Chlorine and Regret

Marcus stood at the edge of the apartment complex pool at 5 AM, chlorine stinging his nostrils, the water still and dark as a promise he'd stopped making to himself years ago. Forty-seven years old and still waking up before dawn, as if running from something he couldn't name.

The vitamin supplements sat in his kitchen cabinet at home — a rainbow of promises: better joints, sharper mind, more energy. The kind of bullshit men bought when they realized their bodies were beginning to betray them. He swallowed them every morning with the same grim determination he applied to everything else in his life.

"You're out here early," a voice said from the shadows.

He turned. Elena from 4B, wrapped in a bathrobe, cigarette glowing in the darkness. They'd slept together three months ago — once, after the building party where too much wine had made everything seem possible.

"Can't sleep," he said, toeing off his sandals.

"Me neither." She sat on one of the loungers, watching him lower himself into the water. "My husband asked about you yesterday."

Marcus began his laps, the rhythm familiar as breathing. What could he say? That he still thought about her when he woke up alone? That the vitamins and the running and the goddamn pool were just ways to fill the silence?

"He's suspicious," she added, when he surfaced at the wall.

"Let him be."

"You always were that way." She stubbed out the cigarette. "So sure of yourself. Like you could just keep running and never have to stop."

The sun was beginning to rise, painting the water gold and pink. Marcus floated on his back, watching the sky brighten, thinking about all the things he'd never said. All the ways he'd been running since he was twenty — from jobs, from relationships, from the quiet voice that whispered that none of this mattered.

"The vitamins," he said finally. "They don't work."

Elena laughed, and it was the saddest sound he'd heard in years. "Nothing does, Marcus. That's the point."

He pulled himself from the pool, water dripping from his skin like time he couldn't get back. Behind him, the sun rose full and blazing over the complex, indifferent as always.