What We Keep

The papaya sat on her counter, untouched, since Leo left. Three weeks of slow decay, the skin growing mottled and soft, like something trying to survive the wrong climate. Maya had bought it because he liked them—liked the way their seeds looked like tiny pearls, liked saying the word with his accent. Now it was just fruit turning to mush in the heat of an unspoken summer.

"You need to eat something," Sarah said, placing a bottle of vitamin D on the table. "Your friend was worried about you."

Maya looked at the orange pills. "He's not my friend anymore."

"That's not what he told me."

Sarah's apartment smelled of cat and old paper. Her goldfish bowl sat on the windowsill, its single inhabitant swimming in endless circles, mouth opening and closing like it was trying to speak. Maya hated that fish. She hated how it kept moving, how it never seemed to learn that the glass was there, how it would hit the same wall over and over again and just turn around and do it again.

"He's dating someone else," Maya said.

"I know."

"And you're still defending him?"

"I'm defending you. From yourself." Sarah opened the papaya with a knife. The flesh inside was still bright, shocking against the rotting exterior. "Look. Some things keep their color even when everything around them's gone wrong."

They ate the papaya standing up, juice running down their wrists. Outside, a fox moved through the garden, its tail flashing like a flame. Maya watched it through the window—how it moved without hesitation, how it knew exactly where it was going, how it belonged to itself in a way she never had.

"Leo called me," Sarah said. "He said you used to have plans. That you were going to open that restaurant. That you were going to be brave."

"That was before."

"Before what? Before he left? Before you decided being hurt was the same thing as being dead?" Sarah's voice cracked. "Maya, you're swimming in circles. That fish has more ambition than you do right now."

The fox disappeared into the hedge. The goldfish hit the glass again.

"Take the vitamins," Sarah said softly. "And call him. Or don't. But stop waiting for someone else to live your life."

The papaya seeds lay scattered on the plate like tiny pearls. Maya thought about restaurants, about bravery, about how sometimes you have to hit the glass a hundred times before you figure out there's another way.

"I still hate that fish," she said, but she took the vitamins.