Dead Things Don't Float

The resort pool was exactly like every photo on the website — turquoise, glittering, fringed with palm trees that looked too perfect to be real. Elena swam laps, her arms cutting through water that felt like bathwater, trying to outpace the conversation she and Marcus had been avoiding for three days.

She'd told herself this vacation would fix things. That sand and sun and unlimited cocktails would somehow repair what months of silence had broken. Instead, she felt like a zombie going through the motions of a marriage — eating together, sleeping beside each other, existing in the same space without truly touching.

Marcus sat at the umbrellaed table, his phone glowing in his palm. Another work emergency. Always another emergency. Elena stopped swimming, treading water in the deep end, watching him through heart-shaped swim goggles. He looked exactly like the man she'd fallen in love with eight years ago, and nothing like him at all.

That was the thing about grief — it didn't always announce itself. Sometimes it was just the absence where something used to be. They'd lost a baby six months ago, and with it, the easy intimacy that had defined them. Now every touch felt loaded. Every silence felt like an accusation.

She thought about a documentary they'd watched recently about hibernating bears — how mothers could birth their cubs during winter sleep, how the tiny things would nurse and grow while she dreamed, how she'd wake to new life without ever having witnessed its beginning. That had made her cry. The unfairness of it.

Elena started swimming again, harder now, until her muscles burned. When she finally pulled herself up the ladder, dripping and breathless, Marcus was off his phone. He was watching her with an expression she hadn't seen in months — something raw and uncertain.

"I turned off the notifications," he said quietly. "I'm here. I'm really here."

Elena stood dripping on the concrete, water pooling around her feet. She didn't know if they would make it. Didn't know if some things could be repaired. But as she walked toward him, palms swaying in the artificial breeze that moved through the resort, she thought maybe some things could grow back, even after a long winter.

Even dead things could bloom again, if you waited long enough.