Papaya Season

Maria cuts into the papaya with surgical precision. The knife makes a wet, sucking sound as it parts the flesh, revealing black seeds like tiny eyes staring back.

"You're not eating," David says from the balcony. His hair — once thick, now thinned by stress and the Caribbean sun — catches the light. He's smoking again. She can see the pack in his pocket, the way his fingers tap against his thigh. Nervous energy. Regret. She knows both intimately.

"Not hungry." She scoops the seeds into the compost bin. They'll grow nothing here. Everything in this godforsaken retreat is curated, controlled, sterilized of possibility.

The resort's infinity pool stretches below them, a perfect blue rectangle cut into the jungle. Tonight, after the fertility workshop ends, they'll go swimming together. Dr. Evans says it helps. "Relax," she'd said, "release the tension." As if their bodies were simply knots that could be untied by warm water and tropical air.

As if three years of trying could be washed away.

David stubs out his cigarette, palms pressing against the railing. His wedding ring glints. She thinks about the night he bought it — both young, the future stretching before them like an unwritten page. Now that future has narrowed to a single obsession.

"My sister called," he says, not turning around. "She's pregnant again."

The words hang between them, heavier than the humid air. Maria's knife stills. The papaya half sits exposed, vulnerable.

"Congratulations," she says, and means it. Mostly.

"She asked if we'd made any progress."

"Progress." The word tastes like ash. They've been poked and prodded, injected and monitored, their intimacy reduced to temperature charts and ovulation strips. Love distilled to biology.

She joins him at the railing. Beyond the palm fronds, the sun is setting, bleeding into the ocean in streaks of orange and gold. It would be beautiful if she could feel anything beyond exhaustion.

"Maybe we should stop," David says finally. "Maybe this isn't... maybe we're done."

His voice cracks. For the first time in months, they're not talking about treatment protocols or insurance claims. They're talking about them.

Maria takes his hand. His palm is rough, calloused from work, warm against hers. She remembers why she married this man — not for what they could make together, but for who he was.

"Let's go swimming," she says. "Just us. No doctors. No charts. Just us."

For a moment, David looks surprised. Then he squeezes her hand, and something like hope — real hope, not the desperate kind that comes in vials and syringes — flickers between them.

"Just us," he agrees.

The papaya sits forgotten on the counter, its flesh exposed to the air, slowly turning sweet in the darkness.