What Remains in the Water

The papaya sat on the nightstand, already softening at the edges, much like everything else in their marriage. Elena had brought it back from the resort's breakfast bar three days ago, a small act of hoarding that Marcos never noticed. He was too busy by the **pool**, conducting whatever business required him to be on his phone from eight in the morning until midnight, his skin darkening to the color of the fruit beside her bed.

Elena watched him through the sliding glass door, his back turned to her, the orange umbrella casting its shadow across his shoulders. They were supposed to be reconnecting. That was the word Dr. Kessler had used—reconnecting—as if their marriage were simply a loose wire that needed tightening. But Marcos had spent four days at the resort's infinity edge with his back to her, and Elena had spent four days calculating whether the water below was deep enough to hold everything she couldn't say.

"You're going to miss it," she said aloud to the room, picking up the papaya. It yielded to her thumb, leaving a small bruise. "You're going to miss everything."

She cut the fruit open, its flesh the same shocking orange as the sunset Marcos wasn't watching. The seeds were slick and black, like little eyes. She ate standing up, juice running down her chin, thinking about how Marcos used to look at her across a crowded room, how he used to find her hand in the dark. Now he only found her when he needed something—another signature for the papers she'd stopped reading, another appearance at another dinner with people whose names she forgot before the appetizer arrived.

Her phone lit up with a notification: her own workplace's betting **pool** finalizing their predictions about when she and Marcos would finally announce what everyone already knew. She'd placed her own bet—six months ago—on "never." Even then, some part of her had believed it.

Outside, Marcos turned, finally seeing her through the glass. He gestured at his watch, then at the restaurant reservation they were already running late for. His expression was patient, long-suffering, the face of a man who believed he was doing his best.

Elena swallowed the last of the papaya, wiped her chin with the back of her hand, and did not move toward the door. She simply watched him watching her, calculating the distance between where they stood and where the water began, and thinking about how easy it would be to simply let herself fall.