The Things We Leave Behind

The internet had been out for three days when Lisa found the papaya ripening on her dead lover's kitchen counter. It had been hard and green when Marcus left for his business trip—when he'd still been alive—and now it sat there, yellow-freckled and soft, mocking her with its stubborn forward momentum.

Her friend Rachel kept texting. *You need to eat something. You can't just sit there in the dark.* Rachel didn't understand that the darkness felt appropriate. That the apartment without Marcus was supposed to be without light, without warmth, without the hum of his ridiculous stereo system that she'd never quite learned to love.

Marcus's dog, a neurotic border collie mix named Buster, had taken to sleeping pressed against the door, as if Marcus might walk in any moment. Lisa envied the dog's certainty. She envied the way Buster could still believe in impossible things.

The coaxial cable dangled uselessly from the wall where the technician had tried to fix it earlier that day, shaking his head about something being severed in the storm. Lisa had just nodded, thinking: Yes, everything's been severed. The cable swayed slightly in the draft from the window, a dead snake that would never transmit anything again.

She cut into the papaya that evening. The flesh was brilliant orange, impossibly vibrant against the gray dusk. It tasted like regret and summer simultaneously—sweet and slightly cloying, with those strange black seeds that looked so much like the things you're supposed to spit out but sometimes swallow anyway.

Rachel called instead of texting this time. "I'm coming over with wine and portable Wi-Fi. Don't argue."

"Okay," Lisa said, surprising herself.

Buster lifted his head at the sound of her voice, tail giving one tentative thwack against the floorboards. The papaya sat half-eaten on the counter, its orange flesh gleaming. The cable still swayed in the corner. Some things were broken. Some things were ripening anyway. And sometimes, you let your friend bring you wine and internet, because the dog needs to believe someone will come through the door, and you're starting to understand why he still believes it at all.