Best New Fiction: What I Eat in a Day by Rosie Accola

What I Eat in a Day

by Rosie Accola

My therapist says it’s unhealthy for me to keep telling the internet what I eat. She uses words like compulsive and attention-seeking, but I have to tell someone.

8:25 AM

1/2 a cinnamon roll with miso caramel glaze; a large iced Americano with oat milk and vanilla.

In the coffee shop, I know I look like shit. My hair is greasy, lank pale strips frame my face. I haven’t slept in weeks. I’m wearing Marci’s coat, the army-green one. It’s too tight around the shoulders. I have to suck in to zip it up.

Coffee shops are a good place to be surrounded by normal people. The winter light is bright as it cuts through the glass storefront, shining onto a perturbed man wearing a fleece vest over a long-sleeved shirt. A group of runners is clustered near the door, cheeks pink from the cold as they lean forward to stretch. It’s Tuesday.

Another wave of exhaustion hits me, followed by a wave of nausea. I need to brush my teeth.

When I turn to leave, Emily’s voice cuts through the crowd.

“Maeve! Hey!”

To be known is to be loved, but I wish my ex didn’t work at the only coffee shop in town I actually like.

As I approach the counter, Emily’s face transforms—the soft, helpful grimace I’ve come to know well over the past two months.

“Hey, Emily,” I cough. It’s the first time I’ve spoken out loud all day. My voice sounds hoarse.

She drums on the countertop, “What can I getcha?”

“I’ll have an iced americano and…” my eyes drift over to the plastic pastry case, “Whatever that cinnamon roll is.”

“Miso caramel, Jesse made ‘em. You’ll love it.” Emily taps on the iPad in front of her. When I reach for my wallet, she waves me away.

“It’s on the house. We’ve missed you, dude.”

My voice catches in my throat; I can feel the hot tears pressing against the backs of my eyeballs. I blink twice and swallow, I’m not exactly in the position to refuse free food.

“Thanks.”

“So, how have you been, man?” Emily dips down below the counter and scoops ice into a plastic cup.

“I’ve been okay.”

“I realize that’s kind of a loaded question, I mean, I heard about Marci,” as Emily pops back up, she studies my face.

“Yeah, it’s…” I try to stuff my hands into my pockets, the fabric digs around my elbows like a tourniquet.

“I mean, I think about her every time I wear a helmet!” Emily tamps down the espresso. I don’t have the heart to correct her as the machine rumbles to life.

The helmet didn’t do anything. One of her ribs punctured her lung and her lung collapsed. They were so focused on trying to fix that the intern didn’t catch the internal bleeding. She bled out on the table. my hands go numb as if I don’t replay this exact scenario for hours each night:

Marci swipes right on Maeve.

Maeve and Marci go on a 72-hour first date.

Insert one year of dyke bliss.

To kick off one year and one month, Maeve considers asking Marci to move in with her.

While riding her bike at night, Marci gets hit by a drunk driver.

Maeve rushes to the hospital.

Marci dies.

I was touched when Marci first asked me to be her emergency contact, it felt like a domestic milestone. Never mind that, in Marci’s words, she was a “mega orphan,” with no family left—the only child of only children. She didn’t need family, she has me.

Emily slides the Americano across the bar to me. I blink twice, Emily is scrutinizing me. I wonder if there’s a stain on my shirt.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, no. I’m fine.”

“Well, you let me know if you need anything.” Emily slots the cinnamon roll into a brown paper bag. I grab my drink in one hand and the bag in the other, running out the door before I can reassure her.

Outside, I stuff the cinnamon roll into my mouth like I’m trying to muffle a scream. Clots of caramelized sugar stick to the roof of my mouth as I walk down the street.

12:15 PM

A ham sandwich with mustard, lettuce and sharp cheddar. 1 clementine, peeled. 1 orange seltzer water leftover from the day before.

People give you a lot of food when someone dies. It’s like all their discomfort congeals into an emotionally repressed casserole; I’m sorry for your loss drowned by cream of mushroom soup, half a can of green beans, baked at 450 for an hour before topping with crunchy onions.

In the weeks following Marci’s funeral, my refrigerator filled up: ham sliders on Hawaiian rolls with a honey mustard, chicken salad with almonds and rotund purple grapes, enchiladas topped with homemade red sauce, pasta bakes broiled in layers of mozzarella cheese. At first, it was nice, feeding myself was one less thing I had to do. I could barely shower. I took long, evasive naps, sleeping for 12 hours at a time. My mom woke me up pounding on the door of my apartment. When I opened the door, bleary-eyed, she looked like she was about to start crying. After I saw the look on her face, I promised to call her at least once a day.

“And the funeral home did put you on a payment plan, right?” She asks. I balance the phone between my cheek and my shoulder as I open the fridge, snagging one final ham sandwich.

“Yeah, and I guess Mar had some life insurance thing? So that’s supposed to start up next month or something? Someone called me about it, I have to call them back.”

“Maeve Ellen, don’t procrastinate on these things! This is important!”

“I know. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

I flop onto my couch, balancing my lunch on the arm. I brush a pile of unpaid bills off the coffee table to make room for my work laptop.

“You can’t keep saying that! It’s been two months of tomorrows! Listen, I know you’re hurting, but at some point, you have to start taking the steps to move on.”

“Mom,” I hiss. It comes out sharper than I wanted it to.

“Now, don’t start twisting my words. You know Marcella wouldn’t want to see you like this.”

When I log back in, there’s a message from my manager:

Katrina: Hey, Maeve. This is an urgent project. The client has requested we send the ad proofs by EOD.

