The Last Goodbye

Maya hadn't felt the urge to cry in three years, not since the day Marcus walked out with nothing but a cardboard box and that damn leather jacket. But standing in the bathroom of her forty-third floor apartment, staring at her reflection in the mirror—dark circles under her eyes like bruises, her hair falling flat against her skull—she felt something crack open inside her chest.

She was a corporate zombie now, moving through presentations and quarterly reviews with a smile that never reached her eyes. Her boss had called her into his office yesterday, that bullish posture of his taking up half the room as he explained why her promotion was being delayed. "You're valuable, Maya, but we need to see more fire. More hunger."

More hunger. She'd stopped eating meals weeks ago, surviving on coffee and whatever vending machine snacks she could grab between meetings.

She reached for the television remote, the cable dangling from the wall where it had been ripped halfway out during her last drunken attempt at intimacy—with herself, with the memory of someone who used to hold her like she was something precious. The screen flickered to life, showing some nature documentary about bulls charging through Spanish streets, the crowd roaring like they wanted blood.

Marcus had loved these shows. He'd sit on her couch, running his fingers through her hair when it was still thick, still dark, still worth touching. "You're too much in your head," he'd whisper against her neck. "Someday you'll wake up and wonder where the years went."

She was waking up now.

Maya turned off the television. The silence in her apartment was absolute, the kind that made you hear your own heartbeat like a stranger in the room. She walked to the window and looked out at the city below—thousands of people, thousands of stories, and she was just one more ghost drifting through them.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. Marcus.

She stared at his name glowing on the screen, and for the first time in three years, Maya didn't feel dead. She felt something else—something raw and terrified and entirely alive. She picked up the phone.