Everything She Left Behind

The apartment felt different without her—lighter, somehow, as if the oxygen had been diluted. Two weeks after Maya walked out, I was still navigating around the artifacts of our three years together.

I found it tangled in the sheets: a single strand of her hair, long and dark against the white pillowcase. I shouldn't have kept it. I should have stripped the bed immediately, donated the linens to Goodwill, started fresh. Instead I'd been sleeping on her side, pressing my face into the pillow where her scent still lingered—coconut shampoo and something sweeter underneath, something I couldn't name anymore.

My iphone lit up at 2 AM. A message from her, or maybe I was just hoping it would be. It was just a notification from some app I'd forgotten I'd installed. The screen washed the room in pale blue, illuminating the half-empty closet, the drawer she'd cleared out entirely, the nightstand where she used to charge her phone.

The cable was still there, coiled like a sleeping snake. White, braided nylon, the expensive kind she'd insisted on buying because the cheap ones always frayed. I remembered standing in the electronics aisle with her, her thumb brushing mine as she reached for the package, the way she'd looked at me like I was someone who could be counted on to make small, reliable choices.

We'd bought oranges that morning—her favorite, always in season somewhere. The fruit bowl still held two, their skin dimpled and yielding now, soft with neglect. I'd planned to squeeze them for mimosas that weekend she'd talked about visiting friends in the city. We never made it. She went alone.

The message wasn't from her. It was from my sister, checking in, asking if I'd eaten. I typed back something reassuring, a grown man who couldn't remember his last meal. The orange sat heavy in my hand, promising something bright beneath the skin, something I'd have to work to reach.

I ate it standing at the counter, juice running down my wrist, sticky and sweet and somehow insufficient. The apartment waited, patient as a tomb. Somewhere, Maya was probably sleeping in clean sheets, her hair loose, her phone charging on a nightstand that belonged to someone else.

I plugged in my phone, the cable clicking into place, and finally washed her pillowcase.