Papaya at the Funeral

The papaya sat among the fruit arrangement like some exotic mistake, bright orange against the solemn grapes and pears. Elena's funeral, and someone—her sister, probably—had insisted on papaya because Elena had loved it, had eaten it every morning of the life she'd lived in Costa Rica, the life Julia had never visited, though they'd promised each other they'd go, they swore, back when they were friends who still told each other the truth.

The truth was, Julia hadn't spoken to Elena in three years.

Outside, lightning fractured the sky—a storm gathering like the tension in Julia's chest. She'd spent years bearing the weight of their fractured friendship, telling herself she was the one who'd been wronged, who'd been betrayed. But the truth, as it so often did, sat somewhere in the messy middle.

Elena had been like a fox: clever, beautiful, impossible to pin down. She'd slip away just when you thought you had her, just when you thought you understood. Their falling-out had been over something stupid—a man, of course, because even in their forties, they were still making the same mistakes. Mark had been Julia's boyfriend, or near enough, until Elena had decided she wanted him instead.

The lightning flashed again, and Julia remembered that night in the bar when she'd seen them together. How Elena had looked at her across Mark's shoulder—something like guilt, something like defiance, something like I can't help who I am.

They hadn't spoken since. And now Elena was dead—car accident on some Costa Rican road, papaya season eternal and Julia still in Seattle, still bearing grudges, still unable to reach for her phone and send the text she'd composed a hundred times in her head.

She approached the fruit arrangement, took a wedge of papaya. It was perfectly ripe, impossibly sweet. Elena would have loved it. Elena would have laughed at how inappropriate it was, how they were all pretending to be sad when half of them were remembering how selfish she'd been, how she'd burned bridges and taken what she wanted and left everyone else to bear the consequences.

But she'd also been the friend who'd held Julia when her mother died, who'd flown across the country at a moment's notice, who'd made Julia laugh until she couldn't breathe during the darkest year of her life. People weren't one thing. They weren't villains or heroes—they were papayas and lightning and foxes, all of it, impossible and contradictory and gone too soon.

The lightning flashed again, illuminating the room. Julia took out her phone, found Elena's number in her contacts, still there after three years of silence. She typed: I miss you. I forgive you. I'm sorry.

And hit send, even though there was no one left to receive it.