Summer's Last Inning

The papaya sat on the kitchen counter, its skin already yielding to the touch, the way everything does when you wait too long. Emma had bought it three days ago, back when we were still speaking in complete sentences, back before the silence between us grew thick enough to choke on.

"It's perfect," she'd said, holding it up like a prize. "Just like the ones in Costa Rica. Remember?"

I remembered. I also remembered that I'd told her then, as I told her a thousand times since, that I didn't like papaya. She kept buying them anyway. That was Emma—always trying to cultivate taste in me, always certain that with enough patience, she could reshape me into someone worthy of her garden.

Now the fruit sat between us like an accusation, softening quietly in the August heat while we sat at opposite ends of the kitchen table. The radio droned in the background, a baseball game drowning out the words neither of us could say.

"Bottom of the ninth," the announcer's voice crackled. "Two outs, bases loaded."

Emma's fingers traced the rim of her coffee mug. She used to love baseball, back when she still believed in comebacks, in ninth-inning rallies, in the possibility that everything could change with one swing. That was before she learned that sometimes the game just ends, sometimes you strike out looking, and sometimes you don't even get to take your turn at bat.

Lightning flashed through the window, a sudden white fracture in the evening sky. A moment later, thunder shook the house.

"Storm's coming," I said, because someone had to say something.

Emma finally looked at me. Her eyes were the color of memories I'd been trying to outrun for three years. "Everything's coming, David. The storm, the winter, the end." She stood up, her chair scraping against the floor like the sound of something breaking. "But I'm done waiting for you to decide whether you even want to be in this game."

Outside, lightning struck again, closer this time. The papaya on the counter split open from the pressure of its own ripening, spilling seeds that looked like tears.

"I never asked you to change me," I said, but the truth was heavier than that. I never asked her to stop trying, either.

"No," she said, opening the door to the storm. "You just never decided what you wanted."

The announcer shouted something about a home run, but I'd already turned off the radio. The papaya continued its slow decay on the counter. Lightning illuminated the empty space where she'd been standing, and for the first time in three years, I understood exactly what I'd lost.