Digital Decay in the Produce Aisle

Maya was running on fumes and three hours of sleep when she turned the corner and saw him—Thomas, her ex-husband, standing by the tropical fruits, looking devastatingly familiar in that gray sweater she'd bought him three birthdays ago.

Her iphone buzzed in her pocket, a work email she'd ignore until Monday, but she didn't reach for it. Instead, she grabbed a papaya, holding it like a shield, letting the weirdly alien fruit anchor her to this moment.

"You look tired," Thomas said, and God, the way he still noticed everything—the spinach stuck between her teeth from lunch, the way she twisted her hair when she was nervous. The way she was running herself into the ground at that new startup, chasing validation like a fox chases rabbits: endless, futile, hungry.

"I'm fine," she said. "Just... living that post-divorce glow, you know?"

He laughed, but it was gentle, not mean. "I still have your plant. The succulent? It's not dead, if you were wondering."

"I wasn't."

"You were. You're wondering about a lot of things."

And wasn't that the fucking tragedy of it? That he still knew her better than the woman she'd been dating for six months, better than her coworkers who saw her more hours than she saw herself. Her phone buzzed again—probably her girlfriend, asking where she was, and suddenly Maya felt like she was sprinting toward something she couldn't name, running from something she couldn't admit.

"I miss you sometimes," Thomas said, so quiet she almost missed it. "Not the marriage. Just... you."

The papaya felt heavy in her hand, absurd and ridiculous. This whole moment was ridiculous. They were two people who'd failed each other in a dozen different ways, standing in a grocery store at 8 PM on a Tuesday, pretending they could still be honest.

"I miss me too," she said.

Later, she'd sit in her car and eat the papaya with a spoon, juice running down her wrist, sticky and sweet and terrible. She'd text her girlfriend back, delete Thomas's contact for the third time, and wonder why the only person who really saw her was the one she couldn't keep.

But for now, she just nodded. "Take care of yourself, Thomas."

"You too, Maya."

She walked away, iphone buzzing against her hip, running toward nothing and everything at once.