Citrus and Drowning

Julia stood at the kitchen counter, peeling an orange with mechanical precision. The citrus spray hit her eyes, sharp and stinging, like the truth she'd been avoiding for three months.

'You're going to pretend nothing happened,' Marcus said from the doorway. His voice sounded thinner than it used to.

She didn't turn around. 'I'm making breakfast.'

'The cat's been staring at the same spot on the wall for twenty minutes.' He paused. 'He knows something's wrong. Animals always do.'

The cat — Barnaby, a ragged rescue with one ear — had indeed fixed his amber gaze on the water stain spreading across the plaster. The pipe had been leaking for weeks, a slow seep they'd both ignored, like everything else between them.

Julia finally looked at him. Marcus's eyes were red-rimmed, his shirt wrinkled from another night on the couch. 'I saw you,' she said quietly. 'At her office. Thursday.'

The silence that followed was heavier than the humid air pressing against their third-floor windows. Outside, rain sheeted down the glass, blurring the city into watercolor streaks of gray and gold.

'It wasn't what you think.'

'It never is.' She placed the orange sections on a plate, her hands steady despite the nausea roiling in her gut. 'You can't put toothpaste back in the tube, Marcus.'

'I love you.'

'You love how we used to be.' She met his eyes across the six feet of linoleum that felt like an ocean. 'That's different.'

Barnaby meowed, a sound like something breaking. The water stain had grown another inch during their conversation, dark and inevitable as the end itself.

Julia pushed the plate toward him. 'Eat your breakfast. Then we can talk about who gets the cat.'