Papaya Season

The resort brochure promised renewal, but Elena suspected that was marketing for expensive isolation. She sat on the edge of the infinity **pool**, legs submerged in water that felt too perfectly calibrated, watching Thomas at the breakfast table. He was peeling a **papaya** with surgical precision, the juice staining his fingers orange.

Ten years of marriage, and she still couldn't tell if his meticulousness was charming or pathological.

"You're not eating," he said without looking up.

"Not hungry."

"You said you wanted to come here. For us."

"I wanted to want to come here. There's a difference."

Thomas set down his fork. The papaya glistened in the morning light, obscene in its fleshy vibrancy. Behind them, **palm** fronds rustled in a breeze that felt manufactured, like everything else at this place designed to convince strangers they were falling in love.

"My readings were right about us," she said suddenly. "Remember that afternoon in her kitchen? She traced your **palm** and told you you'd marry someone who'd eventually leave you. You laughed."

Thomas's jaw tightened. "That was superstition."

"Was it?"

He stood up, walked to the pool's edge. "You've been waiting for permission to go since we arrived. Just say it."

"I don't know what I want. That's the problem."

"Then stay until you do."

He dove in. The water broke around him, then smoothed again into its artificial calm. Elena watched him surface, slick and hair-plastered, something about his sudden vulnerability making her chest ache.

The papaya sat on his plate, half-eaten. She reached over, took a bite. It was sweet, faintly musky, nothing like she'd expected—not terrible, not wonderful, just complicated. Like them.

She dove in beside him. When they surfaced, gasping, they were both laughing, though at what, exactly, neither could say. The papaya waited, the palms stood witness, and for the first time in years, they weren't waiting for something to end, but for something to begin again.