Green Stains at Midnight

The pool water shimmered like liquid mercury under the half-moon, but Elena couldn't appreciate its beauty. Not with Thomas's blonde hair tangled in her fingers, not with the taste of chlorinated desperation still on her tongue.

"You have something—" David started from the patio chair, his voice raw.

She touched her teeth. "Spinach. From the hors d'oeuvres. Because that's what matters now."

David had spent three months on his health transformation—green juices, morning laps in this very pool, a new regimen that had given him the body of his twenties. Elena had encouraged it at first. Who wouldn't want their husband to live longer?

But somewhere between the spinach smoothies and the personal training sessions, he'd decided that his forties were not something to age into gracefully, but something to outrun. And now, standing waist-deep in the expensive pool with Thomas—her sister's husband—Elena understood the terrible arithmetic of midlife crisis.

Thomas's wet hair plastered against his forehead. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

"It never is." She swam toward the pool edge. "That's why we call them mistakes instead of carefully considered life choices."

David's silhouette against the garden lights. The careful cultivation of his health, his vitality—she'd thought it was for them. For their future. Instead, he'd been crafting himself into someone who deserved better. Someone younger. Someone whose hair didn't need dyeing.

She pulled herself from the water, the cold air hitting her skin like truth. "I'm going home."

"Elena—" both men said simultaneously.

She paused at the patio door, letting water drip onto the expensive stone. All that money, all that careful calorie counting, all those hours swimming laps to extend a life he'd already decided wasn't enough. Spinach in her teeth, pool water drying salt-like on her skin, Thomas's blonde hair still ghosting through her fingers like the memory of who she used to be.

"Don't," she said. "Just don't."