The Papaya Window

The vitamin supplements sat on her counter like a promise she kept breaking. Vitamin D for the winter gloom, B-complex for the stress her doctor called 'situational,' omega-3s she always forgot to take. Three months since Julian left, and the only routine she'd maintained was buying them.

Her cat, Miso, watched from the windowsill, yellow eyes tracking something across the street. The apartment felt too large now, filled with the careful silences two people construct when they're drifting apart. Julian had hated cats—claimed they were like living with a small, indifferent roommate who paid rent in hairballs. Miso had slept on his pillow anyway.

She'd bought the papaya on impulse. Julian always called them 'expensive melons for people who care too much about Instagram.' She cut it now, the knife sliding through flesh the color of a sunset he'd never appreciated. The scent hit her—sweet, musky, tropical—and she was suddenly back in that hostel in Costa Rica, before the mortgage and the arguments about whether they were 'growing apart' or just growing tired.

The papaya tasted like memory. Like the girl she'd been before she became someone's wife, before she learned to compromise on vacations and restaurants and whether to have children. She took a bite, juice running down her chin, and Miso jumped down to wind around her ankles, purring like a small engine.

The vitamin bottle caught her eye. 'Supports emotional well-being,' the label claimed. She swept them into the trash—all of them, the whole pharmacopeia of loneliness.

'I'm sorry,' she said aloud. Not to Julian, who was probably someone else's problem now. To herself. To the years spent becoming smaller, quieter, easier to manage.

Miso butted her head against her hand, demanding. Outside, the February snow was melting. She finished the papaya, sticky fingers and all, and for the first time in months, she didn't feel like something was missing.