The Living Dead in Paradise

Mara traced the lifeline on Elias's palm, her finger moving over the calloused skin. They were sitting on the balcony of their overwater bungalow in the Maldives, the kind of place they'd saved five years for. The sunset was painting everything in shades of bruised peach and violent purple.

"Your lifeline's shorter than I remember," she said softly.

Elias pulled his hand away. He'd been doing that a lot lately — pulling away. "Palm reading, really? We're not twenty anymore, Mara."

Below them, the water lapped against the wooden pilings, that gentle, rhythmic sound they'd both fallen asleep to for three nights. Three nights of expensive dinners, forced conversation, sex that felt like choreography rather than desire.

"No," she said. "We're not."

She thought about the Elias she'd met at twenty-five — the one who made her laugh until her ribs ached, who brought her soup when she had the flu, who looked at her like she was the only person in the room. That Elias was dead. The man sitting across from her was something else — something that went to work, paid bills, asked about her day in a tone that suggested he'd rather be anywhere else.

A corporate zombie, really. She'd seen it happen gradually over the past three years, like a slow-acting poison. The layoffs had come, then the mandatory overtime, then the drinking, then the silence. Now he moved through their life on autopilot.

"I'm going for a swim," she said.

"Now? It's dark."

"Yes. Now."

She stood up and walked to the edge of the deck. The water was black and endless. She thought about how easy it would be to just keep going down. That was the thing they never told you about depression — it wasn't wanting to die, exactly. It was wanting not to exist, not in a dramatic way but in the way you might want to turn off a television that was playing something you'd already seen a thousand times.

Behind her, she heard Elias stand up. "Mara, wait."

She turned. He was crying, finally crying, after all these months of nothing.

"I don't know who I am anymore," he said. "I wake up every morning and I can't believe I have to do it all over again. I feel like I'm haunting my own life."

She walked back to him and took his hand, pressed it against her cheek.

"Then let's figure it out," she said. "Together."

The water kept lapping below them, indifferent and eternal. Above them, the first stars appeared. For the first time in a long time, something in the silence between them felt alive.