The Fruit We Never Finished

I sat on the balcony of our apartment, cutting into a papaya I'd bought at the market. The flesh was bright orange, like sunset leaking onto a cutting board. Below me, the city hummed with its usual Friday energy, but up here, everything was suffocatingly quiet.

Inside, the baseball game played on TV — the sounds of the crowd, the crack of the bat, the announcer's voice rising with each pitch. David used to watch baseball religiously. He'd explain the strategy, the statistics, the poetry of a well-executed double play. I'd nod, pretending to care, pretending this was enough.

Lately, I'd been moving through my days like a zombie — present, accounted for, but fundamentally not there. I'd go to work, smile at the right times, make love to David with the appropriate enthusiasm, file taxes, remember birthdays. All the mechanics of a life, none of the aliveness.

The papaya tasted like betrayal somehow. It was his favorite fruit. He'd eat it with lime juice, standing at the kitchen counter in his boxers, telling me about his day. I'd listen and wonder how something that looked so alien — the black seeds, the weird orange flesh — could make him so happy.

Then came the lightning last night. Not the weather kind. It was his phone buzzing at 3 AM. I'd seen it: a text from Sarah. "Can't wait to see you tomorrow." I'd pretended to be asleep, my heart striking something like lightning inside my chest — sudden, illuminating, destructive.

I threw the rest of the papaya into the trash.

David opened the sliding door. "You missed the game. It went into extra innings."

"I know," I said.

"Everything okay?"

"I'm leaving," I said. "Today."

He laughed — that nervous reflex laugh of people who think life is a game with rules. "What? Why?"

"Because I don't want to be a zombie anymore," I said, and finally, terrifyingly, I felt awake.