The Last Supper by the Sea

Emma sat on the balcony of the honeymoon suite they'd never booked, watching her husband Daniel unpack his vitamins from the bathroom cabinet. He'd brought the entire regiment—D3 for bone health, B-complex for stress, magnesium for sleep. Each orange bottle clicked against the marble counter as he lined them up, a tiny army of wellness in a marriage that had been sick for years.

"You know," Daniel said, not turning around, "the doctor says I'm deficient in everything. Even optimism."

Emma smiled, a thin and fragile thing. Below them, the infinity pool blurred into the sea, and she watched guests swimming lazy laps through water that looked like liquid glass. Their honeymoon was ending—her idea, this trip to the very resort where they should have come three years ago, before the miscarriage, before the silences grew comfortable, before she learned to sleep curled around the empty space in their bed.

"Come swimming," she said suddenly. "It's midnight and we're leaving tomorrow."

He hesitated, then nodded. They descended to the pool in matching hotel robes, the tropical air heavy and sweet. The moonlight caught the palm fronds overhead, casting shadows like broken fingers across the water. They slipped in silently, two ghosts haunting their own marriage.

The water was shockingly cold. Daniel surfaced first, droplets running down his face like tears. "Emma," he said, and she heard it then—the question he'd been asking for six months without speaking it.

She swam to him, her body remembering how to move toward his across the water. When she reached him, she pressed her palm against his chest, feeling the heartbeat she'd fallen asleep to for seven years. "I'm not leaving you," she said. "I'm leaving us. This version of us. The one that died and we kept propping up at the dinner table."

He didn't flinch. Just nodded, like he'd been waiting for permission to grieve. They treaded water there, suspended in the warm Mexican night, not touching anymore, not swimming away either. Just two people learning how to be strangers again before they could figure out how to be something else.

"We should have come here years ago," Daniel said quietly.

"Yes," she agreed, watching an orange glow creep over the horizon—dawn coming to claim them both. "But we're here now. That has to count for something."