Chlorine and Regret

The vitamin bottle rattled as Martin shook two orange pills into his palm. Doctor's orders, though the pamphlet made it sound like a suggestion rather than a life raft. At forty-seven, your body stops forgiving you for every tequila sunrise and skipped breakfast.

He stood at the sliding glass door, staring at the pool. Sarah's pool now, technically. The house was Sarah's too, along with the kid, the dog, and that particular brand of manufactured happiness they'd spent seventeen years assembling. Martin had housesitting privileges while she and Emma visited her sister in Santa Fe. Generous, really. He swallowed the vitamins dry, like a man who'd lost the right to demand anything, even water.

The pool's surface had that stillness that comes from neglect. Leaves scattered across the blue like confetti after a party nobody enjoyed. He remembered Emma's seventh birthday, the way she'd laughed in her polka-dot swimsuit, how he'd tossed her into the air and she'd surfaced grinning, chlorine dripping from her eyelashes. That version of Martin had been a father. This version was just a guy with a key and a vitamin deficiency.

A baseball lay half-buried in the grass near the fence. His old baseball, the one he'd pitched during that last summer league before his shoulder gave out. He walked outside, the concrete cool against his bare feet, and picked it up. The leather was cracked, the stitching unraveled like everything else he'd tried to hold together.

He stood at the pool's edge, baseball in hand, and considered the physics of loss. How something so small could weigh so much. How water could look like salvation until you were drowning in it. He thought about throwing the ball—really throwing it, like he used to, before the rotator cuff surgery, before the drinking, before Sarah stopped looking at him like he was someone she'd choose again.

Instead, he sat on the edge and let his feet dangle in the water. Cold. The vitamins sat heavy in his stomach, tiny promises of a future he wasn't sure he wanted. The baseball rested in his palm, a constellation of failed dreams and summer afternoons that no longer existed.

Martin closed his eyes and listened to the water lapping against the pool walls. Tomorrow, he'd start going to the gym. Tomorrow, he'd call his sponsor. Tomorrow, he'd figure out how to be the kind of man who deserved to swim in this pool again.

But tonight, he just sat there, vitamin-supplemented and baseball-handed, waiting for the courage to either dive in or finally walk away.