Chapter 2 Running Toward Venom

Amelia Noah POV

Six AM light filters through my living room blinds, casting prison bar shadows across the coffee table where I've been sitting all night. The travel magazine lies open beside my laptop, the Santorini photo now creased from my fingers tracing the clifftop resort. I haven't slept. Haven't moved from this spot since Marcus walked out seven hours ago.

My savings account balance glows on the screen: $23,847. Three years of skipping designer shoes and cooking dinner instead of ordering takeout. Three years of building a nest egg for someday plans with someone who was texting another woman while I transferred money into our joint vacation fund.

The Poseidon Resort website loads with crystalline images that make my chest ache. Infinity pools carved into volcanic rock. Suites with private terraces overlooking the Aegean Sea. The kind of place Marcus and I bookmarked for "when we're ready to splurge."

I click on availability. October 15th through 22nd—one week from today. The dates we'd circled on my calendar, back when we were planning futures instead of exit strategies.

A junior suite costs four thousand dollars for the week. Four thousand dollars I was going to spend with a man who called me suffocating.

My finger hovers over the reserve button.

This is insane. I don't travel alone. I don't make impulsive financial decisions. I research everything to death—read reviews, compare prices, create spreadsheets with pros and cons columns. But spreadsheets didn't warn me about Marcus's wandering hands, and research can't predict when someone will decide you're too much work.

I press reserve.

The confirmation email arrives instantly, followed by a queasy thrill of panic. I just spent four thousand dollars on a vacation to a country where I don't speak the language, to a place I'll have to navigate entirely alone.

My phone buzzes. Kate.

"Hey, sis. Calling before my yoga class—" Her voice stops abruptly. "God, you sound terrible. What's wrong?"

I could lie. Tell her I'm tired, that work is stressful, that everything's fine. Instead, I say, "Marcus has been cheating on me for three months."

Silence. Then: "That piece of shit. Are you okay? Do you want me to come over? I'll skip class—"

"I'm going to Greece."

Another pause. "What?"

"Santorini. Next week. I just booked it." The words sound more confident than I feel.

"Amelia." Kate uses her kindergarten teacher voice, the one she reserves for five-year-olds having meltdowns. "Honey, you just found out about Marcus. Maybe you should take a few days to process before making any big decisions."

I stand and walk to the window, looking down at the street where early commuters hurry past with coffee cups and purpose. "I've been processing for eight months. Processing every time he checked his phone during dinner. Processing every weekend he had mysterious plans. I'm done processing."

"Running away isn't processing."

"I'm not running away. I'm running toward something."

"Toward what, exactly?"

The question hangs in the air like a challenge. Toward what? Toward proving I can be happy alone? Toward discovering who I am when I'm not trying to earn someone's love? Toward justifying four thousand dollars of impulse spending?

"Toward figuring out why I keep choosing men who think I'm too much."

Kate sighs. "Amelia, that's not about geography. That's about—"

"About what? About lowering my standards? About accepting that wanting fidelity makes me needy?" My voice climbs higher. "I'm thirty-two, Kate. I make six figures. I closed the Hartfield campaign last month. But put me in a relationship, and suddenly I'm this desperate woman clinging to men who can't even be bothered to lie convincingly."

"That's not what I meant."

But I'm already moving, pulling my suitcase from the bedroom closet. "You know what Marcus said when I caught him? He said this keeps happening to me because I'm too needy. As if wanting basic respect is some character flaw."

"Marcus is an idiot."

"Maybe. Or maybe he's right." I throw the suitcase on my bed and unzip it with more force than necessary. "Maybe I am the problem. Maybe I do expect too much. Maybe I should just accept that this is how relationships work now—casual and uncommitted and emotionally vacant."

"Amelia—"

"Or maybe I need to remember who I was before I started trying to make myself smaller for men who were never worth it."

I'm yanking clothes from my dresser now, not caring if they match or make sense for Greek weather. Sundresses and sweaters, sandals and boots, a week's worth of outfits for a woman having an identity crisis on a volcanic island.

"Okay," Kate says quietly. "Okay, I hear you. But traveling alone when you're this upset—"

"When else am I going to do it? When I'm in another relationship, making compromises and checking with someone else before making plans? When I'm forty and settled into the same patterns with some new man who thinks my emotions are inconvenient?"

