Green Leaves and Blue Water

The spinach stuck between Julian's teeth had been there for three courses. Elena watched it with a fixation that frightened her—a small green wedge of domestic discord, stubborn as their marriage itself. She'd considered telling him, but the words had lodged in her throat alongside everything else she'd stopped saying two years ago.

They were at the Caribbean resort his company had insisted on for the team-building retreat. Mandatory fun. Julian's palm rested on the white tablecloth, his fingers loose and relaxed, while hers gripped her wine glass until her knuckles ached. He was laughing at something his boss had said—some anecdote about quarterly projections that demanded genuine amusement, not just the polite variety.

"You okay?" he'd asked twice already, each time with that tentative concern that felt more like obligation than intimacy. Each time she'd nodded, smiled, lied.

"I'm going for a walk," she said.

"Elena, the keynote starts in twenty minutes."

"I know."

She left him there with his spinach and his laughter and his boss who kept everyone's promotion prospects in a spreadsheet that wasn't shared with the promoted.

The pool was empty at this hour—midday, everyone theoretically working or pretending to. She slipped off her sandals and let her feet dangle in the water. The temperature was shocking, perfect, electric. She thought about how Julian had proposed in a pool, ten years ago, underwater like an idiot, his words bubbles she had to read on his lips. She'd laughed so hard she'd swallowed water. She'd said yes through coughing.

A palm tree cast a slatted shadow across her legs. Its fronds were brown at the edges, dying slowly from the outside in.

She remembered the word she'd been looking for during the fight they hadn't had yet. The one that might explain why she'd stopped wanting to touch him, why his kindness felt like suffocation, why the sight of him sleeping made her want to scream. It wasn't a word like resentment or boredom. It was smaller than that, more specific.

Then she remembered: the spinach.

She could tell him about the spinach. That was something. That was a place to start.

Elena stood up, water dripping from her ankles, and walked back toward the banquet hall where her husband was probably still laughing at things that weren't funny, green as a leaf in his teeth, waiting for someone to tell him the truth.