The Last Signal

The old friend's name still appeared on Maya's iPhone, frozen in time from three years ago—last contact: the day before the funeral. She'd meant to delete it, meant to block the number, meant to do a lot of things. Instead, she'd carried him like a phantom limb, an ache that wouldn't heal.

Now here she was, thirty-two and drinking overpriced wine at a gallery opening where no one looked at the art and everyone looked at each other, their faces illuminated by the glow of their own devices. Maya caught her reflection in a darkened window—dark hair chopped short after it started falling out from stress, eyes that aged five years in twelve months. She looked like everyone else here: beautiful, hollow, performing aliveness.

"Maya?"

The voice stopped her cold. She turned slowly, already knowing.

James. Standing there in a tweed hat that should've looked ridiculous but somehow made him look more like himself than she remembered. His hair was thinner at the temples. Lines around eyes that still crinkled when he smiled, tentative now.

"I heard you left corporate," he said, not meeting her eyes. "Working at that nonprofit now."

"News travels."

"Your mom mentioned it. At... you know."

The silence stretched, thick with everything they hadn't said. The argument that ended their friendship—the one about ambition and selling out and what they owed the world—felt suddenly so small. So young.

"We're all zombies now, aren't we?" Maya said softly. "Walking around, eating each other's brains, calling it networking."

James laughed, startled. "God, I missed you."

The simplicity of it cracked something open in her chest. Not forgiveness—not yet. But the possibility of it.

"My phone died," she said, pulling the dead iPhone from her clutch. "No escape."

"Good," James said. "Let's get coffee. Actual coffee. And talk about everything except work."

"Except the existential dread of our thirties?"

"Especially that."

As they walked out into the cool evening air, Maya realized she hadn't felt this alive in years. The zombie could still wake up. There was still time.