Citrus & Ash

The orange sat on Mara's desk like a small, bright accusation. Three weeks since David walked out, and she still hadn't touched the fruit bowl he'd carefully arranged before leaving for what he called a 'business trip'—a polite fiction they both maintained, like the water glass she still set for him at dinner, though the water had long evaporated.

She found his hat in the coat closet that morning, a grey fedora smelling faintly of cigarettes and the woman's perfume he'd tried so desperately to wash away. The revelation had come not through lipstick stains or late-night texts, but through the cat—a ragged tom she'd named Jezebel, who began bringing dead mice to their doorstep only after David started coming home smelling of another apartment.

The affair wasn't the worst part. It was the casual cruelty of his departure, the way he'd dismantled their twelve years together with the efficiency of someone decluttering a spare room. Now Jezebel sat on the windowsill, watching Mara with golden eyes that seemed to understand everything.

Mara peeled the orange, its citrus spray stinging her eyes—or maybe she was already crying. She realized she'd been holding her breath for weeks, waiting for him to return, for some explanation that would make sense of the abandonment. But the real truth was simpler: he'd wanted someone else, and that was all.

The cat jumped to the floor, wound around her ankles. Mara ate the orange section by section, letting the juice run down her chin, not bothering with napkins. Somewhere outside, rain began to fall on the city, water washing away the footprints he'd left when he walked away from everything they'd built.

Tomorrow she'd box up the hat. Tomorrow she'd stop setting that second water glass. Tonight, she'd feed Jezebel and sleep in the middle of the bed, letting herself finally, finally breathe.