The Last Orange Sunset
Mara stood on the balcony of her corner office, watching the sky bleed orange as the sun died behind the Chicago skyline. Another day survived at Sterling & Chase, another evening of answering emails that could wait until morning, another night of returning to an apartment that echoed with everything she and David hadn't said to each other in months.
The migraine had been brewing since lunch—a sharp, sudden lightning strike behind her left eye that made fluorescent lights feel like interrogation. She'd taken the ibuprofen her doctor prescribed, the one that came with warnings about dependency and liver damage, but sometimes you needed something to take the edge off the relentless gray of spreadsheet warfare and boardroom battles.
Her phone buzzed. David again. Probably asking if she'd be home for dinner, probably pretending everything was fine, probably avoiding the conversation they'd been circling since New Year's.
Mara set her phone on the railing and looked out at Lake Michigan in the distance. She thought about her brother's wedding last summer, how she'd spent half the reception crying in the bathroom while her mother asked through the door if she was okay. She'd ended up swimming laps in the hotel pool at midnight, the chlorine stinging her eyes, moving through the water until her arms burned and her thoughts dissolved into rhythm and exhaustion.
She missed that clarity now—the way swimming forced everything down to breath and stroke, the way the water held you up even when you were sure you'd sink.
The orange light was fading, giving way to that precarious hour between day and night where the world felt suspended. Her phone buzzed again. This time she picked it up.
"I'm not coming home tonight," she said, when David answered.
The silence stretched between them, charged and waiting.
"Okay," he said finally.
No argument. No question. That was the problem, she realized. They'd stopped fighting weeks ago, and somewhere along the way, that was worse than the fighting.
She watched as the last of the orange disappeared from the sky, leaving only the glow of city lights and the distant rumble of thunder moving in from the west. A storm was coming. Maybe it was exactly what she needed.