The Papaya Summer

The pool water was cold enough to make my breath catch, but I kept swimming—lap after lap, cutting through the silence of three AM. This was the only time I could think clearly, when the resort was asleep and the water felt like it belonged only to me.

"You're going to drown yourself if you keep that up."

I stopped mid-stroke, wiping water from my eyes. Marcus stood at the pool's edge, wearing that ridiculous bear mask he'd bought in town earlier that day. The bear—its glass eyes reflecting moonlight—should have looked comical. Instead, it looked like a confession.

"What are you doing here?" I treaded water.

"Couldn't sleep." He pulled off the mask. His face was drawn, older than thirty-five had any right to look. "The conference ends tomorrow. Then we go back to our lives."

Our lives. His wife in Chicago, my husband in Seattle, three nights in Costa Rica that had unraveled everything carefully built over years. I swam to the edge and pulled myself up, water streaming off my skin like the last of my resolve.

"I brought you something." He held out a papaya, cut open to reveal its bright orange flesh. "From the breakfast buffet. I know you've been wanting to try one."

The gesture was so absurdly intimate that my chest tightened. We'd spent three days avoiding each other, pretending this wasn't happening, and now he was bringing me fruit like it was normal.

"Marcus—"

"Just eat it." His voice cracked. "Please."

I took the papaya, my fingers trembling. The first bite was sweet, musky, unlike anything I'd tasted before—or maybe it was just that I was finally tasting something true.

"My grandfather used to say papaya was good for the heart," he said quietly. "He was a doctor. Should have known better than to trust folklore."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because tomorrow I go back to pretending. And you go back to Seattle." He looked at the bear mask in his hands. "And this goes in the trash."

The papaya tasted like forgiveness. Like the terrible, beautiful truth that some things only exist in the dark, in the water, in the stolen moments between who we are and who we're supposed to be.

"Get in," I said.

He hesitated, then stripped off his shirt and dove in. When he surfaced beside me, the water between us felt like the only honest thing in the world.