Photogenic Apples

She hadn’t broken up with Troy. Just a two week break. That’s why this was different. Why the day one pain, the knife in her heart, the thing cutting from the warmth under her belly to the cold in her throat, wasn’t pulling her to pieces.

Jennifer knew about that pain. Knew about breaking up. About not being in love.

She wasn’t in love. Never had been.

But at the Libertador Street market, where he’d taken her, where she was now apart from him, she went to the grocers’ stall. The same Phillips behind the counter, reading a smartpaper flimsy titled Intermediate Guitar Practice on the outer sheet.

The first apple on the side of the basket, wasn’t quite perfect, so Jennifer selected the second. The apple’s skin made her fingertips tremble, just for a moment. The first time she’d held one of these apples, Troy had given it to her.

A moment wasn’t long enough to get to her face. She smiled brightly at the Phillips, holding up the apple. “Just this, please.”

“Ten cents for one of my favourite customers,” the Phillips said, putting down the flimsy to tap at the back of the counter. “How’s your boyfriend doing?”

Jennifer froze. Just for a moment. Another moment. She didn’t let it move outside her heart. Kept the ache and pain and confusion inside her heart, and outside her heart, she simply dotted her purse onto the stall’s payment point when it lit up.

She smiled. A smile always worked. “Didn’t think you’d recognize me, without him.”

“Your sisters don’t know how good the McCarthy Whelps are, they buy the Rose Galas. Why you think that is?”

He’d gestured at each as he spoke. The McCarthy Whelps were the bittersweet little apples Troy had bought her, the Rose Galas… “They look more like a storybook apple,” Jennifer said, instantly.

“Huh.” The Phillips cocked his head to a side.

It was the truth. Troy’s apples were small, barely a fistful. Mottled green and yellow. The other ones were big, red, juicy, shiny. Everything one could hope for in an apple.

“Thanks, sweetie.” Jennifer smiled, lifted the apple, and took a screen-perfect bite out of the side.

With a proprietorial nod, the Phillips said, “Have a great day,” and picked up his flimsy.

Jennfer walked with her eyes shut. Rolling the appleflesh over her tongue, chewing slowly. The bitterness was sharp, poignant, overwhelmed in an instant by a cooling sweetness that built and built and built until it was too intense. There wasn’t anything she could do but take another bite, start it all over again, keep walking.

She wasn’t in love. So the aching hurt in her, the yearning directionless pull in her chest that she knew would turn to sharp agony if she really knew where Troy was, that wasn’t love. Wasn’t hurt from splitting up.

They weren’t split up. It wasn’t breaking up.

It was just that she didn’t think the Phillips would recognize her, without Troy.

Because Jennifer couldn’t recognize herself, without Troy. And that scared the hell out of her.