The Last Day of August

The orange lay on the white tablecloth like a small, stubborn sun. Susan had peeled it halfway, the rind curling around her fingers, but she'd stopped. Just stopped mid-motion, like a film breaking in the projector.

'You're not listening,' David said. He was wearing that hat—the charcoal fedora he'd bought in Rome three years ago when they still believed in grand gestures. Now it just looked like part of a costume he'd forgotten how to take off.

'I am,' she said, though she wasn't. She was thinking about swimming. Not the actual act, but the feeling of being underwater, that muffled silence where you could pretend the world didn't exist. How she'd felt last summer in the Mediterranean, floating on her back while David slept in their hotel room, imagining she could just keep floating away.

The market had been a bull that week, David's firm riding high, everyone celebrating, but Susan had watched from their apartment window as the city blurred below. She'd realized she was living with someone who spoke in ticker symbols, whose eyes lit up for percentages but went flat when she mentioned she'd started writing again.

'I'm saying we could buy the beach house,' he said, gesturing with his wine glass. 'It's the right move. Financially.'

She finally finished peeling the orange. The scent hit the air—sharp, bright, impossibly alive. She separated a segment and placed it on her tongue, letting the burst of juice fill her mouth. Something about the ordinariness of the moment crystallized everything.

'I don't want the beach house, David.' Her voice surprised her—steady, quiet. 'I don't want any of it.'

He set down his glass. The restaurant continued around them—waiters in crisp white aprons, couples leaning toward each other over candlelit tables. But they'd created their own small universe of sudden, terrible clarity.

'What are you saying?'

She placed the half-peeled orange on the table. 'I'm saying I've been swimming for so long I forgot I could stand up.'