Chlorine and Regret

The pool at the Motel 6 was supposed to be heated. Elena stepped in anyway.

The water bit at her ankles, sharp and unforgiving. She'd come here for the sales conference, but found herself standing at the edge at 2 AM, still wearing her blouse and skirt, clutching a plastic cup of wine from the motel's complementary "hospitality hour."

Her phone buzzed on the pool chair. David again.

She'd started taking B-complex vitamins three weeks ago, after the doctor said her fatigue was probably just stress. Just stress. As if stress wasn't the whole architecture of her life. As if swallowing a horse pill could fix the way her chest tightened every time she walked into her office.

The wine tasted metallic. She set it down and waded deeper, fully clothed, until the water reached her waist. Her skirt billowed around her like a dark flower.

David wanted to talk about "the relationship." About why she'd been distant lately. About why she'd started sleeping in the guest room. She couldn't explain it to him any more than she could explain it to herself.

Her cat, Buster, would be waiting at home. He'd scratch at the door until she fed him, then ignore her completely. That was love, maybe. The kind that demanded food but offered nothing in return.

At the conference today, she'd watched her competitor—confident, loud, male—present numbers she knew were inflated. Everyone had nodded. Everyone had smiled. She'd smiled too, her cheeks aching from the performance of approval.

She submerged herself completely.

Underwater, everything was muffled and blue. Her hair floated like mermaid silk. For a moment, she considered just staying down. Just letting the chlorine fill her lungs instead of the endless presentations and quarterly reviews and relationship conversations that circled like sharks.

Then she kicked toward the surface, gasping.

The phone buzzed again. She ignored it.

Elena thought about the spinach salad she'd forced herself to eat for lunch, how it had tasted like paper. How she'd been trying to take care of herself in all the small ways while the big ones—career, marriage, the question of whether she wanted any of this at all—went entirely unaddressed.

She waded back to the edge, water dripping from her clothes, and lay back on the concrete. The sky was enormous.

"Tomorrow," she said aloud, and the word felt like both a promise and a threat.

The pool stayed perfectly still, reflecting nothing at all.