The Riddle of Grace

Ellen stood on the balcony of her thirtieth-floor apartment, watching lightning stitch the sky into jagged fragments. Below, the city was a grid of living windows, each one lit by stories she'd never know. She held an orange in her left hand, her thumb absently worrying the peel, releasing tiny bursts of citrus into the humid air.

Inside, Marcus was packing. The sound of tape being ripped from cardboard was like a wound reopening, over and over. Three years together, and what did they have to show for it? A collection of arguments they'd both memorized, choreographed like some terrible dance.

"You're doing it again," Marcus said, appearing in the doorway. "That sphinx thing. Where you act like I'm supposed to solve some riddle to understand what you're feeling."

Ellen turned. The lightning behind her illuminated her face in stark flashes. "Maybe there's nothing to solve. Maybe I'm just angry."

"At what? Me? Yourself? The universe?" He stepped closer, and she could smell the familiar scent of him—soap and exhaustion and that particular smell of someone you once loved but no longer know how to reach.

"Remember that baseball game?" she asked suddenly. "Two years ago, when we got caught in the rain and you gave your jacket to that stranger's kid?"

Marcus paused. "Yeah."

"That's when I knew. That you were good. That you would always choose what was right over what was easy. Including this." She gestured vaguely at the boxes, at the ending they'd both seen coming for months.

"You could come with me," he said, but they both knew it was a formality. A politeness.

"No." She finally peeled the orange, the skin coming away in a single spiral. "I need to figure out who I am when I'm not being your mystery to solve."

He nodded, something like relief in his eyes. Another flash of lightning, closer now. The first drops of rain began to fall.

"For what it's worth," he said, "I never wanted you to be simple. I just wanted to be able to find you."

Ellen ate a section of the orange, sharp and bright against her tongue. She watched him walk back into the apartment, back to the boxes, back to the separate life they'd both chosen. Somewhere in the distance, thunder finally caught up to the light. She stayed on the balcony as the rain came harder, washing the city clean, making everything new again, or at least different. And different, she thought, might be enough.