Chlorine and Goodbyes

Maya floated on her back in the apartment complex pool, staring up at the pale February sky. The water felt like a second skin—cool, embracing, temporarily suspending the weight of everything she couldn't say aloud.

'You're going to turn into a prune,' Daniel called from the poolside. He sat on a lounge chair, baseball game blaring from his phone, the plastic container of fruit salad between his legs untouched.

Maya closed her eyes. 'I'm thinking.'

'About what?'

'About how you haven't asked once how the appointment went.'

The silence stretched, broken only by the distant splash of someone doing cannonballs in the deep end. Daniel's baseball game grew louder.

'The doctor said I need to take a vitamin D supplement,' she said, her voice barely carrying across the water. 'Also, my iron's low. I need to eat more spinach.' She laughed, but it came out hollow. 'Remember how you used to call me Popeye when we started dating?'

Daniel muted his phone. 'That was three years ago, Maya.'

'Exactly.' She swam to the edge and rested her arms on the concrete. The papaya chunks in his fruit salad had turned brown and mushy in the sun. Nothing stayed fresh forever—not even them.

'Are we going to talk about this?' she asked.

He sighed, set down his phone, and finally looked at her. Really looked at her, like he was seeing her for the first time in months. Or maybe seeing what was left between them.

'There's nothing to talk about,' he said quietly.

Maya pulled herself from the pool, water streaming from her body like she was shedding something essential. She reached for her towel, for her dignity, for whatever came next.

'There never was,' she said, and walked toward the apartment building, leaving him with his baseball game and his brown, forgotten fruit, while somewhere behind her, the water settled again into stillness.