Floating at the Edge

The hotel pool shimmered like liquid glass at midnight, that artificial blue that exists nowhere in nature. Elena rested her arms on the warm concrete, watching her friend Clara pace the perimeter with a third martini in hand.

"You're going to have to tell him eventually," Clara said, her voice slurring slightly. "You can't bear this alone forever."

Elena submerged herself completely, holding her breath until her lungs burned. When she surfaced, gasping, Clara was sitting cross-legged on one of the lounge chairs beneath a swaying palm, its shadow stretching long across the water like an accusing finger.

"There's nothing to tell," Elena said, though they both knew she was lying. The conference had ended twelve hours ago. Her colleagues were either asleep or fucking in rooms nearby, while she was here, contemplating everything she'd lost and everything she'd chosen to sacrifice.

"Bullshit." Clara set down her glass. "I saw how you looked at him during the keynote. Like you were seeing a ghost. Like you were seeing your entire marriage reflected back at you and realizing it was made of glass."

Elena swam to the edge and pulled herself up, water streaming from her skin. The air smelled of chlorine and coconut sunscreen and the faint, sweet rot of tropical flowers. "He's not why I married David. He's not why anything."

"Then what?" Clara's expression softened. "Because you've been swimming in circles for three hours, El. You're exhausted. You're grieving something that hasn't even died yet."

Elena looked at her then—really looked at her friend of fifteen years, who knew every version of her except this one. The one who'd tasted her husband's name on someone else's tongue and found it didn't belong to either of them.

"I think," Elena said slowly, "that I'm bearing witness to my own cowardice."

The palm fronds whispered above them. In the distance, someone laughed. The future loomed like a question she didn't know how to answer, so she slipped back into the water, letting it hold her weight for just a moment longer.