The Last Morning in Kauai

Emma sat on the lanai, slicing into a ripe papaya. The orange flesh yielded easily to her spoon, sweet and cloying—much like the last three days of this vacation. Inside, David was asleep, or pretending to be. They'd stopped touching on the second night.

The coaxial cable had snapped from the wall the day they arrived, dangling like a dead snake from the mounted TV. Neither had bothered to call the front desk. What was there to watch anyway? The silence between them had become its own kind of entertainment.

She smoothed her hair, noticing more gray at the temples than she'd acknowledged before they left Chicago. David had commented on it once, absently, as if remarking on weather. She hadn't forgiven him.

Her palm pressed against the cool glass of the sliding door. Inside, David shifted. Their eyes met through the glass—his sad, hers resigned. Fifteen years dissolved into this moment: not hate, not love, but something worse.

"The cable," he said, voice muffled. "You want me to finally fix it?"

Emma shook her head slowly. She took another bite of papaya, juices running down her wrist. Outside, the trade winds rustled the palms, indifferent to endings.

"No point," she said, and he nodded, understanding everything and nothing at once.

She would pack her bag while he showered. The papaya would sit on the table, half-eaten, oxidizing in the tropical heat—a small,rotten thing they'd created together, neither able to finish nor discard.