Floating

The corporate retreat was Barbara's idea—a weekend of "team building" at someone's cousin's lake house. Now Marcus floated in the middle of the lake, wearing the ridiculous orange swim cap she'd insisted everyone buy for "visibility purposes." He looked like a traffic cone abandoned at sea.

From the dock, he could see the others. Tom, the VP who'd taken credit for Marcus's Q3 report, was currently being humped by Barbara's golden retriever. The dog—a chaotic, fur-shedding manifestation of unchecked enthusiasm—had decided Tom's linen shorts were the perfect place to express his joy. Tom was laughing too loudly, the kind of laugh that said 'I am important and this is funny because I am deigning to participate.'

Marcus treaded water, watching them. The lake was warmer than he expected, thick with algae and secrets. He'd been swimming laps for forty minutes, trying to outpace the email notification he'd received Friday: his position was being "restructured." Again.

His father would call this dog eat dog. His therapist would call it capitalism. Marcus called it Tuesday.

The hat slipped over his eyes. He pushed it back up, water streaming down his face. Somewhere on shore, someone was opening champagne. The pop carried across the water like a small, celebratory gunshot.

"Marcus!" Barbara called from the dock. "We're doing trust falls!"

He thought about floating there until they left. Thought about how easy it would be to just keep swimming, away from the restructured positions and the credit-stealing Toms and the cheerful, mounting anxiety that lived in his chest like a second, quieter heart.

Instead, he swam toward shore, toward the dog and the fake laughter and the hat that matched everyone else's. Toward the champagne and trust falls and whatever fresh hell Monday would bring.

But for another moment, he just floated—suspended between the person he was and the person he kept pretending to become—weightless, breathless, and entirely alone.