Chlorine and Regret

The hotel pool was empty at 2 AM, which was exactly why Elena had chosen it. She'd cut her hair that afternoon—chopped it all off in the bathroom of the apartment she was abandoning, watching the dark strands swirl down the drain like her wasted twenties. Now her neck felt exposed, cold, vulnerable.

She floated on her back, staring up at the artificial stars that someone had贴 onto the ceiling of the pool enclosure. The water lapped against her ears, drowning out the city sounds below. This was supposed to be her honeymoon week. Instead, she was alone, drinking flat champagne from a plastic cup while her now-ex-husband was probably god knows where with god knows who.

A scratching sound at the glass doors made her turn. An elderly woman stood there, holding the leash of a small, trembling dog—some kind of terrier mix with matted fur and anxious eyes. The woman was gesturing frantically, mouthing something Elena couldn't hear through the glass.

Elena swam to the edge and pushed open the door. "Is everything okay?"

"My Buster got away from me," the woman said, her voice cracking. "He's never done that before. He's old, you see, and I think he smelled something—"

Elena looked around. No dog in sight. Then she spotted it: the real Buster, curled up on one of the lounge chairs near the pool's edge, fast asleep. The dog on the leash was clearly a replacement.

"Oh," Elena said softly. "I think... I think you picked up the wrong one."

The woman stared at the sleeping dog, then down at the one in her arms. Her face crumbled. She'd had a stroke two years ago, she explained. Her memory came and went like the tides. Some days she knew her life was over. Other days she forgot her husband had died at all.

Elena sat with her on the wet concrete, both of them in their swimsuits at 3 AM, while the woman told her about love that lasted forty-seven years, about the way her husband used to peel oranges for her every Sunday morning, how he'd never let her lift a finger. How she kept forgetting he was gone and then remembering, over and over, the way wounds heal and then split open again when you move wrong.

"You'll be alright," the woman said, patting Elena's bare shoulder. "I can tell. You've got good hair for starting over."

Elena laughed until she cried. By dawn, they were both still there, watching the light change across the water, neither of them ready to face what came next.