Signal Lost at the Orange Hour

The hotel pool was empty at 5 AM, which was exactly why Mara chose it. She sat on a lounge chair in her bathrobe, the Ethernet cable stretched from her room across the balcony like a technological umbilical cord. Her boss had insisted she join the quarterly review from Hawaii, even though she'd technically been on unpaid leave since Thomas left.

"Can you hear us now?" Rob's voice crackled through her laptop speakers. "You keep freezing."

"The cable's loose," Mara lied. It wasn't the cable. It was that she couldn't make herself care about Q3 projections when her shared apartment of seven years now held only half their belongings. Thomas had taken the furniture. She'd kept the plants, which were slowly dying despite her careful attention.

She reached into her bag and pulled out an orange, peeling it with trembling fingers. The citrus scent cut through the chlorine smell. Four sections. She'd eat one section every time she had to speak.

"Mara? Your take on the streaming strategy?"

She ate a section. "I think we're over-indexing on youth demographics. Our core audience is aging with us."

Silence. Then Rob: "That's... actually brilliant. We should discuss more when you're back."

Another section. She wasn't coming back. The severance package would last six months if she was careful. She could finally write that novel she'd been talking about since before she met Thomas.

"The pool service is starting," she said, seeing the groundskeeper approach with a net. "I have to go."

"Wait—"

She closed her laptop, ending the call. The cable lay on the concrete like a dead snake. She finished the orange, sticky juices on her fingers, and watched the sun rise over the water. For the first time in months, she didn't check her phone to see if he'd texted.

The signal had been lost for a long time. She was just finally noticing.