The Last Wave

Maya sat on the balcony of her beachfront rental, the humid air pressing against her skin like a second layer of clothing. In her palm, her iPhone vibrated again — Marcus's third call in ten minutes. She let it ring out, watching the screen light up and fade, a small galaxy of hope and desperation contained in that rectangular glass.

A stray cat wound around her ankles, its rough tongue catching the salt spray on her skin. She'd found it yesterday near the market, mewling outside a fish stall, and had been leaving it water and scraps since. Something about its persistence reminded her of herself, of the years she'd spent trying to make Marcus see what was right in front of him.

The water below stretched dark and endless, waves crashing with a rhythm that had nothing to do with human time. She'd come here to think, to decide whether to answer the question he'd asked last night: are we staying together, or not?

Her hair, loose and salt-stiffened, whipped across her face. She pushed it back, her fingers tangling in the knots. Three years with Marcus, and she couldn't remember the last time he'd touched her hair with anything resembling tenderness. His hands were always elsewhere — on his phone, on the remote, on some imaginary future that never materialized.

The cat meowed, demanding. She rose to refill its water bowl, and as she bent down, her phone slipped from her grasp. It hit the balcony floor with a sickening crack, screen spiderwebbing into irrelevance.

She stared at it for a long moment. Then, instead of panic, she felt something else: lightness. A door closing, yes — but one she'd been standing in front of for too long, waiting for someone else to walk through it first.

Below, the tide was coming in. The future wasn't written in anyone's palm, hers or his. The cat butted her hand, purring. She scratched its ears and watched the waves, wondering not if she should call him back, but why she'd waited this long to let go.