Tropical Fruit & Sharp Teeth

Marlena watched the papaya bleed orange juice onto her white linen napkin. The fruit was too ripe, too eager to spill itself. Like her marriage, she thought, then immediately hated herself for the cliché.

"You're quiet," David said. He was her oldest friend, the one who'd flown across three time zones to sit beside her at this overpriced Belizean resort while she figured out whether her life had actually ended or just transformed.

"I'm fine."

"You said that the night you found out. You said it at the airport. You say it every morning over breakfast." He speared a piece of melon. "At some point, Marlena, I'm going to stop believing you."

The waitress appeared — young, beautiful, with hair the color of a fox's coat: bright and unnatural and somehow signaling danger. Marlena found herself staring at the girl's wrist, the delicate bone there, the pulse she could almost see beneath the skin.

"Another water, ma'am?"

"Yes. Thank you."

David watched the girl walk away. "She reminds me of you, twenty years ago."

"Don't."

"What? Don't notice that you're still beautiful? Don't notice that you're obviously what everyone else notices first?"

She turned to him, really looked at him. The grey in his beard. The way his eyes had changed. "We can't do this. Not again."

"Not again?" He laughed, dry and sharp. "We never did anything to begin with. That's the problem."

She thought about weddings and funerals, all the moments where they'd almost crossed the line. The drunken embrace after her father's funeral. The hotel room in Chicago. The way he'd held her hand when she told him she was marrying someone else.

"I can't bear it," she said. "Starting over. Starting anything."

"Then don't start. Just continue."

He reached across the table. She looked at his hand, the familiar fingers, the scar from when he'd broken a glass at her college graduation. The papaya juice had spread across her napkin like a bruise. The fox-haired waitress was watching them from the bar.

Marlena took his hand. It wasn't the beginning of anything. It was the middle, and that was somehow more terrifying.