What the Tide Left Behind

The papaya sat on the counter, its skin freckled with brown like an old woman's hands. Three days past ripe, exactly how Elena used to eat them. Not him. He preferred them green and sharp, the way his mother had taught him to slice them in San Juan, with salt and a squeeze of lime. But Elena—Elena had loved them sweet and soft, scooping out the flesh with a silver spoon until only the black seeds remained, clicking like teeth in her mouth.

That was six months ago. The apartment still smelled like her vanilla-and-tobacco perfume, or maybe he just imagined it did. His therapist called it "olfactory hallucination, a common grief response." He called it haunting.

"You're swimming again," Marcus had said last night, watching him stare at nothing over whiskey. "In your head. You go under and I can't reach you."

Marcus was wrong. He wasn't swimming. Swimming implied movement, progress through water. He was drowning—still, silent, weighted down by things he couldn't say. Not about Elena. Marcus didn't know about Elena. Marcus didn't know about the summer in Puerto Rico, the way papaya juice had dripped down Elena's chin, how she'd laughed and kissed him sticky-sweet under the coconut palms. How she'd promised to leave her husband. How she'd disappeared instead.

The dog—Elena's dog, a neurotic rescue named Stella who hated men—scratched at the balcony door. She'd been sleeping at the foot of his bed for three weeks. He'd never wanted a dog. He'd never wanted complications. But here he was, walking another man's dog, eating another man's lover's favorite fruit, letting another man call him baby in the dark while he pretended not to be somewhere else.

Stella whined. He opened the door. The night air smelled of salt and exhaust. Below, the ocean glittered like broken glass.

"Come on," he said, clipping the leash. "Let's go swimming."

Not in the water. He didn't swim anymore. But he could walk along the edge where the waves lapped at the sand, where it was safe, where you could feel the ocean without letting it take you. Stella pulled toward the beach, her claws clicking on the sidewalk, and he followed, thinking of papaya seeds, of promises made and broken, of all the ways you could love someone and never really touch them at all.

The tide was coming in. He took off his shoes. Stella waded in, barking at the waves. He stood at the water's edge, letting the cold foam lick his ankles, wondering how long you could pretend to be happy before the ocean finally pulled you under for real.