Disconnected

The charging cable lay frayed between them like a dead snake, its white wire exposed where she'd bent it too many times in frustration. Elena hadn't replaced it. Instead, she'd let the battery drain to nothing, a choice that felt like the only power she still had.

"You haven't called," Marcus said, not looking up from his phone. His thumb scrolled automatically, muscle memory from years of avoidance.

"My iPhone died. I told you."

"Three weeks ago?"

She watched his palm resting on the table — the hand that used to trace her spine in the mornings before everything became about efficiency and optimization and whatever corporate bullshit he'd swallowed whole. Now that same hand only held devices, poured drinks, pushed her away.

"I started playing padel," she said. It wasn't true, not really. She'd gone twice with Sarah from accounting, hated the enclosed court, the hollow thwack of the ball, the forced intimacy of a sport designed for people who still believed in things.

Marcus laughed. "Since when do you play racquet sports?"

"Since I needed to feel something besides this." She gestured at nothing, at everything. "You know Sarah's husband left her? Just sent a text and disappeared. Like switching off a device."

"That's different." Finally, he looked at her. "We're not disappearing. We're just ... busy. The merger's been —"

"The merger's always been something. For two years."

His phone buzzed. He checked it reflexively.

Elena stood up. She'd charge her phone later. She'd call Sarah. She'd find something else. But this — this ritual of disappointment, this scheduled unhappiness — ended tonight.

"Where are you going?"

"Out. To buy a cable. To live."

She didn't look back. The door clicked shut behind her, and for the first time in months, she didn't check her pocket to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything.