What We Feed Each Other

Elara stood in her bathroom at 6 AM, examining a single grey hair in the mirror like it was a harbinger of everything she'd failed to become. At forty-three, she'd expected more. Not the house with the wraparound porch—that was childish—but something that felt less like an endless Wednesday. She plucked the hair and watched it disappear into the trash can.

On the kitchen counter, a regimen of vitamins spilled from their amber bottles: D for the darkness she couldn't shake, B-complex for energy she rarely felt, magnesium for sleep that wouldn't come. Her doctor called it preventative care. She called it preparing for a siege.

Then came the scratching at the back door. Bear, her neighbor's elderly golden retriever, had developed a habit of escaping his yard to visit her instead. His real name was something ridiculous—Buster? Barnaby?—but she'd started calling him Bear because he moved with the heavy, deliberate gait of something that had survived too many winters.

"You're back," she said, letting him in. He pressed his warm weight against her leg, and she felt something crack open in her chest.

Her phone buzzed. Marcus. Her oldest friend, her former boss, the man she'd slept with exactly once after his wife left him. That had been two years ago. They'd agreed—explicitly, tearfully—to pretend it never happened.

"Your vitamins," he said by way of greeting. "Did you take them?"

"Why are you thinking about my supplements at seven in the morning?"

"Because I'm thinking about mortality, El. My mother's in the hospital again."

The silence stretched between them, carrying all the things they didn't say. That night, unspoken. The promotion he'd given her instead of a proper goodbye. The way they'd built a fortress out of their friendship because anything else would destroy them.

Bear nudged her hand with his wet nose.

"Come over," she heard herself say. "Bring coffee. We can bear it together."

Later, sitting on her couch with Marcus's shoulder warm against hers, watching Bear twitch in his sleep, she thought about how people became homes for each other. Not perfect—not the stuff of romance novels—but something realer. The kind of thing you couldn't buy in amber bottles.

"You have dog hair on your sweater," Marcus said, his thumb grazing her sleeve.

"I know," she said. And she did. She really did.