Laps in the Shallow End

The water was precisely 78 degrees—the kind of controlled comfort that cost extra. Maya surfaced from her third lap, gasping, and immediately reached for her iphone on the pool deck. The screen was cracked, a spiderweb of fractures that caught the afternoon light.

Three new messages. All from him.

*"I think we need to talk."*

*"I've been doing a lot of thinking."*

*"Are you ignoring me?"*

Maya let the phone drop onto the concrete. She'd met David at this same pool three years ago—a corporate summer party where they'd both gotten tipsy on cheap wine and bonded over how much they hated their coworkers. Now David was probably at their apartment, probably eating that spinach salad he'd become obsessed with, probably composing the text that would end everything.

She'd seen it coming. The way he'd started staying later at work. The way he'd stopped asking about her day. The way he'd look at her sometimes like she was a puzzle he'd already solved and no longer found interesting.

A splash interrupted her thoughts. A kid cannonballed into the deep end, sending ripples toward her. Maya watched them spread, distorting her reflection in the blue-tiled bottom.

She wasn't ready to go back there yet. To the apartment with the half-empty closet. To the conversation where they'd dissect three years of shared history like it was a failed experiment. To the spinach wilted in the vegetable drawer because she kept forgetting she wasn't cooking for two anymore.

Her iphone buzzed again. David's name lit up the screen.

Maya pressed decline. Then, with a strange calm, she dropped the phone into her pool bag and pushed off the wall, diving into the chlorinated water that smelled like artificial summer and denial. Let him wait. Let them both wait. She had three more laps to swim, and for now, that was enough.