My hands shake as I fold a blue dress Marcus complimented once. I add it to the suitcase, then immediately take it out again. No clothes he's touched. No memories he's contaminated.

"Just be careful," Kate says. "Greece is beautiful, but—"

"But what? I might discover I actually like my own company? I might realize I don't need a man's validation to feel complete? I might come back knowing my worth?"

"You might come back broke and emotionally exhausted with no real solutions to anything."

The honesty stings because part of me knows she's right. This feels like emotional spending, like the relationship equivalent of a shopping spree after a bad day. But the alternative is staying here, in this apartment that smells like Marcus's cologne, surrounded by the ghosts of plans that will never happen.

"Maybe," I admit. "But I'd rather be broke and exhausted in paradise than broke and exhausted in Manhattan, wondering what would have happened if I'd been brave enough to try."

Kate's quiet for a long moment. Finally: "When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Amelia, you can't just disappear for a week without—"

"I'm calling in vacation days. I have them saved up." Saved up for the romantic getaway that turned into a solo journey toward questionable mental health decisions. "Sarah can handle the Morrison project."

"What about your bills? Your responsibilities?"

I stop packing and sit on the bed beside my half-filled suitcase. Kate's questions are practical, reasonable, the kind I usually ask myself before making any decision larger than dinner plans. But practicality got me eight months with a cheater. Responsibility got me a broken heart and a depleted vacation fund.

"My bills are on autopay. My responsibilities will survive a week without me. And if they don't, maybe that says something about the life I've built."

"What kind of something?"

"Maybe that I've been so busy being reliable and low-maintenance and perfect that I forgot to actually live."

The words surprise me with their truth. When did I become someone who plans every moment, who saves every penny, who makes herself convenient for men who can't be bothered to save her number under her actual name?

"I love you," Kate says. "You know that, right? I just don't want you to do something you'll regret."

"I already did something I regret. I wasted eight months on Marcus. This feels like the opposite of a mistake."

After we hang up, I finish packing with methodical efficiency. Swimsuits for the pools. Comfortable shoes for exploring. A journal for processing whatever revelations await me on the cliffs of Santorini.

My laptop still shows the resort confirmation, and I print the details before shutting it down. Tomorrow I'll board a plane to Athens, then a ferry to an island I've only seen in photographs, carrying nothing but a suitcase and the desperate hope that geography might hold answers.

The morning passes in a blur of laundry and logistics. I email my office about the sudden vacation request, knowing Sarah will cover for me because she's done it before, during other romantic disasters. I update my travel insurance and download Greek phrase apps I'll probably never use.

By afternoon, I'm standing in my bedroom with everything packed except the decision itself. The suitcase sits by the door like a challenge. I can still cancel. Get a partial refund. Stay home and nurse my wounds like a reasonable adult.

Instead, I call a taxi to JFK.

The security line at the airport moves with bureaucratic slowness, giving me plenty of time to second-guess everything. The family in front of me argues about forgotten phone chargers. The businessman behind me talks loudly about quarterly projections. I clutch my boarding pass and passport, two pieces of paper that represent the most impulsive decision of my adult life.

When I reach the metal detector, the TSA agent glances at my passport photo, then at my face.

"First time traveling alone?" she asks.

"How can you tell?"

"You look terrified."

I laugh, surprising myself. "Appropriately terrified?"

She stamps my passport and hands it back with a smile. "The best kind of terrified. Safe travels."

Beyond security, the gate area buzzes with the energy of people going places. I find my terminal and sink into an uncomfortable chair, watching planes taxi past the windows. In three hours, I'll be airborne over the Atlantic, committed to a week of solitude in a country where I know nobody.

My phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number. Heard about the breakup. Call me if you want to talk. - David

David from college. David who called me emotionally exhausting when I wanted to meet his parents. David who apparently got my number from someone and thinks a breakup makes me available for his attention again.

I delete the message without responding, then power off my phone entirely.

Whatever happens in Greece, it won't involve men who think my emotional availability is a character flaw. It won't involve making myself smaller to fit into someone else's idea of convenient.

It will just be me, figuring out who I am when nobody else is watching.

The boarding announcement crackles over the intercom, calling my row number. I grab my carry-on and join the line of passengers shuffling toward the gate, toward the point where turning back becomes impossible.

One foot in front of the other, carrying me toward whatever waits on the other side of the ocean.