The Last Orange at Sunset

The iphone screen lit up at 6:47 PM — the third text from him today. I let it fade to black, watching the orange slice wither on my dashboard. Its edges were turning brown, just like us.

We met at the baseball stadium two years ago. He caught the foul ball, handed it to me with that crooked grin. Now that signed ball sat in a box with everything else: the goldfish bowl (Bubbles died three weeks before he moved out), the dog leash we never used because we never got the dog we always talked about adopting.

The office was quiet when I walked in. Karen from HR was already waiting, that look on her face — the one that says 'we need to talk.' Not about the merger. About him.

"He's been accessing your emails," she said, sliding a folder across the desk. "For months."

The iphone buzzed again. I turned it off completely.

Later, standing in my empty living room, I peeled the last orange from the fruit bowl. The spray of citrus hit my nose, sharp and clean, cutting through the stale air of a ending. Somewhere outside, a dog barked. Somewhere else, a baseball game was ending, strangers high-fiving, falling in love, making mistakes they wouldn't realize until it was too late.

The goldfish taught me that some things die quietly. The iphone taught me that some connections aren't worth saving. The orange taught me that even the sweetest things eventually rot.

I bit into the fruit. It was perfect, perfectly ripe, perfectly alone.

Tomorrow I'd change my passwords. Tomorrow I'd report him. Tonight, I stood in the golden light of the streetlamp outside my window, eating an orange in the dark, feeling absolutely, terrifyingly free.