Breathless

The swimming pool at 5 AM smells like chlorine and desperation. Marcus laps the pool, his body cutting through water that's too blue to be natural. He's training for a triathlon he doesn't even want to compete in anymore, but the routine keeps him from thinking. Keeps him from noticing the way Elena's side of the bed has been empty for three weeks, or how her toothbrush sits dry in the holder.

After his thousand meters, he showers and drives to work, his iPhone vibrating constantly in the cupholder. Text messages he won't answer, notifications from apps he's forgotten he installed. Elena's digital footprint is everywhere—her location sharing shows her at a coffee shop she never visited when they were happy, her Instagram stories feature hands that aren't his holding coffee cups that should be his.

He's been running from this conversation for months, literally. Every evening after work, he laces up and hits the trails, his feet pounding the earth in a rhythm that mimics a heartbeat. Running until his lungs burn, until his legs threaten to give out, until he's too exhausted to have the conversation that will end his marriage.

Tonight, he comes home to silence. The cat, Barnaby—a morbidly obese tabby Elena adopted without asking—meets him at the door, weaving between his legs with a demanding mew. Barnaby is the only thing between them that still works. Even the cat seems to know something's wrong, his yellow eyes tracking Marcus's movements around the apartment that already feels like someone else's.

Marcus sits on the sofa and picks up his iPhone. There's a new notification: a calendar invite for Saturday. "Moving day—Elena."

The room tilts. Saturday is four days away.

He should call her. Should text back. Should something. Instead, he scrolls through old photos—Elena laughing at the beach, Elena holding Barnaby like a baby, Elena's face illuminated by birthday candles. The swimming, the running, the endless exercise—it wasn't training. It was avoidance. A way to exhaust himself so thoroughly that he could collapse into dreamless sleep without having to face what he already knew.

Barnaby jumps onto his chest, purring loudly, and Marcus realizes with a sick lurch that he'll have to decide who gets the cat. He buries his face in fur that smells like the woman who's leaving him, and finally, finally, lets himself feel it.

The phone vibrates again. A text from Elena: "We need to talk about Barnaby."

Marcus laughs—a dark, broken sound—and replies: "He's yours. I can't take care of anything right now."

Then he puts on his running shoes and goes out into the night, running toward nothing and away from everything, finally, desperately, breathlessly awake.