Citrus at the Edge of Everything

Marlena peeled the orange with surgical precision, her fingers stained with juice that caught the morning light. The apartment smelled of citrus and unwashed sheets, of three days spent mourning something that hadn't even had a name yet.

"You need to take your vitamin," David said from the doorway, not coming closer. He held out the small white pill like a peace offering, like maybe vitamins could fix what was broken between them.

She laughed, a dry, scraping sound. "You think a vitamin is going to fix this?"

He didn't answer. Just watched her section the orange, separating each piece with the same careful attention she'd once applied to their future together. The fertility doctor's words still echoed in the small space between them: *Some things just don't take.*

Marlena thought about the water glass on the nightstand, how she'd stared at it for hours last night, watching the surface tremble with each breath she took. How easy it would be to drown in something so shallow.

"My father used to say that if you wanted something badly enough, you had to be willing to charge like a bull," she said, finally looking at him. "Just lower your head and run at whatever stands in your way."

David moved closer then, sank onto the edge of the bed. "And?"

"And I'm tired of charging." She placed a section of orange in his palm. "I'm tired of the bruises."

The juice ran down his wrist, sticky and bright in the quiet room. Outside, the city was waking up, people moving toward lives that made sense, toward futures they could see.

"Maybe," David said softly, his thumb grazing her palm, "we stop charging at windmills. Maybe we just... exist."

Marlena looked at the water glass again, at how the light bent through it, creating rainbows on the duvet. Some things, she realized, didn't need to be conquered. Some things just needed to be witnessed.

She ate the last piece of orange, sweet and sharp against her tongue, and let herself believe that this might be enough. That they might be enough."