The Last Supper

The goldfish bowl sat on her nightstand, its solitary inhabitant darting through crystal-clear water. Three weeks after David moved out, the fish remained—the only living thing that still needed her.

Emma swallowed her vitamin D supplement with lukewarm coffee. The doctor had warned about seasonal depression, but this wasn't seasonal. This was the hollow ache of a seven-year relationship evaporating like morning fog.

"You're too much," David had said, packing his books into boxes. "Too intense. I need something... easier."

Easier. Like a bull market that only goes up. Like papaya—sweet, uncomplicated, foreign.

She'd bought the papaya yesterday at that upscale grocery store where they shopped together on Sundays. The ritual had died with their relationship, but she'd gone anyway, standing in the produce section until her hands stopped shaking. The papaya sat on her counter now, ripe and speckled, mocking her with its tropical optimism.

Her phone buzzed. Sarah, her oldest friend from college, the one who'd held her hair back freshman year and held her hand at the hospital last month.

"Come over," Sarah's text read. "I have wine and that terrible reality show you love."

Emma stared at the papaya. She should eat it. It would go bad soon. Everything did.

The goldfish rose to the surface, mouth opening and closing in silent desperation. David had named it Bubbles—ironically, because he hated clichés. Now she had to remember that every time she dropped those stupid flakes into the bowl.

"Enough," she said aloud to the empty apartment.

She sliced the papaya, its flesh revealed in shocking sunset orange against the dull beige of her countertop. She took a bite, letting the juice run down her chin, messy and alive. It tasted like nothing she expected—musky sweet, slightly fermented, complicated.

Her fingers found her phone. She didn't text Sarah back. Instead, she called Mark from accounting, the one with the nice smile who always asked about her weekend though he surely had better things to do.

"Hey," she said when he answered. "I was wondering if you wanted to get that drink. Tonight."

The goldfish watched from its bowl, indifferent to the sudden sharp turn in her orbit. Outside, the city hummed with millions of people making mistakes and recoveries, bull markets crashing and rising, papayas rotting and ripening, all of them just trying to be seen.

Emma took another bite and let herself feel hungry for the first time in months.