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“Nothing, just a work thing.”

“Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Call the life insurance place today, please.”

“Sure, mom.”

I hang up and zoom in on the proof. My job offers no benefits, so I’ve been working extra hours to make up the time I missed for Marcie’s funeral. It’s mindless, soothing work, to stare at poreless faces floating above sans-serif text.

I note when the names of serums and eye creams are supposed to be hyphenated or capitalized.

I write the copy for an Instagram reel about a lychee jelly face mask, annoyed but grateful that SoftTouch hasn’t outsourced all their writing to AI.

My living room is drafty, so I grab one of Marci’s blankets off the back of the couch, a faded fleece blanket covered in light blue snowflakes, the one she’d had since she was a kid. I bring the hem of the blanket up to my nose and sniff. It still smells like her: bergamot and smoke, the faintest hint of nag champa incense. My throat starts to close up as my laptop dings.

During a team meeting about Q2 deliverables, I keep my camera off. Marci’s cat, I mean, my cat, curls up next to me. Russell looks like a baby werewolf. He has stripy brown fur that billows out around his squished face like a well-loved plush lion. His Swiffer-sized tail brushes over my keyboard.

“Russell, no!”

He nibbles on the corner of my work laptop that I don’t legally own.

“Maeve, did you say something?” Katrina asks.

I unmute, “No, sorry! It was just my cat.”

“Well, since we’ve got you on the mic, do you have any ideas for the Q2 creative?”

“Um,” my palms start to sweat. I’m terrible at being put on the spot. “Maybe something about…” I glance around my living room, Russell yowls. “Harmony with nature! The relationship between humans and animals, um, in an increasingly digitized world?”

Katrina’s poreless face lights up. I even see a millimeter of movement from her forehead, “Amazing. Maeve, if you keep this up, you’ll be an FTE in no time.”

“Great.”

Before Marci died, I was planning on quitting SoftTouch. She was supposed to help me apply to culinary school. There are a lot of things we were supposed to do: go to Europe, buy a new rug, get Russell’s teeth cleaned, have actual sex on a beach to see if it’s better or worse than the cocktail.

Without Marci, I feel frozen. Russell nudges my knee with his head. I scoot my laptop over so he can rest his weird muppet feet on my knee. He looks up at me and blinks in silent understanding.

“I know you miss her too.”

I gently move Russell off my lap so I can grab another seltzer water. When I open the fridge, its a brutal reminder: I’m only one person.

3:45 PM

1 handful of saltines with peanut butter.

Between calls, I lounge in the hall near the pantry, eating saltines out of the plastic sleeve.

I want to achieve a calorie deficit, consider it a shorthand for happiness. I wedge a saltine into an open jar of peanut butter. The saltine cracks in the corner.

In the other room, I hear a thud.

“Russell, if you’re scratching the couch again, I swear to god…”

Russell sits on the mantel with his tail tucked around his paws. Below him, the cardboard box containing what’s left of Marci spills open onto the rug. “Shit!” Russel’s face is coated in a thin layer of ash. He licks his lips.

“Russell! No!” I yowl, lunging across the room. My knees skid along the rug. I feel something crunchy beneath them, almost like pebbles in a sandy beach. I realize it’s Marci and my eyes fill up with tears. I start sobbing, loud guttural sobs. Snot drips onto the carpet as I wave my arms around frantically trying to sweep up what’s left of my girlfriend.

“Fuck! Marci, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so bad at this. I’m so fucking bad at this, I can’t do this without you.”

My laptop dings. I ignore it, grabbing handfuls of Marci letting it sift through my fingers. Then I see it. Hanging off the corner of the box top, there’s a small piece of blistered flesh. It almost looks like beef jerky.

I grab it and tuck it in my pocket.

I spend the rest of the afternoon carefully trying to shove Marci back into her shoe box.

“Maybe I should’ve gotten an urn.”

I wrap the wedge of Marci up in saran wrap like it’s leftover pizza and stick it in the fridge, feeling guilty as I close the door.

“This is what you wanted, right?”

As always, it’s silent in my apartment, but I’m desperate for an answer.

7:30 PM

Marci. Angel hair pasta, capers with a drizzle of lemon. Champagne.

I grew up Catholic.

The body of Christ always tasted so flat and stale, like a saltine someone forgot about.

Marci wasn’t like that, when she pressed her torso against the bridge of my nose—warm and soft as a balaclava in winter, writhing above me, I knew I could die content.

I break angel hair noodles in half as I set the water to a rolling boil, ignoring my bullshit resolution to eat less carbs.

I uncork a bottle of champagne we had wedged in the freezer for a special occasion, taking a swig directly from the bottle. The bubbles make my eyes water.

While the pasta boils, I coat her in a thin layer of flour and panko bread crumbs, placing her squarely in the center of a shallow pool of oil.

I drain the pasta, adding a hunk of butter to the noodles and swirling them around.

Feeling a little humiliated, I flip the meat to the other side so it browns, then I drain the excess oil, patting it dry with a paper towel.

I lay Marci to rest on a nest of angel hair pasta, placing a singular caper on top. My chest aches as I sculpt the perfect bite, swirling a forkful of pasta, piercing the meat, placing it carefully into my open mouth.

I lean back against the counter, blinking back tears. I lick my lips.

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Rosie Accola is a queer guido and poet who works in health care. They published their first novel with Bullshit Lit in 2025, about a wily group of queer guidos trying to film a reality show. You can find them on Instagram @rosieaccola.