The Morning After Everything

Maya's iPhone glowed at 5:47 AM, the third notification from David in as many hours. *You up?* *We should talk.* *Please.* She silenced it, the same way she'd been silencing everything since he moved out two weeks ago.

By 6:15, she was running, her sneakers slapping against the pavement in a rhythm that felt like punishment. The morning air burned her lungs, each breath a reminder that she was still here, still functioning, still showing up to a life that had been meticulously curated around someone who no longer wanted to be part of it. Her hair—now chopped short in a moment of defiant independence last week—stuck to her forehead in the humidity. Everyone said it looked sophisticated. David hadn't noticed. Or if he had, he hadn't said.

Back at the apartment, she sorted her pills with surgical precision. Vitamin D for the seasonal depression she refused to call depression. Magnesium for sleep that never came. A multivitamin that promised to fill the gaps in a life that felt increasingly hollow. Her mother, in her weekly check-ins, swore by the routine. *It's called self-care, Maya. You're thirty-five. It's time.*

The pool opened at seven. Maya had been swimming laps every morning since the separation, the water the only place where her thoughts quieted. Forty laps back and forth, the chlorine smell mixing with her own exertion, the blue bottom of the pool offering a kind of meditation that her yoga app had never managed to deliver.

Today, as she surfaced after lap thirty-two, her iPhone vibrated on the deck chair. David again. *I'm coming over. We need to talk. I made a mistake.*

Maya floated on her back, staring at the ceiling where light rippled across the concrete like underwater sunlight. For three weeks, she had been running from the conversation, swimming through the grief, organizing her vitamins, chopping her hair, doing everything except feeling.

Her phone buzzed once more with a text from her mother: *Dr. Collins thinks new supplements might help with the mood swings. Have you tried B-complex?*

Maya swam to the edge and pulled herself out of the pool, water streaming from her skin. She stood dripping on the concrete, suddenly exhausted by the performance of wellness, by the curated self-care, by the running and swimming and vitamin-popping that was supposed to fix what was actually just heartbreak in a very expensive package.

She picked up her iPhone and texted David back: *Come over. But bring coffee. And don't expect me to be fixed.*

Then she texted her mother: *I met someone. I think it might be serious.*

Neither was true. But sometimes, she thought as she wrapped herself in a towel, you have to stop swimming against the current and just let yourself drift toward whatever comes next.