Pyramid of Ash

The resort in Cancun was exactly the kind of place Elena swore she'd never return to — all-inclusive drinks and pyramid schemes of happiness sold to people who didn't know they were being sold anything. But here she was, thirty-eight and attending her ex-husband's third wedding, nursing a tequila that tasted like regret and artificial lime.

"You still read palms?"

Mark's voice behind her. She hadn't heard him approach, which was unnerving — he was the one who'd taught her to pay attention to footsteps, to read a room before entering it. Back when they were both climbing the corporate pyramid at that consulting firm in Chicago, before he chose the partnership track and she chose to walk away.

"Sometimes," she said, turning to face him. His hair was thinner at the temples. He wore the wedding ring of his second marriage. "For tourists mostly. They want to believe their futures are written in something other than spreadsheets."

"And are they?" He gestured toward her empty chair. "May I?"

She almost said no. Almost remembered how it felt when he chose that promotion over her, how he'd called it "just a business decision" as if their three years together had been a quarterly report he could summarize in a bullet point. But she nodded, watched him sit, and wondered why some friendships — or whatever this was — refused to die.

He held out his hand, palm up. The lifeline was still deep, the heart line still broken in the same place she'd noticed seven years ago in a hotel room in Atlanta, when they'd both had too much to drink and he'd traced the lines of her hand instead of answering her questions about where this was going.

"I don't see anything different," she said, touching his fingers briefly. "You still have the same future you had back then."

"And what's that?"

"Reaching the top of whatever pyramid you're climbing. Alone."

Mark laughed, but his eyes didn't. "Maybe some people are meant to build things alone."

"Or maybe," she said, signaling the waiter for another round, "they're just scared to find out what happens when someone else sees all the way to the bottom of them."

The first palm frond fell just as the reception began, a silent witness to all the things they still weren't saying.