The Last Resort

Elena pressed her **palm** against the hotel window, feeling the condensation cool her skin. Outside, the Cancun sunset burned gold and bruised purple, but she felt nothing. Behind her, Marcus was already three drinks in, his laughter too loud for the empty bar.

"You look like a **zombie**," he'd told her that morning, and he wasn't wrong. She'd been sleepwalking through their marriage for two years, since the miscarriage they never discussed, since her promotion to a job that demanded her soul in exchange for benefits and a parking space.

She turned from the window. Marcus held up a bright green drink. "It's got **spinach**, kale, actual nutrition. You need your **vitamins**, El. You're wasting away."

She wanted to scream that she wasn't wasting away—she was disappearing, and there was a difference. Instead, she sat beside him and ordered tequila.

"My brother's going through it," Marcus said, staring at his phone. "Second divorce. Says he can't **bear** the loneliness anymore."

Elena thought about bears—how they hibernated through dark winters, how mothers could crush their cubs with one misplaced swipe. How some things couldn't be domesticated.

"Marcus," she said. "When we get back..."

He looked up, eyes hopeful.

"I'm not coming back."

The silence stretched. A **palm** frond scraped against the glass.

"Is this because I forgot your birthday?" he asked quietly.

"No. It's because you remembered it, and I still wished I was anywhere else."

She walked to the beach that night, leaving her phone in the room. The ocean roared like something alive. For the first time in years, she felt something stir in her chest—not hope exactly, but the raw, terrifying possibility of it. She was nobody's wife, nobody's employee. Just a woman standing under ancient stars, hungry and awake and finally, terrifyingly alive.