Chlorine and Chard

The apartment complex pool sat empty at 11 PM, its surface still and reflecting the sickly yellow glow of the security light. Elena sat on the edge, her feet dangling in the water that had warmed to something like bath temperature by late August. She held a plastic container of wilted spinach—leftovers from a salad she'd meant to eat three days ago—and watched a single leaf float on the water's surface like a small, dark boat.

"You're going to fall in," came a voice from behind her.

Elena didn't turn. "Maybe that's the point."

Marcus dropped onto the concrete beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed. He'd changed out of his work clothes but still smelled faintly of whatever cologne he'd applied that morning, something woodsy and expensive that he'd started wearing after the promotion. After he stopped calling.

"We haven't spoken in six weeks, Elena."

"Six weeks and three days." She dropped another spinach leaf into the pool. "But who's counting."

"I was going to call."

"But you didn't."

"No," Marcus admitted. "I didn't."

The water lapped gently against the pool's edges. Somewhere above them, a window slid open and then shut, muffled laughter drifting down like smoke. Elena remembered when she and Marcus had been the ones laughing, back when they'd get high in his car and talk about the futures they'd build—careers that mattered, relationships that didn't dissolve like sugar in water. Before he got the promotion to director. Before she found out he'd quietly thrown her under the bus in that meeting about the layoffs.

"I told them you'd understand," Marcus said quietly. "That you'd want me to take the opportunity."

"And did I?" She turned to look at him for the first time. "Did I seem like someone who'd understand being sacrificed?"

"You never asked me about it."

"Maybe," Elena said, dropping the last of the spinach into the water, where it began to spread, "I already knew the answer."

Marcus stood up. "I missed you. That's why I came back. I thought..."

"What? That we could be friends again?" Something cracked in her voice. "That you could dip your toe in whenever it got lonely at the top?"

"I don't know what I thought."

Elena watched the spinach leaves drifting apart in the gentle current. "Me neither."

She listened to his footsteps retreat, the security door click shut behind him. The pool remained, chlorinated and waiting. Eventually, she pulled her feet from the water and stood up, leaving small wet footprints on the concrete that would evaporate by morning, like nothing had ever happened at all.