What We Don't Say

The spinach had been stuck between Miranda's front teeth for twenty minutes, and Thomas still hadn't told her.

They sat across from each other in their Brooklyn apartment, the remains of a salad dinner wilting between them. Outside, the first storm of autumn rattled the windowpanes. Miranda was talking about her day—something about a merger, a colleague named Greg who made inappropriate jokes, how exhausted she was all the time now. Thomas nodded at the right intervals, watched that green fleck flash in and out of view with every word, every smile.

He wondered what it meant that he couldn't say something so simple. Something kind.

The television flickered and died. Cable outage again. Their building's infrastructure was crumbling, much like everything else between them. Miranda fell silent, the sudden quiet filling the room like water.

"There's nothing to watch," she said.

"We could talk."

She laughed, but it was sharp. "About what, Thomas? About how you haven't looked me in the eyes for three months? About how I come home to an apartment that feels like a hotel room? About whatever it is you're not telling me?"

Lightning fractured the sky, a sudden violent stroke that illuminated everything—her drawn face, his own hollow expression in the darkened window, the small green thing he still hadn't mentioned.

"There's something in your teeth," he said.

Miranda stilled. She touched her lower lip, found the spinach, wiped it away. And then she started crying, these terrible quiet tears, and he realized she wasn't crying about the spinach. She was crying because he'd finally told her the truth about something small, which meant he'd been capable of telling her all along.

Through the window, something moved in the alley below—a fox, sleek and clever, navigating the urban wilderness, turning its head toward their light before slipping away into darkness. Thomas watched it go, understanding with terrible clarity that he was about to do the same.

"I think," Miranda said, wiping her face, "that we should stop pretending."

The storm broke open. Rain lashed against the glass, washing everything clean.