Deep Water

The pool at 6 AM is a church without God. Sarah cuts through the water, breaststroke, rhythmic and punishing. Her husband's voice still echoes from their argument last night—his vitamin supplements spread across the kitchen counter like a pharmacy, his insistence that she take them too, as if swallowing a handful of pills could fix what's broken between them.

She surfaces at the wall, gasping. The older man in lane three watches her. They call him The Bear—he's massive, hirsute, swum here daily for twenty years. Last month, she'd seen him weeping silently in the locker room, his wife's name on his lips. Now he nods at her, acknowledging fellow swimmers in this underwater limbo where grief has weight.

"You're getting faster," The Bear says, and Sarah wonders if he sees it too: the way she's swimming away from her life, one lap at a time.

"Just trying to stay afloat," she says, and it's not a metaphor. She is sinking. David's vitamin obsession, his late nights at the office, the way he looks through her now. She catches her reflection in the pool deck glass—thirty-eight and already ghost.

The Bear dives in, powerful and graceless. She follows. Underwater, the world narrows to blue and breath. No vitamins. No silent breakfasts. No pretending. Just the rhythmic escape.

She thinks about staying under. Just for a moment longer. Then fear snaps her to the surface, gasping.

The Bear watches her from the next lane. He knows, she realizes. They all know. This is where people come to practice not drowning.

She climbs out, dripping and alive. Today, she'll go home. She'll take the damn vitamins. She'll ask David where he goes at night. Not swimming—she's done running.

The water holds its shape behind her.