Learning to Float

The papaya arrived at her table already sectioned, glistening in the relentless Hawaiian sun. Elena had ordered it because it felt like something the new version of herself — the post-Thomas version — would eat. Someone who took care of herself. Someone whose ribs didn't show through sundresses because she forgot to eat when the depression got loud.

She took a bite. It tasted like loneliness and artificial paradise.

"Is this seat taken?"

The man was maybe fifty, silver-haired, handsome in that way that comes from money and good tailoring. His eyes flickered to the empty chair across from her, then to her left hand, currently unadorned for the first time in seven years. The tan line was still faint enough to embarrass her.

"It's a free country," she said.

He sat. They made small talk about the resort, the humidity, the flight from LA. He was in venture capital. She taught literature at a community college. Their conversation circled like the goldfish she'd won at a carnival with Thomas during their first month together — the fish that had lived for three years in a bowl on their nightstand, swimming through its own waste, surviving despite everything. She'd left it behind when she moved out. Letting it live or die wasn't her problem anymore.

"You're here alone?" he asked eventually.

"It was supposed to be my anniversary trip."

"Ah." He ordered a scotch. "What happened?"

"He fell in love with someone who wasn't me. The usual story."

"The worst kind."

They ate in companionable silence after that. She'd ordered a spinach salad for lunch, another performance of wellness. But as she chewed the bitter leaves, watching the pool's artificial surface shimmer in the heat, she realized something: she didn't have to perform anymore. Not for a stranger, not for herself.

"I have a cat," she heard herself say. "His name is Barnaby. He hates everyone but me."

"That's something," the man said.

"It is."

She dipped her feet into the pool. The water was shocking, perfect. "I think I'm going to be okay," she said, and the strange part was that she believed it.

"You will," he said. "We always do."

She finished her papaya as the sun dipped toward the ocean. Somewhere in a bowl in her old apartment, a goldfish kept swimming. Somewhere in her new studio, a cat was waiting. And here she was, learning to float.