Produce Aisle Exit Strategy

The fluorescent lights hummed above Maya as she stood paralyzed in the produce aisle, clutching a papaya like it might somehow anchor her to the life she was about to leave. Tomorrow, the movers would come. Tomorrow, she'd be thirty-five and single again, starting over in a studio apartment with boxes she hadn't bothered to label.

"Did you buy the spinach?" David had texted two hours ago, as if they were still playing their Tuesday night dinner roles. As if she hadn't found his rental agreement signed and dated three weeks before he'd bothered to tell her.

She dropped the papaya into her cart. It rolled against the organic spinach—a bag of wilted greens David would forget to eat, just like he'd forgotten to mention he'd been secretly planning their dissolution for months.

Her phone buzzed again. "Also, we need to talk about the goldfish."

Maya closed her eyes. She remembered the night they'd bought that fish, drunk on expensive wine and the possibility that they might be those people—the ones who could sustain something small together. They'd named it Mercury because it darted around the bowl like an idea they couldn't quite catch. Now it swam alone in their apartment, oblivious that its entire world was about to be divided between two cardboard boxes.

She left the spinach in the cart. Let him buy his own damn greens.

At home, David was sitting on the couch they'd picked out together, surrounded by half-packed boxes. The goldfish bowl sat on the coffee table between them, catching what remained of the daylight.

"You got papaya," he said, sounding pleased. Like this was still a thing they did—commented on each other's grocery runs like they meant something.

"I like papaya."

"Since when?"

"Since I realized I never got to eat what I wanted. Only what we both liked." The words came out harder than she intended, sharp as broken glass.

David flinched. Mercury swam to the front of the bowl, opened its mouth, then retreated to the plastic castle.

"I can take the fish," Maya offered, though she didn't want it. Didn't want anything that reminded her of their failed experiment in domesticity.

"You hate fish."

"I hate living alone more."

The water in the bowl rippled. She thought about all the things they'd never said, all the ways they'd drifted apart like continents—slowly, inexorably, until there was an ocean between them where there used to be a bed.

"Keep it," she said. "Maybe get another one. They're supposed to do better in pairs."

She walked to the bedroom and closed the door, leaving David and Mercury to figure out who got custody of the life they'd built together. In the kitchen, the papaya sat on the counter, already softening, already forgetting what it was supposed to be.