The Color of Goodbye

Mara found herself running at 2 AM again. Not from anything specific — just the persistent, thrumming anxiety that had taken up residence in her chest since Julian moved out. Her sneakers hit the pavement in a rhythm that matched her heartbeat: alone, alone, alone.

The streetlights cast everything in that sickly orange hue that exists only in cities at night, in the hours when decent people are asleep and people like Mara are either running toward something or away from everything.

She stopped at the bridge, the one where she and Julian had kissed three years ago when they were still capable of believing in forevers. Below, the river moved with the lazy confidence of something that would outlast them all.

Mara had gone swimming once with Julian, in the Mediterranean, when they were still young enough to think love could protect them from anything. She remembered the water blue as a promise, his hand in hers, the way they floated weightless as if gravity had temporarily suspended its claims. Now she felt like she was always swimming upstream, against the current of her own disappointment.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the orange. A piece of fruit, mundane and perfect, that she'd grabbed from the kitchen before leaving. Julian had always bought too much fruit, optimistic about their ability to consume it before it spoiled. Now the oranges sat in a bowl on the counter, a slowly rotting monument to his absence.

She peeled it there on the bridge, the citrus sharp in the night air, and thought about how grief was just love with nowhere to go. How she was running from a ghost, swimming through memories that threatened to pull her under.

A car passed below, its taillights painting the darkness red. Mara ate a section of the orange, bitter and sweet, and started running again. Some mornings you just had to keep moving until your legs gave out or the sun came up, whichever surrendered first.