The Last Orange

Marcus stood in the kitchen at 2 AM, peeling the last orange from the bowl on the counter. The citrus scent hung sharp in the air, cutting through the stale smell of disappointment that had settled over their apartment like fog. Three years of fertility treatments, three years of hoping, and now this—Janet sleeping in the guest room again, her silence louder than any argument could be.

He'd bought into the bullshit at first. The clinic's brochure had promised miracles in glossy photos of smiling families, their specialist Dr. Evans speaking with the confidence of a man who'd never failed at anything. Marcus had believed them, believed that if they just spent enough money, endured enough injections, swallowed enough prenatal vitamins in every pastel color the pharmacy sold, they'd get their happy ending.

But happy endings weren't scientific.

The orange's flesh came away in sections, bright against his calloused fingers. He remembered how Janet used to eat one every morning when they first met—her hands sticky with juice, laughing at something he'd said, the sunlight catching in her hair. That felt like another lifetime now, back when their future seemed as inevitable as dawn.

Now their future was just a series of appointments and negative tests and credit card bills that arrived like monthly reminders of their failure. Marcus had found himself resenting the success stories at the clinic, the women posting bump photos on Facebook like they'd personally invented pregnancy. It was petty, he knew. The kind of petty that ate away at a marriage from the inside.

He ate the orange sections one by one, the burst of tart-sweet almost shocking. It had been months since he'd really tasted anything.

The guest room door creaked open. Janet stood there in her oversized t-shirt, looking smaller than he remembered. "Can't sleep?" he asked, though he already knew.

She shook her head, leaning against the doorframe. "I was thinking about what Dr. Evans said today. About other options."

Marcus nodded, tossing the orange peel into the sink. "Yeah. Me too."

They looked at each other across the kitchen's fluorescent glow, two people who'd spent three years trying to create life and had nearly forgotten how to live it. "Maybe," Janet said quietly, "we could start by having orange juice with breakfast tomorrow. Like we used to."

Marcus felt something loosen in his chest—not hope exactly, but something like it. "Yeah," he said. "I'd like that."