Tropical Decay

The papaya sat uneaten on the breakfast tray, its flesh already weeping into the linen doily. Lightning fractured the dawn, briefly illuminating Tom's face before the hotel room plunged back into shadow. He was checking his phone again, thumbs flying, while outside, palm fronds clawed at the glass like desperate fingers.

"You're leaving," I said. Not a question.

He looked up, startled, then guilty. "Sarah—"

"Don't. I saw the messages." I thought of her—red lips sharpened to points, eyes assessing Tom's worth with the precision of a jeweler. She'd moved through the resort bar like a fox through a henhouse: deliberate, confident, hungry.

"The papaya's going to spoil," he said, and something in me cracked at the inadequacy of it.

I'd brought his grandfather's watch from home, the one he'd forgotten. Gold case, engraved with a fox on the back—Tom Sr.'s lucky charm, passed down through three generations of disappointing men. I placed it on the nightstand, the metal warm against my fingertips, heavier than it had any right to be.

"It's already spoiled," I said. "Both of them."

Thunder rumbled low, gathering somewhere over the ocean. I walked out barefoot, the marble cool beneath my soles, while behind me, Tom finally stopped typing and began to understand what he'd lost.