The Last Vitamin

The water from the hotel shower ran lukewarm, then cold, but Maya didn't step out. She let it cascade over her shoulders, watching the translucent liquid swirl down the drain, carrying away the evidence of another night spent in someone else's bed. She'd been running from herself for three months since David left, jumping from city to city, hotel to hotel, like she could outpace the hollow ache in her chest.

The room service had left a small bottle of multivitamins on the nightstand—complimentary, like the bitterness that still sat on her tongue whenever she thought about their last conversation. He'd told her he couldn't bear her restlessness anymore. "You're always looking for the next thing," he'd said, packing his suitcase with the methodical precision of a surgeon. "Some of us want to stay put."

Maya wrapped herself in the rough hotel towel and sat on the edge of the bed. Her laptop was open, the coaxial cable loose from the wall port, dangling like an unanswered question. She was supposed to be at a networking event in forty minutes. Another room full of strangers, another round of cocktails she didn't want, another performance of the confident, successful woman she was supposed to be.

She unscrewed the vitamin bottle. The pills were bright yellow, cheerful and absurd against the grey of everything else. She dry-swallowed one without water, letting it catch in her throat, a small, deliberate discomfort.

Her phone buzzed. David's name lit up the screen.

She stared at it until it stopped, then picked up the loose cable and reconnected it to the wall. The television flickered to life—a nature documentary about bears in Alaska, massive creatures emerging from hibernation, groggy and disoriented, lumbering toward streams where salmon fought their way upstream.

Maya lay back on the pillows, remote in hand, and watched. The water rushed over rocks, time pushing against itself. The bears swam and hunted and slept. And for the first time in three months, she didn't want to be anywhere else.