The Taste of Goodbye

The papaya sat on the white ceramic plate, its orange flesh glistening like something that should have been spoken but wasn't. Elena picked at it with her fork, the juice staining her fingers. She could hear Marcus in the hotel bathroom, the shower running, water against tile—a sound that used to mean intimacy and now meant only routine.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. The iphone lit up with his name, again. She didn't pick up. David had been calling since yesterday, since she'd told him she needed to think. Since she'd admitted that maybe, after seven years together, she wasn't sure he was the one she wanted to grow old with.

The bathroom door opened. Marcus stepped out, towel around his waist, water still clinging to his skin. His hair was wet, plastered to his forehead in that way she once found adorable but now just looked like something she'd have to deal with every morning for the rest of her life.

"You gonna eat that?" he nodded at the papaya.

"Not hungry."

"You're never hungry lately."

She looked at him. This was the bull—him, the situation, the way he kept pushing, assuming everything was fine when she was drowning in the space between them. This whole vacation had been his idea. Fix it with sand and ocean and expensive fruit. As if infertility and betrayals and the slow death of desire could be resolved with a trip to Belize.

"David called again," she said.

Marcus froze. "And?"

"And I didn't answer."

He sat on the edge of the bed, back to her. The water on his skin had begun to dry, leaving small patches that caught the morning light. She remembered when his bare back had made her feel safe. Now it just looked like another thing she'd have to navigate, another geography she'd lost the map to.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, not turning around.

She took a breath. "I don't know."

"Bullshit."

The word hung there. She stood up, walked to the balcony doors. Outside, the ocean stretched endlessly, water meeting water, no beginning or end, just movement and depth and the terrifying possibility of drowning.

"Maybe," she said, "that's the most honest thing I've said in months."

Behind her, she heard him exhale. She didn't turn. Some endings, she realized, don't arrive with storms or declarations. They come quietly, like breakfast fruit that's gone slightly soft, like the space between two people when they've stopped trying to reach across it.