Dead Pool, Dead Screen

The corporate retreat's pool shimmered with that artificial blue they always use in resorts. Elena sat on the edge, legs in the water, nursing her third mimosa. She'd come here to escape—escaping Marcus, escaping the merger meeting, escaping the way her iphone kept lighting up with notifications she couldn't bring herself to read.

An orange rolled across the concrete and stopped against her heel. She looked up to see David, the VP whose division was being absorbed into hers. He stood there in his suit, jacket off, sleeves rolled, holding two more oranges like they were offerings.

"Thought you might want breakfast," he said. "Before we spend seven hours deciding which of our people get fired."

Elena took the orange he extended. "You know they've already made the list."

"I know."

He sat beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched. The contact sent something through her—not quite desire, but something like recognition. They'd been dancing around each other for months, in boardrooms and elevator rides, in those long email chains that started professional and ended with too many personal details.

David's phone buzzed on the concrete. Neither of them moved to answer it.

"My wife is leaving me," he said, staring at the water. "She's taking the kids to Oregon. I found out yesterday."

"David—"

"I'm not telling you for sympathy. I'm telling you because if I'm going to be single in six months, and unemployed in three, I want to know if there's a reason to stay in this city."

The oranges sat between them like small, bright suns. Elena's phone finally stopped buzzing. The pool reflected the morning sky, so perfectly still it seemed impossible that anything beneath its surface could ever be anything but peaceful.

She peeled her orange, the citrus scent cutting through the chlorine smell. "There might be," she said.

They sat there until the merger meeting started, until they had to go back and decide whose lives to dismantle, but for now they had this: the blue water, the oranges, and the possibility that after everything fell apart, something could begin.