Aquamarine at Sunset

The fluorescent lights of the aquatic center cast everyone in a sickly pallor. I pushed off the wall, slicing through water that felt too warm, too chemically. In the next lane, a man swam with mechanical precision—lap after endless lap, eyes dead, movements repetitive. A corporate zombie, I thought, just like me. Just like everyone upstairs on the fourth floor, where we processed data we didn't understand for clients we'd never meet.

I surfaced at the wall, gasping, and saw her. Elena. My former friend, former confidante, the person who'd reported my "unprofessional behavior" to HR after I'd helped her through her divorce. She stood at the pool's edge in an orange swimsuit that was too bright, too young for her, the color screaming for attention she'd never needed when we were close. The orange burned against the blue water, jarring and wrong.

We'd been swimming together here three times a week for two years. Until the promotion opened up. Until there was only one slot and both of us wanted it.

She didn't see me. She was focused on the man in the next lane, watching his mechanical strokes with something like hunger. I slipped underwater, letting the silence envelop me. The muffled world was peaceful. Down here, there were no corporate ladders, no betrayals, no fluorescent lights.

When I surfaced, she was gone.

I swam harder, faster, until my muscles burned and my lungs screamed. This was the only place I could feel anything anymore. The only place the zombie inside me quieted. I thought about quitting every day. About walking into the orange-carpeted office of that smug HR director and saying the words that would free me.

But I had a mortgage. And the pool membership.

I touched the wall, chest heaving, and noticed the man in the next lane had stopped. He was looking at me, really looking, eyes alive with something I hadn't seen in anyone in years. Recognition. Understanding. We were both zombies here, swimming in circles, going nowhere together.

"You're fast," he said, water streaming down his face.

"Running from something," I replied, not knowing why I said it.

He nodded. "Me too."

I thought about inviting him for coffee. A new friend, someone who didn't know about the promotion, the betrayal, the orange swimsuit. But the moment passed, as they always did. I pushed off the wall again, alone in the blue, swimming laps in a world that had forgotten how to be anything but tired.