Ripe With Waiting

The papaya sat on her desk like a small, unasked-for ovary—yellow-green and perpetually promising ripeness that never came. Elena had brought it three weeks ago, back when they were still sleeping together, back when the office felt like a secret garden instead of a glass-walled tomb where she avoided his eyes across the bullpen.

'You going to eat that?' Marcus asked, leaning against her doorframe. He shouldn't be here. Not after the breakup. Not after she'd cried in the supply closet last Wednesday when 'their song' came over the Spotify playlist.

Elena sliced the papaya open. Black seeds spilled like questions she couldn't formulate. 'It's probably rotten inside.'

He stepped closer, smelling like the same cedar cologne that used to linger on her pillowcases. 'Maybe. Or maybe it just needed more time.'

They'd been friends first, for two years, before the four-month affair that ended because Marcus wanted children and she wanted—well, she wanted to know who she was when she wasn't someone's wife or mother. The sphinx had nothing on the riddles they asked each other in the dark.

'What do you want, Marcus?' The knife slipped. A thin line of red opened on her thumb.

He reached out, then stopped himself. His hand hung there like an unanswered question. 'I saw your mother at the grocery store. She asked when you're coming home.'

The papaya flesh was orange and perfect, sweet and faintly musky. Elena took a bite. 'I am home.'

'You're thirty-five and living like a grad student.' His voice cracked. 'You're still waiting for something.'

She swallowed. The fruit tasted like regret and possibility, two flavors that shouldn't go together but did. 'The sphinx asked riddles. She didn't answer them.'

'Maybe that's why Oedipus killed her.' He stepped back. 'Some riddles need solving, Elena. Before they solve you.'

He left. The papaya was gone in three bites. Elena licked juice from her thumb, where blood had already begun to well, mixing with the sticky sweetness, and finally let herself feel hungry.