Salt in the Wound

Maria stood on the balcony of room 412, peeling an orange with mechanical precision. The juice stung the small cut on her thumb—a paper cut from the divorce papers she'd signed that morning. Below, the **palm** fronds caught the last light of day, their silhouette like hundreds of beckoning fingers against the sky.

"You're doing it again," David said from behind her. "Retreating."

She turned, orange sections falling onto the white tile like abandoned promises. "I'm not retreating. I'm processing. There's a difference."

"Is there?" He gestured at the **cable** snaking across the floor—her laptop charger, his phone charger, tangled together like their lives. "We're still connected to the same sources, Maria. Same job, same friends, same apartment. Just different rooms now."

The **orange** scent hung between them, sickeningly sweet. This was their anniversary trip, or what would have been. Fourteen years. She'd booked this Miami Beach resort thinking the sun and **palm** trees would melt the ice forming between them. Instead, they'd spent three days in silence, interrupted only by work calls and the relentless hum of the air conditioner.

"I fell in love with someone else," she said, the words finally light. "Not physically. But emotionally, completely."

David's face cracked. Something ancient shifted behind his eyes—grief, recognition, resignation. "And was it worth it?"

"That's not the question." She picked up an orange segment, studied it like a rare jewel. "The question is whether we stay married out of habit or choose to be honest about how we've changed."

He stepped onto the balcony, close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath. "I thought we were building something permanent."

"We were." She took his hand, placed the orange in his **palm**, closed his fingers around it. "But buildings settle. Foundations shift. Sometimes you have to decide whether to renovate or demolish."

The **cable** to his phone buzzed on the floor. Work. Always work. The thing that had brought them together in that Chicago law firm, the thing that had slowly consumed them both.

"Eat it," she said softly. "While it's still sweet."

David brought the orange to his mouth, juice dripping onto his wrist. Below them, the Atlantic rolled in, indifferent. The **palm** trees whispered in the wind, ancient witnesses to endings that were also beginnings.

He swallowed. "I don't know how to be alone again."

Maria touched his face, her thumb sticky with citrus. "You won't be alone. You'll just be... yourself again. Remember him?"

The sun dropped below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of bruised fruit and blood. Somewhere in the distance, a cable car swayed on its line, carrying strangers to destinations unknown.

"I remember," David said finally. "I think I've been missing him for a long time."