Expiration Date

The spinach was three weeks expired when she finally threw it out. Maya stood before the open refrigerator at 2 AM, the harsh LED illuminating the wilted green mush that had become a metaphor for her marriage. Beside it, a container of takeout pad thai from what felt like another lifetime.

Her iPhone buzzed against the counter — David, again. The seventh call today. She let it go to voicemail, watching the screen dim to black, her own exhausted reflection staring back.

Barnaby, David's cat, wound around her ankles. The traitor. When David moved out two weeks ago, he'd promised to come back for the cat. Barnaby seemed to have decided he preferred the quiet of Maya's grief to the chaos of David's new bachelor apartment. Or maybe he just remembered who actually opened the cans.

'You're keeping the cat, I assume?' David had asked during their brief, civilized conversation about divvying up their possessions. As if Barnaby were a piece of furniture they could assign like a side table.

'I guess you can have the iPhone plan,' she'd responded, and they'd both laughed, the sound jagged and unfamiliar between them.

Now she scraped the spinach into the trash, the smell making her eyes water. Or maybe that was everything else. She'd forgotten to eat again. Forgot to sleep. Remembered only to breathe, and even that felt optional some days.

Her iPhone lit up with a text: *Can we talk? Please.*

Maya carried Barnaby to the couch, settled into the still-new silence of the apartment. The cat purred against her chest, a rhythmic, unapologetic demand for comfort. She scratched behind his ears, his warmth seeping through her thin shirt.

Tomorrow she would buy fresh spinach. She would eat something green that hadn't turned to slime in the crisper drawer. She would change her Netflix password, though she'd probably give it to him anyway.

But not tonight. Tonight she had a cat who needed her, however inadvertently, and a phone she could choose not to answer. Small, quiet victories. They would have to be enough.