Chlorine and Regret

The pool at the Oakwood Apartments complex was empty at 2 AM, which was exactly why Maya liked it. She floated on her back, staring up at the orange glow of the streetlights filtering through the oak trees, chlorine stinging her eyes in that familiar, almost comforting way. At 34, she'd become something of a zombie lately—moving through her days at the PR firm with a mechanical efficiency that scared her sometimes. The emails, the client meetings, the hollow laughter at corporate happy hours. She'd stopped feeling anything real months ago.

Her cat, Buster, waited on the lounge chair she'd dragged poolside. He watched her with those judgmental yellow eyes, as if he knew she'd stolen the key to the pool from the leasing office. Not that it mattered. She needed this—the weightlessness, the silence broken only by the distant hum of the freeway.

Maya's doctor had put her on some new vitamin D supplement last week. "You're not getting enough sunlight," she'd said, clicking through Maya's bloodwork on her computer. "It's affecting your mood." Maya had nodded, thinking about how she hadn't felt truly happy since before the divorce, since before Richard left her for someone younger, someone who didn't work 60-hour weeks and forget to eat dinner.

She'd left the vitamins on her kitchen counter, next to Richard's old coffee mug she still couldn't bring herself to throw away.

A light flickered on in the apartment overlooking the pool. Maya's heart seized. She watched as a figure appeared on the balcony—a man in a t-shirt and boxers, smoking a cigarette. He was maybe her age, with messy hair and the kind of exhaustion she recognized instantly. He looked down at the pool, at her floating there like some pale ghost in the water.

Maya thought about sinking beneath the surface, just disappearing before he could call security or the police. But then the man raised his cigarette in a silent toast, ash falling like gray snow, and turned back inside without saying a word.

She floated there another hour, until her skin wrinkled and the cold settled into her bones. Somewhere around 3 AM, she climbed out, dripping and shivering, and gathered Buster into her arms. His warm weight against her chest was the first real thing she'd felt in months. Tomorrow she'd take the vitamins. Tomorrow she'd call her mother. Tomorrow she'd quit the job that was killing her soul. But tonight, in the chlorine darkness, she let herself be exactly what she was: alive, and terrified, and finally, finally ready to begin again.