Signal Lost

The iphone lay face down on the mahogany desk, its screen pulsing with unread messages Mara refused to check. Outside her thirty-fifth floor office, the city sprawled like a circuit board of lights and ambition. She hadn't called her mother back in three weeks. Work had become a pyramid of obligations—her boss at the apex, middle management like herself supporting the weight, interns crushed at the bottom.

The papaya sat on her desk, a concession to her nutritionist's gentle warnings about burnout. Mara pierced its orange flesh with her fork, the juice staining her fingers. It tasted like something she couldn't quite place—maybe the tropical vacation she'd cancelled twice, or the brightness her life used to have before everything became spreadsheets and quarterly projections.

Her phone buzzed again. This time she flipped it over. A text from Ethan: 'Coming over. We need to talk.'

Ethan. The man who'd brought his cat, a raggedy thing named Pyramid because of its uncanny ability to stack objects into precarious towers, into their apartment three years ago. The cat who now waited at home, probably asleep in the patch of afternoon sun that hit their perfectly neutral beige sofa.

The papaya suddenly tasted like ash.

She remembered finding Ethan's phone that morning, face up on the nightstand. A message she wasn't supposed to see: 'Can't wait to see you Friday.' Not from a colleague. Not from his sister. From someone named Sofia, with a heart emoji that made Mara's chest cave in on itself.

Now her own iphone was demanding her attention. Ethan was ten minutes away.

Mara stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the floor. The papaya remained half-eaten on her desk. She grabbed her phone and deleted his text without responding, her thumb hovering over the number she should have called weeks ago—her mother, her sister, anyone who would remind her that pyramids could crumble, that companies could survive without her, that she was allowed to pick up the pieces and build something new.

Instead, she walked to the window and watched the traffic below, tiny cars carrying people toward homes they loved, or away from ones they'd outgrown. The cat would be hungry. She would go home and feed it, and tonight, when Ethan arrived expecting her to be the woman who always forgave, she would finally, finally, surprise them both.