Maria’s eyes pop open and she groans at the blackness darkening her bedroom. After downing an entire fifth of tequila with her brothers, she doesn’t even remember going to bed last night. And judging by the pounding headache she’s currently rocking along with her cotton mouth, water wasn’t something she even considered drinking before crashing. The waves crashing on the beach are audible in the distance through her open window. Since she moved away from Florida, she had to get one of those white noise machines to help her fall asleep at night because she didn’t have the calming noise of falling asleep to the sounds of the ocean. She’s a relatively light sleeper and the offending noise that woke her dings again as another text message comes in through her phone. Who the hell could be texting her this early?

UNKNOWN: Get back to Vegas.

UNKNOWN: Today.

Me: Can’t a girl sleep in for once? The sun isn’t even up yet.

UNKNOWN: Check your email, your flight information is in there. Don’t miss your flight.

Me: Aye, aye captain.

Closing out of the texts, she pulls up her emails, and sure enough, there’s a forwarded email with her flight information. She has a layover in Dallas, but fortunately, it’s a short one. The one thing she hates more than anything is long wait times in between her flights. Checking the time on her phone and her flight she sees she has at least another hour before she has to start getting ready for the airport. If she skips taking a shower or putting makeup on she definitely has at least an hour and a half.

She rolls over and tosses her phone onto the pillow beside her. Since she’s already awake there’s no way she’ll manage going back to sleep but that doesn’t mean she has to get out of bed. Stretching her arms above her head, she contemplates a morning run. The last thing she ever wants to do is go jogging, but she always finds it clears her head and releases a lot of her stress when she does. That and sex but sadly she’s all alone in this giant bed so a run will have to do. To be honest, she doesn’t even want to think about the last time was that she had sex. Because that would be way too depressing.

Instead, she forces herself out of bed and steps into her sweatpants. Sitting on the nightstand she spots a full glass of water and she downs it in one sitting. Probably not the smartest decision to drink it before she goes for a run, but she’ll deal with that if it comes to it. With her earbuds in, she slips out of her French doors and her feet immediately hit the sand. Right away the burn in her legs scream at her for not stretching first, but she pushes herself forward relishing in the pain. If anything, she’d rather feel pain than nothing at all and the numbness she’s known for the last year and a half has almost swallowed her whole.

It doesn’t take her long at all before her stomach starts to twist and her mouth fills up with saliva. The back of her throat burns with acid and she comes to a stop as the contents of her stomach spray out over the sand. Her stomach instantly feels better, but she wishes she’d thought to bring a water bottle with her. Instead, she ignores the foul taste in her mouth and moves on.

The wet sand calls for her and she begrudgingly stops the torture on her body and moves closer to the water. With each step, she takes she leaves a little bit of herself behind on that beach. Anger toward her father. Anger for her current situation. Just anger. She lets her emotions drip off of her with each bead of sweat and she refuses to let it come back to Vegas with her. She needs her head on straight and can’t let anything distract her.

Her lungs scream out in pain as she reaches her destination. She hasn’t had the chance to go for a run in a while at least not as often as she did when she used to live here. At the three miles mark, she does a quick loop and turns back toward the house. The return trip will be enough to kill her, but she continues putting one foot in front of the other.

By the time she makes it back, the sun is slowly starting to rise. She takes a quick minute to appreciate the sunset before heading inside to take a shower and pack her bags for the return flight. Not for home because that’s the last thing she would consider Las Vegas, but here in Florida doesn’t feel like home anymore either. If she’s really honest with herself she doesn’t have much of a home at all. She refuses to dwell on that thought for too long as she gets herself ready to leave.

She leaves a quick note for her mom to find when she wakes up. She feels bad not waking her up, but there’s no way she would make her flight if she did. There’s way too much riding on her shoulders to screw this up and her mom wouldn’t understand. Too bad she can’t tell her what she actually does for a living. But it would be way too dangerous, to tell the truth, and she’s not willing to risk the safety of her family. So instead she continues lying to them in hopes that one day she’ll finally be free of it all.

Looking out the window she notices the cab has pulled up and is waiting for her. With a small sigh, she picks up her bag and looks around the big house. Growing up, she couldn’t wait to be away from this place. No matter how big it was it still felt suffocating every moment she was in the same presence as her father. Now that he’s gone and all of her brothers and sisters are grown and have moved out too, the size of the house now seems ominous.

She knows her mother has zero plans of leaving. This is her home and the place where she wants to spend the rest of her life, but Maria can’t help but feel a little sad. It has to be lonely all by herself, but her mom is a stubborn woman and would never let on how she’s really feeling.

With one last backward glance, she walks out the front door and toward the waiting car. She doesn’t know when the next time is she’ll be back, but something tells her this will be her last trip to Florida.