightened again as a notification slid across. He didn't look away.

"I'm leaving."

The scrolling stopped. His thumb hovered. Arthur nosed the glass, his orange scales shimmering in the fading light.

"Like, for dinner?"

"No. Like, for good."

He lowered the phone finally, and in the half-darkness between sunset and artificial light, she saw it: the moment he realized she'd already gone, that the space beside him in bed had been empty for months, that the circles they'd been swimming were just circles.

"Oh," he said. "Oh."

Outside, the palms rattled in the wind. Arthur swam on, opening and closing his mouth in the silence between them, as if trying to say something that wouldn't come out as bubbles.