Blue Hour at the Pool

The last thing Marco said before walking out—'You're like a vitamin I stopped needing months ago'—still echoed in Elena's head three weeks later. She swallowed her D3 supplement dry, staring at her iPhone on the hotel room's polished desk. No new notifications. Just the calendar reminder she'd ignored: 'PaClaude tournament at 3.'

She hadn't wanted to come to this corporate retreat. The padel matches were meant to be team-building exercises, but mostly they were opportunities for her colleagues to drink overpriced gin tonics and complain about their marriages. Elena checked her reflection in the darkened screen—thirty-eight, alone, and wondering when her life had become something she needed to supplement rather than something she actually lived.

Down by the pool, she found a chaise away from the main crowd. The water glowed that artificial blue that only exists in places where chlorine does the heavy lifting. She stripped down to her swimsuit, conscious of the eyes that might or might not be watching. Since Marco left, she'd developed this hyperawareness, like a newly exposed nerve ending.

'You playing?'

A man stood over her, padel racquet in hand. David from accounting. The one who always asked too many questions during meetings.

'Don't think so.'

'We need a fourth.' His smile was careful. 'Unless you're busy being existential by yourself.'

She almost said no. But then she thought about the vitamin in her stomach, the iPhone sitting useless on her towel, the way Marco had made her feel like something artificial, something replaceable. She stood up, water dripping from where she'd dipped her toes in the pool.

'Why not.'

Hours later, sweat slick on her skin, Elena realized something as she smashed the ball past David's outstretched racquet. She hadn't checked her phone once. The vitamins in her system weren't propping her up—they were just fuel. The game, the competition, the sheer physicality of moving through space: this was what she'd been missing. Not Marco. Not the constant digital tether. This.

'You're good,' David said, panting, as they walked back toward the hotel.

'I remember,' she said, and for the first time in three weeks, it was true.