What We Delete

The bar's bathroom mirror showed her what she'd become: eyes like a startled cat, pupils blown wide from three gin and tonics. Her phone lay on the counter — that sleek, black mirror that had captured everything: his texts, his photos, the evidence of six months unraveling.

She'd always been the fox in their relationship, clever and adaptable, navigating his moods like a hunted creature through underbrush. He was the bear — hibernating through emotions, waking only to roar and destroy, then lumbering back to sleep as if nothing had broken.

"You're overthinking," he'd say, when she'd try to discuss why he disappeared for days. "It's just how I am."

The iphone buzzed. Another text from him: "Can we talk?"

Her thumb hovered over the screen. Outside, the bar noise swelled — laughter, clinking glasses, the soundtrack of people who weren't dissecting their failed relationships in bathroom mirrors. She thought about the photos she hadn't deleted yet: him asleep on her couch, the two of them at the beach, his hands on her waist. Each one a small death.

The door opened. A woman entered, glanced at her, then at the phone. "Ex?"

She nodded.

"Delete him," the woman said, adjusting her lipstick. "Works every time."

"It's not that simple."

"It is." The woman's smile was sharp. "You're the fox, right? Figure it out."

She looked back at her phone. The bear would eventually wake again, hungry and demanding. The fox would run, or adapt, or die. But the cat — that part of her that just wanted to curl up somewhere warm and pretend none of this hurt — that part was tired of running.

She deleted the text. Then the photos. Then his number.

The screen went dark. For the first time in six months, something in her reflection smiled.

"You okay?" the woman asked.

"I'm getting there," she said. And it wasn't a lie.