The Last Sweetness

The chemotherapy had taken Marco's hair first—those thick black waves that used to catch the morning light when he leaned over the bathroom sink, shaving while Elena watched from the doorway. Now his scalp was smooth and pale, vulnerable as a newborn's, and Elena found herself touching it constantly, her fingers memorizing this new geography of loss.

She peeled an orange at the kitchen table, the citrus spray misting the air. He used to love oranges—would devour three at a sitting when they were first dating, sticky juice running down his chin, laughing at her prim attempts to eat sections with a fork. Now she couldn't remember the last time he'd asked for one. The nausea from the treatments had stolen everything: his appetite, his sense of smell, the pleasure he once took in feeding her his grandmother's risotto on Sunday nights.

"Vitamin D," she said, placing the orange segments on a white plate. That's what the nutritionist had called it when she'd asked how to help him. "Make sure he gets vitamin D. Sunshine. Oranges." As if sunshine and citrus could fix organs that were turning against themselves from the inside out.

Marco appeared in the doorway, thinner than he'd been when they met twelve years ago, but his eyes were the same. Dark and knowing, like he could see the calculus of her grief—how she measured every good day against the bad ones, how she'd started lying awake counting the hours between his doses of pain medication.

"You're peeling oranges again," he said. Not an accusation. Just a fact, heavy with everything unsaid.

"The nutritionist said—"

"I know." He crossed to the table, sat in his usual spot. The sun through the window caught the copper in his eyelashes. For a moment she saw him whole, healthy, the man who'd once chased her through a rainstorm because she'd forgotten her umbrella. Then he blinked, and the illusion fractured. "Elena. You can't vitamin your way out of this one."

She'd started crying before she registered the tears. Hot and humiliating, dripping onto the orange segments until they glistened.

"I know," she whispered. "I know."

But she kept buying oranges. Kept touching his bare head when he slept. Kept measuring the days in units of hope and dread, because what else was there to do when you loved someone the world had decided to take from you piece by piece?

Marco's hand covered hers. His palm was warm. For now, that was enough.