Half-Lit Pool

The pool lights flickered at 2 AM—half the bulbs burned out, half still casting underwater shadows. Sarah floated on her back, staring at the water-stained ceiling, while the television on the deck played infomercials she'd stopped watching hours ago.

Her marriage had ended three months ago with Mark's texts: I can't do this anymore. Not dramatic, just quiet suffocation. Now she was **swimming** laps at odd hours, the hydrotherapy pool at the YMCA her refuge from empty rooms and a **dog** who looked at her with eyes that seemed to ask where his dad had gone.

"You're here late," Marcus said, leaning against the pool edge. He was the night manager, divorced, with hands that knew exactly how to handle a slippery ladder. "Rough week?"

"Rough three months," she said, treading water. "Started taking **vitamin** D supplements. Doctor said I wasn't getting enough sun."

Marcus laughed. "Most of us aren't."

She'd started coming here after the **cable** guy found her crying on the living room floor, surrounded by unpacked boxes from Mark's exit. He'd installed the internet she barely used and said, "There's a pool at the Y. Night swims. Helps."

"My ex-husband," Sarah said suddenly, surprising herself, "took the **bull** by the horns. That was his phrase. Like life was something you wrestled into submission."

Marcus sat on the edge, feet in the water. "Maybe sometimes the bull wins."

They watched the underwater lights pulse. Outside, the city slept while people made love and fought and worried about money and the ache in their chests that wouldn't go away.

"You want to get coffee after?" Marcus asked. "There's a diner down the street."

Sarah thought about her empty apartment, the dog waiting, the vitamin bottle on the counter, the cable packages she'd ignored opening.

"Yes," she said.

Some things, she realized, you didn't wrestle. Some things you just swam toward, even in half-lit water at 2 AM, even when you weren't sure you'd reach the other side.

"Your place or mine?" Marcus asked, and she laughed for the first time since Mark left.