Chlorine Dreams

Maya floated on her back in the hotel pool, the chlorine stinging her eyes as she stared up at the sky turning the color of a bruised orange. She'd come to Cabo for her best friend's wedding—a thirty-fourth birthday present to herself that felt more like punishment—and now she was alone, everyone else asleep or hungover from the rehearsal dinner.

Her iPhone sat on the lounge chair, face up, lighting up every few minutes with notifications she refused to check. Daniel's name had stopped appearing three days ago, but her thumb still hovered over his contact like a phantom limb, searching for signs of life in a graveyard.

She'd been so meticulous about her self-care routine since the breakup. The vitamin D supplements she took religiously each morning, positioned in a neat row on her bathroom counter next to her retinol and probiotic. She was taking care of herself in all the ways that could be purchased, measured, scheduled. It felt like a performance of wellness rather than the thing itself—a pantomime of someone who had her shit together.

A splash from the other end of the pool jolted her. A man her age, maybe older, doing laps with the precise, mechanical rhythm of someone trying to outpace something that was gaining on him. She watched him slice through the water, thinking about how strange it was that humans built these artificial bodies of water everywhere they went—places to float suspended between earth and sky, neither one nor the other. Temporary baptisms.

The man climbed out, water streaming off him like he was made of mercury. He grabbed his towel and his phone, not looking at her. Everyone was always looking at their phones, even here, even in paradise.

Maya's phone lit up again. This time she couldn't help herself.

She swam to the edge and hauled herself out, dripping and shivering in the cooling air. The screen showed a promotional email from a clothing brand, nothing more. The disappointment that crashed through her was so visceral she actually laughed—a dark, jagged sound that startled a bird from a nearby palm tree.

She lowered herself back into the pool, letting the water close over her head, holding her breath until her lungs burned. Somewhere above her, the sun was setting, painting the world in shades of loss and possibility. She stayed under until she couldn't anymore, then broke the surface gasping, alive whether she wanted to be or not.

Beside her lounge chair, an orange peel she'd left earlier had already begun to brown in the heat.