The Weight of Living

Maya stood before the bathroom mirror at 11:47 PM, bleaching the dark brown from her hair. The ammonia smell stung her eyes, but she welcomed it. Something real in a life that had become entirely rehearsed.

Three years at the firm. Three years of spinning lies for corporations who poisoned water systems then hired her to craft their redemption narratives. She'd become something like a zombie — hollowed out, moving through motions, the person she used to be buried under compromise and student loan payments.

Her phone buzzed. David.

"You coming to bed?"

"Soon."

Soon. Her most common lie. Not to David, who deserved better than the shell of her he'd married. To herself. Soon I'll quit. Soon I'll write that novel. Soon I'll feel something again.

She rinsed the bleach. Her scalp burned. Good.

Their anniversary dinner had been four nights ago. David had cooked — spinach lasagna with that careful tenderness he applied to everything, as if he could love her back to herself. She'd watched his hands, the way his thumb still rubbed his ring finger when he was nervous.

"What are you thinking?" he'd asked.

"Nothing."

Another lie. She'd been thinking about the fox.

She'd seen it that morning, streaking across the highway median, something russet and impossible and utterly alive in the dead grey of commute traffic. It had stopped, turned, looked right at her through the windshield, eyes burning with ancient, wild knowing.

Then it was gone. But she kept seeing it in her peripheral vision. A flash of red in a grey world.

The hair dried copper-bright. She looked like someone she might have been, in another timeline. Someone who made choices instead of accommodations.

David appeared in the doorway, sleep-mussed, looking at her new hair without surprise. He'd learned not to react to the small ways she tried to hurt herself into feeling something.

"It looks nice," he said, and the gentleness cracked her open.

"David."

"Yeah?"

She reached for him, fingers tangling in his hair, finding his mouth. Not zombie-kissing but something desperate and starving and real. When he pulled back, surprised, she saw the hope he tried to hide.

"Tomorrow," she said. "I'm calling in sick. We're driving north. To see the water."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

He hesitated, then smiled. A real one. "Okay."

Outside their window, the city slept. But somewhere, a fox ran wild over the earth, and for the first time in three years, Maya thought she might too.