Spinach Between the Teeth of Grace

The piece of spinach had been wedged between Elena's incisors for forty-five minutes before anyone told her. She caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror at Marcus's engagement party and saw it: a vibrant green flag of surrender flapping from a smile she'd been forcing all night.

Her hair, once a glossy mane that men compared to expensive whiskey, now fell in flat, resigned waves around her shoulders. Thirty-nine, single, and suddenly the oldest person at the table discussing which neighborhoods were still "up and coming." She'd become what she never wanted—a zombie of reasonable choices.

Marcus's fiancée caught her eye in the mirror and reached out, palm warm against Elena's cold shoulder. "You look like you're somewhere else," she said gently.

Elena thought about how Marcus had ghosted her three years ago. No explanation, just disappeared, then resurfaced with this perfect woman and a white-picket-future. He'd been a bull in a china shop then, charging through feelings without noticing the breakage. Now he was domesticated. Happy.

"I'm happy for you," Elena said, and meant it, mostly. She flossed the spinach out, watching it drop into the porcelain basin like a small, defeated thing. "Really."

She ordered another drink, because sometimes the only way to survive being the last single friend at an engagement party was to lean into the cliché. To be exactly who everyone expected: the spinster with the spinach between her teeth, dying a little with every toast to forever.

But later, when the guitarist played something familiar and Marcus danced with his mother, Elena found herself singing along, spinach-free and almost whole. Some days, that was enough.