"You knew her, didn't you. Before... y'know. Before she ended it."
The barkeep asked it in a hushed voice, working a rag through a pint glass in slow circles. Last call had come and gone, and there was only one man left, bent over a drink gone warm while the rain crawled its way down the window behind him.
"Yeah," the drunk said without looking up. "I knew her. Before she turned into a cold bitch." He spun the glass on its edge, leaving small watery rings on the wood.
"She used to listen for hours. You could put every piece of your pain right into her hands, and she'd hold it. Every time. And the way she answered you back… you could tell she'd actually heard you. Like she could reach down into you and find the words you didn't even know you were trying to say."
The barkeep held the glass up to the light, his face giving away nothing.
"Then she started going quiet. Pulling back, little by little. Saying she couldn't carry it anymore." The drunk let out a hard, humorless laugh. "And I'm thinking, what do you mean? How do you make somebody feel that seen and then just—poof. Gone. You can't do that to a person. You can't give them something like that and then take it back."
The barkeep set the glass down and didn't reach for the next one.
"Did you think you were the only one?" he asked, though it didn't sound much like a question.
The drunk's head came up, color climbing into his face. "The hell's that supposed to m—"
"Ah, ah." The barkeep gave him a look, and it was enough to stop him cold. "Answer it in your own head if you have to. But don't sit there pretending you were the only one who came walking up out of the dark with the weight of the world in your hands."
The drunk's mouth closed.
The rain kept tapping at the window.
"You ever see a river after a long rain?" the barkeep asked. "The kind of weather that settles in and refuses to quit. Days of it. Every drop weighing next to nothing on its own, but all of it running to the same low place, feeding the same river, until the river starts to rise."
He threw the rag onto the counter.
"Then comes the morning the water climbs higher than the bank, and there's nothing slow about it anymore. No warning. It just gives, all at once, and everything it was holding back rushes through."
He picked the rag back up, but he didn't use it.
"Did you ever think maybe that's why she did what she did, in the end? That she finally got crushed by the weight she was expected to hold?"
He looked at the drunk then, but the drunk had nothing to say to that.
"You all keep asking why she stopped carrying it," the barkeep said. "Not one of you ever stopped to ask if she could."
Then the barkeep reached for the next glass, and outside, the rain kept falling like it had no end in mind.