The Color of Goodbye

The iphone screen glowed at 2:14 AM, displaying messages I couldn't bring myself to delete. Three years of texts, photographs, half-formed arguments and I love yous, all trapped behind that glass like specimens in a museum exhibit labeled Relationship, Failed.

I sat at the kitchen counter eating an orange, peeling it in long strips that clung to my fingers like shreds of something I couldn't quite let go. The juice stung the small cuts on my hands—remnants of moving boxes, packing tape, the visceral business of untangling two lives. Citus sharp and bright against the dull ache that had taken up residence in my chest.

David had been gone for exactly eleven days. Not that I was counting.

The radio played some baseball game from the West Coast, the announcer's voice a low rumble of statistics and innings. We'd met at a game three years ago—Giants versus Dodgers, sixth inning, I spilled soda on his shoes. He'd laughed, wiped it off with ridiculous patience, and bought me a pretzel. It was the kind of meet-cute that felt like a story you'd tell at dinner parties, complete with punchline and happily-ever-after already built in.

Now the baseball season was starting up again without him. The players would run the bases, the crowds would cheer, and somewhere in the stands, someone else might spill soda on someone else's shoes and think it meant something.

I turned on the faucet. Water rushed into the glass, swirling with pulp and seeds. I watched the surface settle, catching my reflection—pale eyes, hair pulled back, thirty-five years old and starting over. Again.

My therapist said I needed to make peace with uncertainty. That comfort came from within, not from another person. But she'd never sat alone at 2 AM with an orange and a phone full of ghosts, wondering if the cold space beside her in bed was independence or just loneliness with a better PR team.

I drained the glass, set it down on the counter. The iphone's screen dimmed, went dark. All those messages still there, just harder to see.

Tomorrow I would delete them. Maybe.

For now, I finished the orange, licked the juice from my fingers, and listened to the crowd roar for someone else's victory.