The Morning After Everything

Mara woke at 5:47 to the sound of her iPhone vibrating against the nightstand — a phantom notification from someone who'd never message her again. She stared at the ceiling until her cat, Barnaby, jumped onto her chest, purring with the oblivious affection of creatures who've never experienced heartbreak. You don't know how good you have it, she thought, scratching behind his ears.

She rolled out of bed and started running.

Not away from anything specific. Just running, foot pounding pavement in the gray dawn, moving fast enough that her lungs burned and her thoughts scattered like startled birds. This was her new routine: run until the static in her head quieted, until she was too exhausted to replay every conversation, every microexpression she'd missed.

Back at her apartment, she swallowed a vitamin D supplement with tap water — her doctor had called it the sunshine pill, prescribed for adults who forgot to go outside. She'd bought them the same week she and Ethan stopped planning their future. The bottle sat on the counter, a six-month supply she couldn't bring herself to throw away.

Her phone lit up again. Sarah, her oldest friend, asking to grab coffee. We should talk, the text read. Just us.

Mara knew what that meant. Sarah had chosen sides, or chosen none, which was worse. Ethan's version of events had already spread through their shared circle like ink in water, irreversible and staining. She typed out: I'm not ready. Then deleted it. Typed: I don't know if I can do this. Deleted that too.

Barnaby wound around her ankles, meowing for breakfast. In the end, she wrote: Tomorrow? Maybe. And left it on read, phone face-down on the counter.

She stood in her kitchen, sunlight finally reaching through the window, and understood something with the crystalline clarity that only comes after everything falls apart: she'd been running toward the wrong person for three years, and somehow that was easier to admit than she'd ever run from herself.

The cat meowed again, insistent. Mara filled his bowl and then her own coffee cup, and for the first time in weeks, she didn't reach for the phone.