The Orange Sunset

The first text came at 5:47 AM—just an orange heart emoji, sent from a number I'd deleted three years ago. Sarah. The friend who'd held my hair back during my divorce, who'd sat with me in hospital waiting rooms, who I'd ghosted when her life got too bright and mine got too dark.

I stared at my phone until the screen timed out, then powered it off and made coffee. My neighbor's cat—that mangy orange tomcat who terrorized the neighborhood—sat on my windowsill, watching me with judging yellow eyes. Sarah had loved him. Called him Phil. Left out treats whenever she visited, until I told her I couldn't do this anymore.

"I get it," she'd said, and her voice had cracked in a way that made me hate myself. "I'll be here when you're ready."

She wasn't. The heart emoji was followed by: Mom died. Thursday.

I drove to her apartment building with a bag of oranges—her favorite fruit, which she'd peel in one continuous strip, a party trick that never failed to make me smile. The elevator smelled like lemon cleaner and suppressed grief. When she opened the door, something in my chest unhinged.

She looked older. Not aged—different. The contours of her face had rearranged themselves around new sorrows. Her hair was chopped short, exposing a neck that seemed impossibly fragile.

"I brought oranges," I said, like an idiot.

She laughed, and it was the same laugh, but with rusty edges. "Come in, you coward."

We sat on her balcony watching the sunset turn the sky violent orange, eating segment after segment, not speaking. The cat from my windowsill somehow appeared on her railing, orange on orange, watching us with those judgmental eyes.

"He's been coming around since Thursday," Sarah said quietly. "I think he knew."

"I'm sorry," I said. "About everything."

She leaned into my shoulder, and the contact felt like returning to a house I'd abandoned, expecting it to be empty, finding instead that every piece of furniture was exactly as I'd left it, waiting.

"Me too," she said. "But we're both here now."

The sun dropped below the horizon. The cat jumped into her lap. We stayed until the streetlights flickered on, two ghosts haunting the only place that had ever felt like home.