The Last Vitamin on the 43rd Floor

Maya pressed her palm against the cold glass of the 43rd floor window, watching the city below pulse with that Friday-night energy she used to feel. At 34, she'd become what her younger self would have called a zombie — not the undead kind, but something perhaps more tragic: the living-dead of corporate America. She took the vitamin D supplement from her desk drawer, its yellow capsule mocking her with the promise of vitality that supplements never really delivered.

Her hair, once the subject of compliments from strangers and lovers alike, had been pulled into the same severe bun for 1,247 consecutive workdays. She'd stopped wearing the hat her sister gave her last Christmas — a beautiful navy wool thing that made her feel like someone who took impromptu walks in crisp autumn air. That Maya existed only in the margins now, in the spaces between quarterly reports and performance reviews.

"You're still here?" Marcus's voice behind her. He was the only reason she hadn't quit yet. Their affair had begun six months ago in a supply closet, ridiculous and desperate and exactly what she needed to feel something again.

She turned to find him holding two coffees, his tie loosened, that beautiful exhaustion in his eyes that made her stomach do something it hadn't done in years. "Someone has to close the Peterson file."

"Let it rot," he said, setting the coffee on her desk and pulling her into an embrace that smelled of rain and old tobacco and something unmistakably human. "I've been thinking about what you said. About Portland."

"I was joking," she lied.

"Were you?" His palm cradled her face, thumb tracing the line of her jaw. "Because I've got savings. And you've always wanted to open that bookstore."

She laughed, surprised by the tears that came. "I'd be terrible at it. I'm a corporate zombie now, Marcus. I only know how to optimize spreadsheets."

"Zombies can be cured," he whispered against her hair. "Or so I've heard."

The vitamin sat on her desk, forgotten. Tomorrow, she thought, she would wear the hat.