The Art of Leaving

The apartment was too quiet after Marcus left. I sat on the floor with my dinner—a wilted spinach salad that tasted like resignation. Three years of relationship reduced to boxes I hadn't bothered to unpack yet.

A cat meowed outside my window. Probably the stray from 3B, the one Marcus always said we should adopt. We never did. There was always something else to prioritize first—his career, my depression, the inevitable arguments about money and whether love was enough.

I reached for the orange on the counter, rolling it between my palms. His mother always brought us oranges from her tree in Florida. They were the only thing she ever gave me that felt genuine, unlike her backhanded compliments about my job, my clothes, my ability to make her son happy.

The orange's skin gave way under my thumbnail, releasing essential oils that smelled like Sunday mornings and the kind of domestic peace I'd stopped believing in months ago.

Water dripped from the faucet—a slow, rhythmic counting of time passing. Marcus had said I was stagnant, that I was drowning him in my complacency. He'd found someone else, someone from his office who understood ambition and drive and all the things I'd stopped pretending to care about.

I ate the orange anyway. Ate the spinach too. Let the water run because it was the only sound in this empty, too-expensive apartment that I could still control.

The cat cried again from the fire escape. I got up, opened the window, and wondered if I was letting it in or letting myself out.