The Sweet Rot Between Us

The papaya sat on the white ceramic plate, its orange flesh glistening in the harsh morning light of the Tenerife resort restaurant. Elena watched David spear a piece, his wrist moving with the same practiced precision that had once made her fall in love with him during their first corporate merger. That was fourteen years ago. Now, she wondered if he even tasted the fruit anymore, or if everything had become as numb as the space between them in their king-sized bed.

"I'm playing padel with Carlos and Sophie at noon," David said, not looking up from his phone. "You should join."

Elena smoothed the napkin on her lap. She remembered when they'd played padel on their honeymoon, how they'd laughed at their own clumsiness, tangled in each other's sweat and joy. Now Sophie—twenty-six, David's executive assistant—played padel with him every day while Elena sat by the pool pretending to read novels she couldn't focus on.

"I think I'll have the spinach omelet," she told the waiter. "And a mimosa. Actually, make it two."

David finally looked at her. "It's ten in the morning, El."

"It's vacation, David."

His phone buzzed. He smiled at something on the screen, something that wasn't her.

Elena thought about how she'd spent three months hiding her affair with Marcus from their litigation team. She thought about the papaya—sweet on the outside, but rotting from the center where the seeds lay black and waiting. She thought about how David's messages to Sophie were always full of exclamation points and heart emojis, while his texts to Elena had become purely logistical.

"I met someone," she said. The mimosas arrived. She took a long pull from the first one.

David's fork paused halfway to his mouth. "What?"

"I met someone. In London. During the merger."

The silence stretched between them like the elastic net of the padel court, everything suspended and waiting to fall.

"How long?" he asked.

"Six months."

He set down his fork. The papaya on his plate looked like a wound. "And you're telling me now?"

"Because you're going to lunch with Sophie again, and I'm done pretending I don't notice."

David stood up, knocking the table. His mimosa shattered on the tile floor. "You're one to talk about—"

They stared at each other across the wreckage of their breakfast, two people who had forgotten how to be on the same team, their marriage dissolved like sugar in acid, leaving only the hollow rind of something that had once been sweet.