What We Leave Behind

Margot stood in the doorway of what had been their apartment for seven years, watching Marcus pack. His baseball card collection — the one he'd defended during their worst fights — was already boxed up. She should have felt something more than this hollow exhaustion.

"You've got some..." Marcus gestured at his own smile.

She ran her tongue over her teeth. Spinach. From the lunch she'd barely touched, the one where she'd finally said it couldn't continue like this. How perfectly pathetic — ending a decade with green flecks in her teeth, invisible until someone pointed them out.

"Thanks," she said, though she didn't move toward the mirror.

The cat, Luna, wound around Marcus's legs one last time, as if she sensed his departure and wanted to mark him with her hair before he escaped. White cat hair clung to his dark sweater — a reminder that would shed in his car, his new apartment, his new life without her.

"I'll come back for her," Marcus said, not meeting her eyes. "Once I'm settled."

They both knew he wouldn't. Luna had been Margot's compromise, Marcus's concession during that first year when they'd both still believed love meant taking turns.

"Take her now," Margot heard herself say. "Please."

He paused, hand halfway to the cable management system he'd installed behind the TV — all those velcro ties and color-coded labels, organized systems he'd applied to everything except their relationship.

"You love her, Margot."

"I loved you too."

The silence that followed stretched thin, like something about to snap. Something already had.

She remembered watching Sunday baseball games with his father, that terrible summer after his mother died, when baseball statistics had been the only language his father could speak. Marcus had held her hand then, his palm sweating against hers, both of them terrified of becoming versions of their parents. Now he was moving in with someone who didn't like sports, who found his systems charming instead of suffocating.

"The cable company," Marcus said suddenly. "The account's in your name. You'll need to..."

"I'll cancel it."

"Right. Okay."

He picked up the last box. Luna watched him go, then jumped onto the windowsill, tail twitching. Outside, the city moved forward — couples fighting, couples making up, couples becoming neither.

Margot ran her tongue over her teeth again. Still spinach. She'd probably find it tomorrow morning, in the mirror, after another night of sleeping in the bed they'd chosen together, surrounded by cat hair and cable wires and all the other evidence of what they'd tried to build.

Maybe then she'd finally cry.