Dead in the Water

The office betting pool had reached eight hundred dollars. Everyone wanted to know when Marcus would finally crack. They watched him like a specimen in a lab—the way he stared blankly at spreadsheets for hours, the way his wife left messages on his voicemail that went unanswered for days. Zombie, someone whispered in the breakroom. Not to his face. Never to his face.

The water in the hotel pool rippled under a merciless August sun. Four floors below their balcony, a child screamed with delight while Marcus's brother Dave made yet another toast to the couple's tenth anniversary. Marcus swirled the champagne in his glass, watching the bubbles rise and break, rise and break, like tiny hostages escaping.

"You're not here," Elena said beside him, her voice low enough that the others wouldn't hear. "You haven't been here for months."

He turned to look at her really look, and realized he couldn't remember the last time he had. Her hair was different now. She was thinner. There were lines around her eyes that he couldn't place.

"I'm tired, El."

"No." She shook her head, her expression almost tender. "You're not tired. You're gone. You move through your days like—" she stopped herself.

"Like what?"

"Like something that's already dead, Marcus. You walk, you talk, you go to work. But whatever made you you—it checked out a long time ago."

The truth of it hit him like physical violence. Below them, the water caught the light and fractured it into a thousand blinding shards. He'd been so angry at her for so long—angry that she wanted more, angry that she asked questions, angry that she refused to accept his hollow version of happiness. But she hadn't been demanding. She'd been grieving. Grieving the living, breathing man she'd married, who had slowly been replaced by this hollow thing that wore his face.

He set down his glass. "I don't know how to come back."

Elena's hand found his, her fingers cool against his palm. "Then let's start here. Right now. Not tomorrow, not after the project, not when you're ready. Because you're never going to be ready."

They stood there as the party continued around them, two people at the edge of something vast and terrifying and necessary. The water glittered below like forgiveness.