Vitamins and Palm Trees

The sixth vitamin D capsule stuck in her throat like a promise she couldn't keep. Maya washed it down with lukewarm water from a plastic bottle, standing on the balcony of their Cabo suite, watching the palm trees bend against the wind like stooped elders carrying the weight of too many summers.

Inside, David was sleeping. Or pretending to. The darkness beneath his closed eyes was easier than the conversation they'd been avoiding for six months — the one about how they'd become roommates who shared a bed and a mortgage but nothing else.

"You need this," her therapist had said, prescribing the Mexico getaway like it was another supplement. "Time away. No distractions. Just the two of you."

The irony wasn't lost on her. They'd come here to reconnect, but David spent his days at the resort's business center, fielding calls from the New York office while she sat by the pool, reading books she couldn't remember and drinking watered-down cocktails.

Yesterday, she'd finally snapped. "What are we doing, David?"

He'd looked at her with those exhausted eyes, the ones that used to look at her like she was everything. "Trying. Isn't that enough?"

"Trying isn't living."

Now she leaned against the railing, the salt air coating her skin. She thought about bears — how they hibernated through winters, how some mothers died protecting their cubs, how they could crush a skull with one swipe but still nursed their young with such tenderness. What would it be like to just sleep through it all? To close her eyes and wake up when the hard part was over?

The patio door slid open. David stood there, shirtless, holding two glasses of champagne. "Room service," he said, attempting a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Thought we could watch the sunset."

For a moment, she almost said yes. Almost accepted the easy out, the temporary fix, another vitamin to mask the symptoms.

"I booked a flight home tomorrow," she said instead. "Alone."

David's hand tightened around the glass. The champagne trembled. "Maya..."

"I'm done pretending this is working. I'm done taking vitamins for a disease we won't diagnose."

She walked past him into the room, already packing her suitcase. Outside, the palm trees kept swaying, indifferent to the endings they'd witnessed and the beginnings they'd survive.