Palm Lines in the Dark

Her palm was sweating against the phone screen as she refreshed his Instagram again. She'd become something she despised — a digital spy, tracking his movements through geotagged photos and cryptic stories at 2 AM. The office holiday party was in three hours, and she'd have to face him across the punch bowl, pretending her heart wasn't running a marathon every time he looked at her.

Their affair had ended six months ago in this very building. She remembered his office on the 42nd floor, the way he'd read her palm during that late-night deadline crisis, joking about her life line being suspiciously short. They'd laughed, drunk on exhaustion and the thrill of workplace taboo. Now his palm prints seemed to be everywhere — on the coffee maker, the elevator buttons, her own compromised career trajectory.

She should delete the app. Block him. Move on. But she was still running reconnaissance, still collecting intelligence on his new life. The woman in his recent post — hand on his arm at some beach bar — looked like a yoga instructor. Of course she did. Of course he'd upgraded to someone whose palm didn't tremble during performance reviews.

Her phone buzzed. A notification from his account: a new post. Her thumb hovered, that familiar spy's reflex. She could look now, parse the metadata, extract whatever emotional intel her desperate heart needed. Or she could finally stop running this surveillance operation that had become her full-time job.

She deleted Instagram instead. Her palm was still sweating, but for the first time in months, she didn't wipe it on her skirt. She just grabbed her purse and headed for the party, ready to be seen.