Season's End

The orange sky deepened toward bruised purple as Elena packed the last box. Three years in this apartment, reduced to cardboard and packing tape. Her phone buzzed—Marcus, again. She let it go to voicemail.

"You're really leaving?" Jamie asked from the doorway. His colleague slash friend slash the man who'd watched Elena and Marcus's relationship unravel like a slow-motion car crash. "He says you're overreacting."

Elena taped the box shut with vicious precision. "Did he mention the other woman? Or was that just an inconvenience in his narrative?"

Jamie flinched. She'd always liked that about him—his inability to fake indifference. Unlike Marcus, whose charming exterior hid something predatory beneath. Marcus, with his foxlike grin and calculated warmth, who'd played them both against some internal scoreboard Elena had never agreed to join.

"He says it wasn't serious. That it happened because you were distant after your mom died."

"So the cheating was my fault? Classic." Elena lifted another box. "You know what's funny? The one time I tried to surprise him—drove two hours to that baseball game he was supposedly attending with his brother—I found him at a bar instead. With her."

The memory still tasted bitter. Orange peels on the roadside somewhere in Jersey, her hands shaking so badly she'd had to pull over. The way Marcus had explained it away with such smooth conviction, like he'd rehearsed each line.

Jamie was silent. Then, quietly: "I knew. About the bar. I was supposed to meet them there."

Elena stopped packing. "You knew?"

"I didn't want to be the one who told you. But yeah—I knew."

Something inside her shifted. Not pain, but clarity. The way autumn leaves finally release when wind hits them just right.

"You should have said something."

"I know."

She studied him—really looked at him for the first time in three years. Jamie, who'd quietly brought her coffee every morning after her mother's funeral. Jamie, who'd never crossed lines but had never quite disappeared either.

"I'm not going back to him," she said. "And I'm not staying in this city."

Jamie nodded. "Where will you go?"

"Somewhere without foxes." She picked up the last box. "Or maybe somewhere I learn to spot them earlier."

The orange light faded to gray. Elena walked past him toward the stairs, toward whatever came next, and for the first time in years, she didn't look back.