Red Delicious
by Loree Stark
She stands up. She’s holding an apple.
As she tells me why she’s leaving, I stare at the apple—the last piece of evidence that she’s doubting her cause. It hops effortlessly back and forth between her open hands, but her fingers shake in the tiniest bit every time the red skin meets her fingertips. I take this as a good sign.
Her words are flying past me, a whiz of syllables like a language I have never encountered. Moneytimealcohol. My own fingers are wrapped tightly around a coffee mug, a blue porcelain vessel with cracks climbing up and over the rim. I stare into the coffee, light brown with milk and sugar, and briefly wonder what it would be like to swim in an ocean of instant cappuccino.
As I look up at her—a mess of red cheeks, fighting words, and an ongoing blur of Red Delicious—I think of the things I want to say. I look to my coffee instead.
She continues tossing the apple, her fingers growing less shaky, her words less painful, her cheeks less red. I think, this is a language I can understand. My mouth opens without me consciously urging it to. As I begin to counter, I look up to see her back, and the apple, solid on the table.