What We Bear

The last time I saw him, we were twenty-three and drinking cheap wine on a fire escape in Brooklyn. Now Marcus stands across from me in this overpriced coffee shop, looking like someone who's been living life at half-volume for a decade. I almost don't recognize the person who used to be my best friend.

"You look good, Elena," he says, but his eyes slide away from mine.

"You look tired, Marcus."

He laughs, a dry sound. "That's one word for it."

We were never more than friends, though there were nights when the line between us felt porous, charged with all the things we wouldn't say. Then came the accident—his sister, my roommate—and we both learned how much weight a human heart can bear without simply breaking open. I coped by moving cities, changing jobs, drinking less. Marcus became something else entirely.

"I'm getting married," he says now.

The news lands like a stone. "That's—wonderful."

"Is it?" He studies his coffee cup. "I feel like I've been walking around half-dead since Sarah died. Like a zombie going through the motions, you know? Getting the promotion, buying the apartment, proposing to Jessica because she's safe and kind and doesn't ask questions about the parts of me that stopped working."

Outside the window, something red moves in the alley—maybe a fox, quick and bright and gone. I remember the time we saw one in Central Park, how Marcus had grabbed my hand and said, look how alive it is, look how it doesn't give a damn about anything but its own survival.

"Marcus," I say softly. "Sarah wouldn't want you to live your life as a ghost."

"I know. I know." He finally meets my eyes. "But some days I don't know how to be anything else."

"You don't have to do it all at once," I say. "You could start by being honest with Jessica. Or you could start by calling your old friend more often than once every six years."

A small, genuine smile touches his mouth. "I'd like that."

We sit there as the afternoon light moves across the table, two people who once knew everything about each other, beginning again in the wreckage of what we've survived.