Green Between Your Teeth

The dinner party was already three hours deep when Elena noticed the spinach. It was wedged between Marcus's front teeth—emerald, stubborn, absurdly visible—as he leaned in to whisper something about the vitamin D supplements his new coworker had recommended. Marcus was forty-five now, suddenly obsessed with longevity, with optimizing everything that had once simply been living.

Elena's iPhone vibrated against her thigh. She knew who it was without looking. David, the junior architect who'd been making eyes at her since the September project launch. Twenty-eight, with that unearned confidence of men who hadn't yet been hollowed out by disappointment. She'd been ignoring his messages for weeks, but lately she'd find herself typing responses at 2 AM, deleting them before send.

"Your hat," Marcus said suddenly, gesturing toward her head. "You still have that ridiculous hat."

It was vintage, velvet, something she'd worn at their wedding fifteen years ago. She only pulled it out on nights she felt particularly unmoored, nights when the apartment seemed too large for two people who'd stopped speaking in anything but logistics and grievances.

"It's not ridiculous," she said, and the sadness that rose up was so familiar it barely registered anymore. "It's me."

Outside, something moved in the neighbor's garden—a fox, amber coat catching the streetlamp. It paused, watching them through the sliding glass door, wild and uninterested in their slow dissolution. Then it was gone, and Marcus was still talking about wellness protocols, about how his startup's CEO swore by ice baths, about how they really should schedule a couples' retreat, something with structured activities.

Elena excused herself to the bathroom and finally opened David's text: *"The way you looked at that meeting today. I can't stop thinking about it."*

She studied herself in the mirror. The spinach was still there. She could tell him, watch his face crumble with that particular embarrassment that was almost tender. Or she could let him wear it all night, let him charm their hosts with green between his teeth, let him be ridiculous and visible and wrong.

She texted back: *"I've been thinking about it too."*

Then she removed her hat, shook out her hair, and returned to the party.