The Last Wave

The ocean was darker than usual today, the waves gathering like old grievances. Elena stood at the shoreline, her iPhone clutched in her hand, its screen glowing with the text message she'd read twelve times already. 'Can we talk?' it said, from David—sent twenty minutes ago, while she'd been swimming laps in the hotel pool, trying to outrun the knot in her chest.

She'd been running from this conversation for three weeks, ever since she'd found the receipt in his jacket pocket. Dinner for two at La Maison, on the night he'd claimed to be working late. A palm tree rustled behind her, its fronds whispering against the breeze, and she remembered how David had once pressed a palm leaf into her hand on their first trip to Mexico, saying it was good luck. That had been four years ago.

Now, her phone vibrated again. 'I know you saw me.'

Elena watched the water rise toward her feet, cold and indifferent. She wasn't running anymore—not from the truth, not from the hollow feeling that had taken up residence beneath her ribs. She thought about the way David had looked at her last night across the dinner table, his eyes sliding away from hers whenever she asked about his day. The way he'd started keeping his phone face down.

She'd spent so many years swimming through their relationship's shallows, refusing to dive deeper, afraid of what she might find. Now she was drowning in it.

The message came again: 'I'm at the bar. Please come talk.'

Elena looked at her phone one last time, then turned and walked toward the hotel, her bare feet leaving prints in the sand that the ocean would soon erase. Some conversations couldn't be escaped, only survived.