What We Keep

The funeral had drained him, left him hollowed out in that particular way only grief can—sharp at the edges, achingly empty in the center. Marcus found himself at The Thirsty Stallion anyway, staring at his whiskey like it might offer answers he wasn't ready to hear.

"Haven't seen you since the accident."

He looked up. Elena. His oldest friend, the one who'd held him while he cried over his marriage collapsing, who'd helped him bury that dog he'd loved more than some people. She looked older now, lines around her eyes that mirrored his own. Something else there too, something he couldn't read.

"Mom's funeral," he said. "Small turnout. Just me and her sister."

"I'm sorry, Marc." She slid onto the stool beside him. "I would've come."

"I know."

They fell silent, the kind that exists between two people who've seen each other through everything but haven't spoken in years. Outside, rain streaked the window like tears refusing to fall.

"You ever think about that summer?" she asked suddenly. "The one with the pool?"

Marcus huffed a laugh. "What about it?"

"The goldfish. How we swore it was haunted because it kept dying and coming back."

"That was you replacing it, El."

"Was it?" She smiled, sly and conspiratorial. "Maybe I just couldn't bear you being sad about another dead thing. Not after—"

"After the bull," he finished.

The bull. God. They'd been seventeen, drunk on cheap beer and the certainty that they were invincible. Found a bull in a field, decided it needed freedom like something out of a童话. Marcus still had the scar on his thigh where it had gored him, fifteen stitches and a lesson in consequences that never quite took.

"We were such idiots," he said.

"We were alive."

Her hand found his on the bar, fingers lacing through his like they'd never spent seven years apart. Marcus felt something crack open in his chest, something he'd been carefully packaging away since his marriage ended, since his mother got sick, since he started waking up at 3 AM staring at the ceiling.

"I'm leaving," she said quietly. "Job in Seattle. I depart Thursday."

"Oh."

"Unless—" She looked at him then, really looked at him, like she was measuring the weight of all their history against whatever came next. "Unless you think there's something here worth staying for."

Outside, the rain had stopped. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, joyful and insistent. Marcus thought about funerals and fresh starts, about the way goldfish kept swimming even when their bowls turned cloudy, about how he'd spent seven years trying to be okay alone when the person who understood him best had been three barstools away.

He squeezed her hand.

"Don't go."