What We Bear in Common

The last time I saw Mark alive, we were swimming in his neighbor's pool at 2 AM, drunk on expensive whiskey and the kind of confidence that only comes from knowing you're about to fuck everything up.

"You're my oldest friend," he said, floating on his back, staring up at the suburban sky. "That has to count for something."

I treaded water beside him, watching the water distort his face. "It counts. But it doesn't fix what you did."

What he'd done was sell his company to a private equity firm—after telling me, his business partner of fifteen years, that he was keeping it. He'd done it while I was at my mother's funeral. The dog, his golden retriever named Bear, had waited by the door for him that whole week, not understanding why her human was suddenly unreachable.

"Bear the burden," he said, as if reading my mind. "That's what they say, right?"

"You bear it," I corrected. "Or you own it. You don't get to use metaphors about your dog when you've effectively stolen half a million dollars from me."

He laughed, then coughed, then slipped beneath the surface.

For three seconds, I didn't move. I watched the water ripple where he'd been, and I felt something terrible and honest bloom in my chest—the thought that if I just waited, if I just let him stay under, everything would be simpler. The money wouldn't matter anymore. The betrayal would become tragedy instead of treachery. I'd be the grieving friend instead of the screwed one.

I reached down and hauled him up. He spluttered, gasping, and I realized I wasn't saving Mark. I was saving myself from becoming the kind of person who could watch a man drown and call it justice.

"You're an asshole," I said, pulling him toward the edge.

"I know," he said, and there was something like relief in his voice. "But you're still here."

He died three weeks later—car accident, single vehicle, alcohol involved. Bear came to live with me. She sleeps on the foot of my bed now, and sometimes when she dreams, her paws twitch like she's swimming through something she can't quite name. I look at her and think: some burdens you choose. Some choose you. Either way, you bear them.