Paradise, with Side Effects

Maya balanced her tray on the chaise lounge beside the infinity **pool**, the desert stretching golden beyond its edge. The resort's brochure had promised rejuvenation, but at forty-two, she wasn't sure what needed rejuvenating—her marriage, her career, or merely her vitamin D levels.

"Your drink, ma'am." The bartender set down something violently **orange** with a paper umbrella. "Sunset Cooler."

She checked her phone again. No message from David. Their flight had landed four hours ago. He'd chosen the rental car counter over the first-class lounge, said he'd meet her at check-in. Now she was nursing drinks that cost more than her first car's monthly payment, watching couples play grab-ass in the water like they'd invented desire.

A man in a linen suit dropped his room key. She watched him bend to retrieve it, the sun flashing off his silver **hat** band. He was older—maybe fifty, the age where men finally learned to listen. He caught her eye and smiled. Not a predatory smile, but something worse: the recognition that she was alone, readable, disappointingly human.

She looked away, digging her fingernails into her **palm**. The pain was grounding. Better than thinking about the text she'd found on David's phone three weeks ago: *Can we talk?* From a colleague named Jenna who sent too many emails after hours.

The doctor's words echoed in her head: *You're not depressed, Maya. You're just depleted.* He'd prescribed **vitamin** supplements, therapy apps, a "wellness protocol." What he couldn't prescribe was the certainty that the life you'd built wasn't a mistake you'd made in your thirties.

Her phone buzzed. David: *Car trouble. Be there soon.*

She finished her drink, the orange syrup coating her throat like artificial sunset. The older man was gone. In the distance, thunderheads gathered over the mountains—April in Arizona, when winter finally surrendered to something warmer. She ordered another drink and decided not to think about what she knew. Some deficiencies, you learned to live with.