Current Events

The iphone lay face down on the poolside chair, its screen darkening as twilight gathered around the edges of the day. Sarah had turned it off two hours ago—something she hadn't done since 2007—when Mark's text had arrived: *I met someone.*

She'd been swimming laps for three hours. Not the graceful, rhythmic swimming of her twenties, but something more desperate, a cutting through water that felt like punishment. Her muscles burned. Her shoulders screamed. Still she swam.

Outside, lightning fractured the sky, illuminating the indoor pool in harsh flashes. The storm had been brewing all afternoon, much like the one she'd felt coming for months. The weatherman had warned of dangerous conditions. Sarah should have heeded that warning in more ways than one.

She pulled herself from the water, breath ragged, limbs heavy. This was the third time this week she'd found herself running—sometimes literally, through the neighborhood at 2 AM, sometimes metaphorically, running from the silence of their apartment, from the unasked questions, from the way Mark's eyes had slid away from hers whenever she'd tried to say something true.

The iphone vibrated against the chair's metal frame. A phantom buzz. Or maybe real. She didn't check.

She remembered the vacation in Greece, years ago, when they'd swum together in the Aegean, how the water had felt like baptism, like renewal. Mark had held her then in the saltwater, both of them weightless. They'd been poor then, stressed by jobs and uncertain futures, but they'd had something that money couldn't buy.

When did they start running from each other?

Another flash of lightning. The pool's surface momentarily became a mirror, reflecting a woman she barely recognized. Sarah sat on the edge, legs dangling in the water she'd spent hours trying to escape into, trying to drown her thoughts in.

She picked up the iphone, powered it on. Six missed calls. Twelve texts. The screen illuminated her face in the darkness, casting ghostly shadows. She opened their shared photo album—thousands of images of a life that no longer existed, frozen moments of two people who had promised forever.

She pressed delete on all of them. Then the messages. Then his contact information.

Outside, the storm broke. Rain sheeted against the pool house windows, nature's violent applause. Sarah lowered herself back into the water, suddenly lighter than she had in years. For the first time in a decade, she wasn't running. She was simply swimming, alone, into whatever came next.