Storm Over Brunch

The papaya sat on my kitchen counter like an accusation, its sunset-orange flesh weeping into the cutting board. Elena's favorite fruit—she'd always called it 'the fruit of ambition' because, she'd say, 'it looks like it's trying to become something more.'

I hadn't seen Elena in three years, not since the lightning strike of our friendship's dissolution: her promotion over me, the same week I found her LinkedIn post praising 'mentorship' from the boss she'd been sleeping with. The corporate ladder has rungs, and some people grease them with secrets.

So when my husband suggested brunch at the new tropical place downtown, I almost said no. But I wore the wide-brimmed hat Elena had given me at my thirtieth birthday party—back when we'd made promises about taking over the world together, before the world took her instead. The hat shaded my eyes, which was good because Elena was there, three tables away, laughing with someone who looked like she'd stepped out of the Instagram influencer handbook.

Our eyes met across the restaurant. Something like recognition flickered across her face. Not guilt—she was never good at that—but something softer. We'd been friends once, the kind who finish each other's sentences and carry each other through divorces and deaths and the particular kind of darkness that comes before dawn.

The waiter brought my papaya. Elena stood up. The room went quiet as she walked toward my table, her heels clicking like a countdown.

'I didn't know you still ate papaya,' she said, not sitting down. 'Remember how we pretended to love it because it seemed sophisticated?'

Outside, lightning cracked the sky open. The restaurant lights flickered.

'Some things,' I said, cutting into the fruit, 'we learn to actually like. Some things, we just outgrow.'

She nodded. Once. Then she turned back to her table, back to her new friend, back to the person she'd become. I finished my papaya alone. The storm passed while I ate. It always does.