Uneaten

The charity gala was exactly what Maya had dreaded: a ballroom filled with people performing networking like competitive sport, everyone's iPhone glowing in their palms like some secular prayer candle. She'd left hers in the car—a small rebellion that now felt foolish as she stood alone by the appetizer stations.

The catering staff circulated with silver trays. Spinach tartlets, something involving papaya and prosciutto, champagne flutes catching the chandelier light. Maya took a tartlet because it gave her hands something to do. Her phone vibrated in her clutch—she'd felt it through the leather—but she ignored it. David was probably texting about his flight again. Their relationship had become a series of notifications, missed connections, reminders of obligations neither of them wanted to keep.

"Maya?"

She turned. It was Elena, the woman from David's office. The one he'd mentioned six times in the past month, always casually, always with that practiced nonchalance that Maya had learned meant something entirely different.

"Elena. Hi."

"David said you might not make it." Elena's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "He's outside. Having a smoke. Or whatever you call it when people stand by their cars and check their iPhones like they're waiting for a diagnosis."

Maya set the spinach tartlet on a passing waiter's tray. Her hands were suddenly empty again.

"He told you I might not come?"

"Well." Elena's eyes flicked toward the exit, then back to Maya. Something like pity moved across her face, complicated and uncomfortable. "He said you two were going through... a rough patch. That he wasn't sure you'd want to be here tonight."

The papaya on Elena's plate—wedge after wedge of bright orange flesh—seemed suddenly obscene. A tropical fruit in February, flown thousands of miles to sit uneaten at a charity event for local food insecurity.

"We're not," Maya said. "Going through a rough patch."

"Oh." Elena's gaze dropped to her phone, glowing in her palm. "Then I shouldn't have—"

"No," Maya said. "You shouldn't have."

She walked toward the exit, past the untouched papaya, past the spinach wilting under heat lamps, past all the phones illuminating faces that refused to meet each other's eyes. Outside, the February air bit her bare arms. David stood by his car, phone in hand, its light casting his face in blue.

He looked up. "Maya. You came."

She didn't say anything. Just got in her car and drove away, leaving her phone still vibrating in the clutch on the passenger seat, its screen lighting up the darkness with messages she would never read.