The Art of Almost Touching

The orange sat on her desk like a small, defiant sun. Sarah hadn't eaten it in three days, hadn't peeled back its skin to release the sharp citrine scent that might pierce through the stale office air. It was a gift from Marcus—her best friend, her colleague, the person she'd spent six months running from in metaphorical circles while pretending they were just getting coffee together.

He stopped by her cubicle now, his shadow falling across the untouched fruit. 'Still haven't eaten it?' His voice carried that familiar warmth, the one that made her chest ache in ways she couldn't articulate without sounding ungrateful or unstable or thirty-two and entirely too old for this kind of emotional paralysis.

'Saving it,' she lied.

Marcus laughed, that soft sound that always made her want things she'd carefully categorized as impossible. 'Sarah, it's going to rot.' He reached out, his palm hovering inches from hers—they were always like this, almost touching, almost speaking the truth. 'You can't keep things fresh just by avoiding them.'

The double meaning hit its mark, as always. They'd been dancing around whatever this was for months, since the holiday party when they'd both had too much wine and stood too close on the balcony, until her phone rang—her ex, calling from across the country at midnight—and she'd answered, stepping away from Marcus, away from whatever was about to happen.

Now she watched his hand retreat, the same way he always gave her space, the same way he accepted her boundaries without pushing. Her therapist would call it respect; she called it cowardice—on both their parts.

'Marcus,' she started, but the words wouldn't shape themselves into sentences.

'I know,' he said, and something in his tone suggested he really did. He walked away, leaving her with her orange, her patterns, her comfortable, suffocating routine.

Sarah picked up the fruit, finally, and dug her nails into the peel. The scent released—bright, sharp, alive. She thought about how some things, once started, couldn't be stopped. How rotting wasn't the opposite of preservation; sometimes it was the only way to become something new.

The orange segments burst on her tongue, impossibly sweet and almost unbearably bitter. Some perfect, terrible combination.