Dead Man's Float
The pool was empty at 2 AM, which was exactly how Elena liked it. Forty laps, back and forth, the water swallowing every sound. Swimming had become her only refuge from the twelve-hour days that had transformed her from an architect into something unrecognizable.
She thought about Marcus sometimes. They'd been friends once, close enough that they'd joked about starting their own firm together. That was three years ago. Now Marcus was something else — a creature of fluorescent lights and bottomless coffee, hollowed out by the grind. He'd come to her last winter, eyes glazed, explaining with terrifying calm why he needed to work through his daughter's birthday. A project deadline. Always a deadline.
"I'm not dead yet, Lena," he'd said, though something behind his eyes suggested otherwise.
She'd started calling him a zombie then, not to his face. It wasn't funny. It was the most accurate word she had.
Elena flipped at the wall, pushing harder. The water resistance felt honest in a way nothing else did anymore. Her phone sat on the bench, dark and silent. Somewhere in its void were messages from clients, from Marcus, from a life she was increasingly certain she didn't want.
The first crack of lightning shattered the pool's glass ceiling, white light flooding the water like judgment. Elena surfaced, gasping. The storm had been forecast for days, but she'd kept swimming anyway.
"You're becoming him," she whispered to no one. The water swallowed her voice.
She thought about Marcus's daughter, the way she'd looked when Elena last saw her — small, confused, wondering why her father kept missing the moments that mattered. Lightning struck again, closer this time. The pool lights flickered.
Elena dragged herself out of the pool, water streaming like something she couldn't wash off. Her phone lit up with a notification: Marcus. Probably asking if she could cover something. Probably another emergency.
She watched the screen darken again without answering. Outside, the sky opened up, rain lashing against the glass. Elena wrapped herself in a towel and sat in the darkness, feeling the storm outside and the one inside, both equally electric, both equally terrifying.
Some friendships don't end. They just become something else. They become ghosts that haunt your inbox, reminders of the person you used to be, warnings of the person you're becoming.
The pool looked almost peaceful in the intermittent lightning, a dark mirror reflecting something she needed to see. Tomorrow she'd quit. Tonight, she'd just swim until her arms gave out, until the water washed away whatever was left of the person she'd been becoming.
One more lap. Then she'd call Marcus back. Then she'd start living.