The Last Supper

The pill sat on Maya's tongue — a generic **vitamin** D supplement, though she'd stopped believing it would fix anything months ago. She swallowed it dry, watching the morning light fracture across the surface of the hotel **pool** below.

"You're going to take that all week, aren't you?" Elena's voice carried from the balcony doorway. "Still pretending you can supplement your way out of grief?"

Maya didn't turn. Elena had been her **friend** for seventeen years, through college heartbreaks and corporate layoffs and the time Maya's mother died. But this — the death of Maya's marriage, specifically the part where Elena had slept with her husband — this was new territory.

"It's not grief," Maya said finally. "It's arthritis. The doctor said —"

"The doctor said you're thirty-eight and stressed." Elena stepped onto the balcony, closing the sliding door behind her. The humid air pressed between them. "I didn't come all this way for you to lie to me."

"You came because you're guilty."

"I came because you invited me. Remember? The email? 'One last trip, like old times.'"

Maya remembered. She'd sent it three weeks ago, after discovering the texts on David's phone. After Elena had stopped answering her calls. The trip had been Maya's idea — a week at the resort where they'd celebrated their thirtieth birthdays, back when everything still made sense.

She looked at the pool again. A solitary swimmer cut through the water, leaving ripples that expanded and disappeared. "I thought maybe if we came here, I could understand."

"Understand what?"

"Why."

Elena was silent for a long moment. Then: "He was lonely. You were always working. And I —" She stopped. "I was lonely too."

The honesty hit Maya like a physical blow. Not anger, not betrayal, but something smaller and more terrible: recognition. She had been absent. From her marriage, from her friendships. From herself.

The vitamin D tablet sat like a stone in her stomach, useless.

"I'm going for a swim," Maya said. She didn't wait for an answer.