The Last Text

Sarah was running on three hours of sleep and expired hope. Her iPhone screen glowed at 2 AM—another unread message from Mark, the friend she'd been slowly losing for months.

"You're becoming a zombie," he'd told her two weeks ago, watching her scroll through work emails during dinner. "The job is eating you alive."

She'd laughed it off, checked her notifications, finished her wine alone. Now she lay in bed, the blue light washing over her face, thumbs hovering over the keyboard. Mark had sent a photo earlier: him swimming in the ocean at sunset, arms wide, grinning like someone who remembered what joy felt like.

The caption had read simply: "Remember this?"

She did. Three years ago, they'd been that couple everyone hated—happy, adventurous, actually laughing at each other's jokes. Then came the promotion that demanded 70-hour weeks, the apartment upgrade, the slow erosion of everything that made her feel alive.

Her therapist called it "success-induced dissociation." Mark called it disappearing.

Sarah's thumb hovered over the call button. Instead, she typed: "Congratulations on the promotion. You deserve it."

Liar. She wanted to type: "I miss us. I miss me."

The bubbles appeared, then disappeared. Then: "Thanks. Taking the new job in Seattle. Flight's Tuesday."

Seattle. She stared at the word until it blurred. He was leaving, and she was still choosing.

The zombie comment echoed. Maybe that's what she was now—alive but not living, moving through days that blurred together, checking her phone for messages from ghosts while the actual people slipped away.

Sarah put the phone face down on the nightstand. Outside, rain tapped against the window. Somewhere in the darkness, Mark was probably packing boxes, maybe swimming in the freedom she'd never allowed herself.

She closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she'd request that meeting with HR. Tomorrow, she'd choose differently.

But tonight, she just let herself feel it—the grief of becoming a stranger to the person she loved, and the hollow realization that she'd been the one to walk away first, one unread message at a time.