The Last Strawberry

The spinach was stuck between your teeth. I saw it when you laughed—really laughed—for the first time in three years of marriage. We were at that corporate retreat, the one where they made us build a human pyramid to teach us about teamwork. As if climbing over each other's backs was anything but a metaphor for how we'd been living.

You were on the third tier, balanced precariously over Sarah from accounting. I was at the bottom, supporting weight that wasn't mine to carry. The organization chart they'd handed out that morning looked like a pyramid too, but inverted—executives at the narrow top, the rest of us widening toward the base, expendable.

Later, by the hotel pool at midnight, you finally told me. Your iPhone illuminated your face in the dark as you scrolled through messages I wasn't supposed to see. He was clever, you said. A fox, everyone called him—sly and impossible to catch. He'd been promoted three times in two years.

"The spinach," I said, because it was easier than saying what I meant.

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand. "How long?"

"Since the pyramid exercise."

You cried then, quietly. The pool water lapped against the concrete edge, rhythmic and indifferent. I thought about how we'd bought a house with a pool last year, something you'd wanted since you were a kid. You'd swam in it exactly twice.

"I'm sorry," you said.

I nodded. The thing about foxes is they're beautiful until they're not. Until you realize they're just animals doing what animals do—surviving, regardless of the cost.

The spinach was gone. You smiled, and there was nothing left to hide behind.