The Color of Regret

The orange peel scattered across my coffee table like abandoned promises. Dave used to peel them in one long, unbroken spiral—a useless talent he'd performed at parties years ago, back when we were still friends who believed our lives would stretch infinitely ahead.

Now he was three years dead, and I was sitting in his living room, surrounded by boxes his widow had asked me to help sort. The baseball sat heavy in my hand—a signed ball from some game we'd attended together, drunk on cheap beer and the certainty that we'd be friends forever.

The date on the ball was September 11th, 2001. We'd left the game early that day, confused by the announcements over the PA system, walking into a city that had already begun to change. We didn't know it then, but that was the last time we'd truly be close. After that came the promotions, the marriages that drifted apart, the slow erosion of phone calls until silence became easier than reaching out.

I found the photos in a shoebox: Dave and me at his wedding, grinning like idiots. Dave and me at the baseball stadium, orange sunset painting our faces. Then came the years I couldn't remember being there for—his promotion, his divorce, the cancer diagnosis I'd learned about thirdhand.

The orange segment in my mouth tasted sharp and bitter. I realized too late that friendship isn't something that ends; it's something you stop nurturing, like a plant you forget to water until the leaves fall off one by one and you're left with nothing but dead stems and the terrible knowledge of your own neglect.

The baseball went into the trash. Some things are better left buried with their secrets.