The Last Orange

Mara sat on her balcony in Phoenix, the desert sun setting everything ablaze. At forty-two, she'd finally confessed to herself what she'd known for years: her marriage had been dead since before the pandemic. The orange tree in the courtyard had dropped its fruit—hard, bitter things that no one bothered to collect anymore. Just like them.

Inside, David watched cable news with the volume too high, as if shouting commentators could fill the space between them. They hadn't touched in six months. They hadn't spoken about anything real in twice that. Their marriage had become a series of transactions: who paid which bill, who remembered to buy milk, who'd pretend to sleep first.

She pressed her palm against the warm glass of the sliding door. A palm reader in college had told her she'd have two great loves. Mara had assumed she meant sequentially, not simultaneously—the innocent version of herself she'd buried somewhere in her twenties, and this hollowed-out survivor she'd become. The joke was on both of them.

The cable box blinked its toxic blue light in the gathering dusk. She remembered when they'd cut the cord years ago, determined to be those people who read books and went for evening walks. Instead they'd just found new ways to exist separately in the same rooms.

"You're going out there again?" David called without turning around.

"Just getting some air."

"You always say that."

"I always mean it."

She didn't. She meant: I'm gathering courage to say the words that will dismantle everything we've built. She meant: I'm mourning the life I thought we'd have. She meant: I can't remember the last time I didn't feel like I was waiting for something to happen, for my actual life to begin.

The security cable on the balcony railing had rusted through in places. Everything eventually corroded under the desert sun. Even love.

She went inside, packed a bag while he watched television. The orange she'd placed on the counter two days ago had already begun to shrivel, its bright dimpled skin turning soft. Impermanence was the only thing they'd ever been good at together.

"I'm leaving," she said.

He muted the television. The palm trees outside swayed in the wind, their fronds catching the last light like guilty secrets.

"I know," he said. "I've been waiting for you to realize it."

Sometimes, she thought as she walked to her car, the bravest thing you could do was stop pretending you weren't already gone.