Chlorine and Regret

The pool water shimmered with that artificial blue that only exists in suburban backyards and pharmaceutical commercials. David floated on his back, staring up at the ceiling, while his wife's cat — a judgmental Siamese named Binx — sat on the deck, watching him with the intensity of a predator who'd already won.

"You missed your vitamin again," Sarah called from the kitchen. Her voice carried that particular note of exhaustion that comes from twenty years of monitoring someone else's health.

David didn't answer. He was remembering the baseball game their son had played last week, the one neither of them had attended. College applications were due soon, and somewhere between the divorce rumors and his mother's chemo, their son had stopped asking them to come.

"Did you hear me?"

"I heard you."

He swam to the edge and pulled himself up, water dripping from his arms. At forty-five, his body felt like a rental he'd returned late — dinged, stained, and increasingly expensive to maintain.

Sarah appeared in the doorway holding the orange pill bottle. "The doctor said your levels are still low. You know what happens when you don't take it."

"I know." He climbed out of the pool, water streaming off him like the last dregs of ambition. "I'll take it."

They stood there, separated by fifteen feet of concrete and two decades of unsaid things. Binx meowed, stretching and yawning with theatrical disdain.

"Tom's having people over Saturday," Sarah said suddenly. "From work. He asked if we'd come."

David froze. Tom was his former business partner, the one who'd bought David out during the cancer scare that wasn't, the promotion that fell through, the year everything almost fell apart. The invitation was either charity or a trap, and David wasn't sure which was worse.

"Do you want to go?" he asked.

Sarah looked at the vitamin bottle in her hand, then at her husband standing wet and shivering in his boxers. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know what I want anymore."

The cat padded over to rub against David's leg, purring with the warmth of a creature who'd never had to choose between survival and dignity. David picked him up, the animal's solid weight anchoring him in the present moment, and for the first time all day, he didn't feel like he was drowning.