Chlorine and Regret

The pool at the apartment complex was empty at 4 AM — the only time Elias could swim without running into his soon-to-be ex-wife and her new boyfriend. He'd taken to wearing his old trucker hat in the locker room, pulled low over his eyes, a pathetic attempt at invisibility that fooled no one.

"You look like shit, man," his padel partner had said earlier that evening, after Elias missed yet another return. "When's the last time you slept?"

Elias had laughed it off, made some joke about the vitamin D supplements he'd started taking since moving out of the master bedroom. But the truth was he'd been running on fumes for months, ever since Miranda dropped the "we need to talk" bombshell over their anniversary dinner.

Now he floated on his back, staring at the artificial stars of the pool deck lights, wondering when his life had become such a cliché. At 42, with a successful career and a marriage that had looked perfect from the outside, he'd somehow ended up here: estranged, insomniac, seeking solace in a sport he'd taken up solely because Miranda's new lover played it competitively.

He'd actually friended the guy on Instagram, like some emotional masochist.

A splash broke his reverie. A woman in her twenties climbed into the adjacent lane, her movements smooth and practiced. She nodded at him, a gesture of solidarity in the holy church of the predawn insomniacs.

Elias watched her for a moment, then remembered his phone vibrating in his locker earlier. A text from Miranda: Can we talk about the cabin?

He thought about the padel court they'd built there last summer, how she'd laughed when he'd accidentally broken a window with an overzealous smash. They were supposed to grow old in that cabin, taking vitamins together and complaining about their joints.

Instead, he was running in circles, literally and figuratively, while she moved forward with someone who probably didn't need a hat to hide his face in public.

Elias dove under the water, holding his breath until his lungs burned, trying to remember what it felt like to not be waiting for the other shoe to drop.