The Last Lap

Elena found herself running alongside the hotel pool at 2 AM, barefoot, the papaya she'd just taken a bite of still in her hand. Its juice dripped down her wrist—sticky, sweet, wrong for this moment.

Mark was inside their room, probably asleep. Probably not wondering where she was. They'd come to Costa Rica for their anniversary, a last-ditch attempt to salvage what seven years of resentment had slowly eroded. The trip brochure had promised paradise. It delivered humidity and silence.

She'd gone to the kitchenette for water, found the papaya in the fruit bowl. Something about it—its alien shape, its improbable orange flesh—made her think of the first time they'd met, at that terrible party in Brooklyn where he'd made fun of someone's shoes while she'd stood by the guacamole, pretending not to hear.

She'd married him anyway.

The pool water was still, black glass reflecting nothing. She thought about getting in, just letting herself sink to the bottom. Not to die—she wasn't suicidal—but to feel something other than this bone-deep exhaustion. To feel weightless, if only for a minute.

"You're always running," he'd told her yesterday, when she'd suggested they go for a morning run instead of lying by the pool. "From something, or toward something. I can never tell which."

The truth was, she didn't know either.

She took another bite of the papaya. It tasted like decay and sunshine, like everything good that was ending.

Inside the room, a floorboard creaked. Mark would find her here, standing poolside in her sleep shirt, eating fruit like it was the last meal on earth. He'd ask if she was okay, and she'd say yes, because that's what she always said.

Elena looked at the papaya in her hand, then at the dark water. She finished it in two quick bites, wiped her sticky hands on her shirt, and started back toward the room.

Some things you run toward. Some you run from. The trick was knowing which was which.