Terminal Burnout

The conference room smelled like stale coffee and desperation. Sarah sat across from me, legs crossed, wearing that sharp little smile—the one that made her dangerous. A fox in designer glasses. We'd been sleeping together for three months, and still she looked at me like I was a puzzle she hadn't quite solved yet.

"You're not listening, Miles."

I was. I just didn't care. Johnson was droning on about quarterly projections, a bullish monologue that went nowhere. My soul had left my body somewhere around the third slide. I was zombie-walking through another Tuesday, dead inside and animated only by caffeine and resentment.

Later, in her car, Sarah traced the fading orange bruise on my jaw. "He get you again?"

"Steven has an expressive management style."

She laughed, but her eyes stayed serious. "We're too old for this, Miles. This whole thing. The job, the affair, pretending like any of it matters."

"It pays the mortgage."

"Does it?" Her thumb pressed against my wrist, finding my pulse. "Feel that? That's you. Still alive. Somewhere under the zombie routine, there's a person who used to give a shit."

I looked at her—really looked. The fox who'd somehow become the only real thing in my hollow life. The orange sunset bled through the windshield, painting us in colors that felt too honest for a Tuesday in a parking garage.

"I could leave him," she said. "The job, the city. You could come with. We could stop pretending to be people we're not."

The offer hung there—impossible and necessary. A fork in a road I hadn't realized I was still walking.

"Zombies don't run away, Sarah. They just rot."

She kissed me then, teeth catching my lip like she wanted to prove me wrong. And for the first time in years, something in my dead chest stirred.

"Bullshit," she whispered against my mouth. "You're still here. That counts for something."